Charleston homeless encampment cleared out. What happens next?

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) — Upon entering or exiting the City of Charleston, mounds of debris can be seen stacked high beneath the Ravenel Bridge overpass between Morrison Drive and Meeting Street.

Mattresses, empty bottles and cans, a dog bed, cushions, clothes, and a Bible are among the discarded items — remnants of an encampment where unhoused individuals came to seek shelter and community.

Crews with the South Carolina Department of Transporation (SCDOT) have been working to clean up the state-maintained area following a September request from city officials.

“We try to prevent a tent city from occurring,” said Geona Shaw Johnson, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development.

That meant dismantling the small encampment and attempting to relocate the individuals sheltering there.

“Typically what the driving force is behind asking individuals to leave a location is if they’re interfering or getting in the way of traffic in any way,” Johnson explained.

“Other times, the need is to literally clean it up because the trash getting so severe,” she continued. “[This location] is also an area where people park, and so then people become a little frightened or afraid of parking because they see an enormous amount of trash.”

The clean-up officially began on Nov. 4 after repeated delays due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. City officials said people living in an encampment are notified in advance, sometimes weeks before but sometimes just 48 hours ahead.

“What we will do is send what we call our outreach workers to our unsheltered neighbors and say, ‘This is not the place for habitation. Let us help you with securing a different or better place to live,'” Johnson said.

Charleston Police handed out notices to roughly a dozen people throughout several interactions, telling them to gather their belongings and relocate, and pointing them to available resources.

No one was reportedly still on site when SCDOT crews arrived to sweep the area. Whatever belongings they hadn’t taken with them were raked into piles and loaded into trash bags.

“It’s heartbreaking when an encampment is dismantled and people maybe don’t have the resources to remove all of their belongings,” said Stacey Denaux, the CEO of One80 Place, a nonprofit on Walnut Street that offers shelter and wraparound services to people experiencing homelessness.

“We might look at someone’s belongings in an encampment and think it’s trash, but that’s what belongs to that person. That’s very personal for them,” she added.

According to SCDOT, the encampment has been cleared five times since 2019 with officials citing health and safety concerns.

The city does offer services for unhoused people, including the Hope Center, a permanent day resource center located just blocks from the encampment on Meeting Street that opened in May 2022.

“We’ve most recently included job services there, so our job service coordinators help someone find employment,” Johson said, noting that while resources are made available, they aren’t always utilized.

Denaux attributes the choice not to seek services partially to the trauma experienced by people when a homeless encampment is dismantled, especially on short notice.

“I might not think it’s safe and appropriate, but the people who are there, they’ve become a community,” she said. “They trust each other. They’ve started to trust service providers, perhaps, and then an encampment gets dismantled in a way that’s, you know, that could violate that trust or really set people back on their path towards permanent housing.”

Often, encampments simply end up relocating, she said.

“It’s not accomplishing our goal of ending and preventing homelessness,” Denaux said. “It’s moving people to a less visible location. So if you had one that had 10 or 12 people in it, now, maybe you have three or four smaller encampments that have gone further into the woods or into a remote part of our community.”

“So dismantling encampments on the basis of health, safety, and sanitation sounds good, but the reality is, you’re not doing anything to end homelessness for the people that were in that encampment,” she continued.

The number of homeless and housing-insecure people in South Carolina is growing, according to the Interagency Council on Homelessness. On a single night in January 2023, volunteers counted 4,053 unhoused people across the state.

“We’re looking at various measures that we can use in concert with our police department, in concert with other stakeholders and providers in our community, such that we’re using the most up-to-date and the most innovative ways to reach the population that are unsheltered,” Johnson said.

That includes the Lowcountry Rapid Housing Program, an initiative spearheaded by Charleston Mayor William Cogswell that would establish a campus of 118 private, temporary shelters on Herbert Street in the upper peninsula. The shelters would be available only to men.

Cogswell estimated the plan would cost $5.5 million at the outset, which he envisioned being split between surrounding counties and municipalities. None in the tri-county area had officially agreed to participate as of Dec. 13, though the plan is expected to move forward.

After the area on Meeting Street was cleared, a new homeless encampment popped up on private property along Ashley Phosphate Road.

“No trespassing” signs were posted on the property and Dorchester County officials confirmed that deputies made contact with at least one individual. That individual reportedly refused services offered to them and willingly left the property.

The county’s solid waste team spent several hours last Thursday morning clearing debris from the roadway and is now working with the property owners to clean up the wooded area.

Still, advocates say there is only one solution that will end homelessness and stop the establishment of new encampments.

“Creation of affordable housing, whether it’s literally constructing units, or taking units that we have now and making them affordable, that’s how we’re going to end homelessness,” Denaux said. “It’s not by creating more shelter beds. It’s not by just moving encampments and hiding people. If we want to end homelessness, we need to continue to work with homeless people who are unsheltered to find them their own place to live.”