Following a social media post by President Donald Trump, D.C. closed a large encampment next to the E Street Expressway with only a day’s notice. The city also closed two other encampments in late February and early March, and has scheduled nearly a dozen more closures for the coming weeks.
The encampment targeted by Trump had been located across from the State Department for many years, and the city has previously conducted encampment engagements at the site without deeming it necessary for closure. But in early March, the city closed it one day after Trump’s post, with only 24 hours of notice, instead of the two weeks usually given. At least nine people who had been living in the encampment were displaced by this closure, according to a street outreach worker from Miriam’s Kitchen, which serves the area.
Trump’s social media posts have increased tensions between the federal government and the District. On March 5, Trump publicly called on D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to close the District’s encampments, seemingly targeting the E Street Expressway site. “She must clean up all of the unsightly homeless encampments in the City, specifically the ones outside of the State Department, and near the White House. If she is not capable of doing so, we will be forced to do it for her!” he posted on his official Truth Social account, signing the post, “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
By the next morning, D.C.’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS) had scheduled the closure at E Street Expressway encampment for the next day, and increased the number of scheduled encampment closures for March, rescheduling some closures that had been postponed due to the weather.
While speaking to the press on the morning of March 6, Bowser denied the Trump administration was ordering the mayor’s office to “do anything.” The mayor’s office instead took the social media post as a “notice,” Bowser said, and she reiterated “Listen, we always clear homeless encampments, we always do.”
Bowser explained she had discussed the encampments in question with the president’s staff. “I said ‘Thanks for the notice — we’ll take care of it.’”
D.C. officials have offered contradictory explanations for why the closure was scheduled so quickly. In an initial statement, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage said the closure had been previously scheduled, but canceled due to the weather. Street Sense was not able to find any engagements scheduled at the site for 2025 on the city’s encampment website.
According to videos sent to Street Sense, by the afternoon of March 6, only one sticker sign had been posted in the E Street Expressway encampment notifying residents of an imminent clean-up that would oust them from the place they called home. Over a dozen other tents in the area had no stickers, though the Washington Post reported outreach workers informed some residents about the closure that day. The sticker sign and post on the city’s encampment website called the engagement a “Scheduled Full Cleanup” and “Encampment Site Closure,” not an “Immediate Disposition,” the language D.C. typically uses for encampment closures that are scheduled without two weeks’ notice.
Then, on March 10, after the closure, a DMHHS spokesperson referred to the clean-up as an “immediate disposition” during a conversation with a Street Sense reporter, contradicting the signage posted by DMHHS at the encampment.
The DMHHS Encampment Protocol states the agency must give 14 days notice before closing an encampment except for “immediate dispositions” which the city can only do if there is an urgent risk. In a recent performance oversight hearing, DMHHS testified it has “consistently” met the standard two-week notice and often averages as much as four weeks for large encampments, making this closure a notable exception.
According to a DMHHS spokesperson, DMHHS and other outreach teams conducted “intense outreach” with residents who were present on March 6, the day before the closure, to make residents aware of the shelter and storage options available to them. During this outreach, “all residents appeared to be understanding of the scheduled actions and voiced their desires to be compliant,” the spokesperson wrote in their statement.
Yet, residents were still left scrambling to gather the belongings they had accumulated over months or years before city workers removed everything remaining with heavy machinery.
On the morning of the closure, Street Sense and other media outlets were not allowed to enter the encampment and were kept behind police tape, limiting access to residents and staff. In a message to Street Sense, a DMHHS representative said only necessary individuals were allowed into the site for safety and liability reasons. The area was blocked off by several police cars at each end.
When DMHHS workers and police arrived around 9 a.m. on March 7, at least 15 tents dotted the side of the expressway, some of which had already been abandoned. Outreach workers from organizations like Miriam’s Kitchen helped residents pack up their belongings and offered transportation to the Aston, a newly opened non-congregate shelter and bridge housing facility in Foggy Bottom.
While encampment residents were offered rooms at the Aston, advocates and outreach workers expressed concerns about the arrangement because bridge housing is not meant to be long-term, and is typically reserved for people moving into permanent housing soon, which is not the case for all residents of the E Street Expressway encampment. They worry residents will be housed for only a few nights before being kicked out on the streets again.
The Aston did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
“The safest place for people is in a shelter or permanent housing,” Turnage wrote in a statement to Street Sense. “D.C.’s case management teams continue to engage individuals and families experiencing homelessness and work to match them to housing resources and wrap-around services such as behavioral health services and case management.”
As of March 11, D.C.’s low-barrier shelter system also has open beds, but hypothermia season is set to end on March 31, cutting the number of shelter beds from 1,560 to 1,087. At various points last spring, shelters in the city were nearly full and people were turned away hundreds of times.
While some residents chose to move to the Aston, others chose to relocate to encampments elsewhere in the city, according to outreach workers. Many E Street residents had moved to the expressway after being displaced from other encampments nearby.
During the closure, police detained one female encampment resident under an FD-12, a form that seeks to involuntarily commit someone to a hospital due to mental health concerns.
The resident, who Street Sense was not able to speak to, was put in handcuffs and moved to a police vehicle after yelling at workers while packing her belongings. A video taken from outside the encampment around 10:50 a.m. shows the woman surrounded by at least five police officers, an outreach worker, and one other unidentified person while shouting and being handcuffed.
According to the Department of Behavioral Health (DBH), FD-12s are issued when there is reason to believe that a person is mentally ill and likely to injure themselves or others unless they are immediately detained. People deemed at-risk can be taken into custody and transported to a hospital for treatment without a warrant. In the past, Street Sense has witnessed city officials threaten encampment residents with involuntary commitment when they have resisted moving during closures.
“MPD officers assisted DBH with an individual in crisis. The individual was referred for emergency hospitalization by DBH through the FD-12 process. MPD assisted DBH with transporting the individual to a mental health facility,” the Metropolitan Police Department Office of Communications told Street Sense via a written statement.
About an hour later, shortly before noon, city workers piloted a CAT 299D3 Compact Track Loader to begin removing residents’ remaining belongings, including tents. The CAT quickly became stuck in the mud and it took officials several minutes to steer it out. The sight drew some laughs from the growing audience, which included many State Department workers identified by their badges.
As the closure continued, at least seven passersby approached Street Sense reporters, curious. All of them asked “Where will the residents go now?” One federal worker called the actions “heartless” and “inhumane.”
“They’ve been here for years,” said a neighborhood resident on his morning walk.
Another woman on her way to the Stand Up for Science rally, a protest scheduled to occur that afternoon outside the Lincoln Memorial, sarcastically noted the encampment closure was a “heartfelt” way to celebrate the first week of Lent, a Catholic season of prayer and fasting that precedes the Easter holiday.
There were at least 25 police officers on site, including three “white shirts,” or officers who have achieved the rank of lieutenant or higher, which is unusual for an encampment closure, according to Yannik Omictin, a former ANC commissioner for the area who observed the closure.
“It’s the most cops per person, I’ll tell you that. The most white shirts per person, the most commanders, high-ranking officers that I’ve seen at a clearing,” he said. “It’s really the first time I’ve seen them do graffiti at the same time, which tells me everything I need to know about what the goal of this is: to appease Trump and to appease the DOGE workers and all the cronies that drive up the E Street Expressway every day. They don’t want to see poverty.”
Omictin’s interview was interrupted when city workers began spraying graffiti in the area with Bare Brick Stone and Masonry Graffiti Remover. Outreach workers and people in the area were not given advanced warning, even though the spray can irritate the eyes and cause headaches and nausea when inhaled.
Trump’s influence weighed heavily on the closure. “He can go fuck himself. Mayor Bowser can also go fuck herself,” Omictin said.
D.C. closed two other encampments throughout late February and early March. Multiple other scheduled closures and clean-ups were canceled or rescheduled due to weather.
Two clean-ups occurred back to back on the morning of Feb. 28. The first, at 20 & E Streets NW, consisted of bulk trash removal. The resident left behind things they no longer wanted and left the area before the clean-up took place.
A few blocks down, D.C. officials closed an encampment on the side of the road overlooking the E Street Expressway at 23rd and E Streets NW.
Jinah was the only person living at this encampment and is a longtime resident of the neighborhood. He told Street Sense he had become familiar with consistently moving throughout the Foggy Bottom area since moving there in 2020. Street Sense is identifying Jinah by only his first name to protect his privacy while living outside.
Samuel, a neighborhood member who frequently visits Jinah, referred to him lovingly as a “real brother, he’s a resident.” They’ve shared meals together and even exchanged Christmas presents, he said. According to Samuel, many neighbors feel a similar sense of friendship with Jinah and other people experiencing homelessness and don’t understand why Jinah must continuously move if the community supports him.
“It’s like an unnecessary dance,” Samuel said.
The city also closed an encampment on March 4 at 2230 Adams Pl. NE, though Street Sense was unable to attend.
Eleven more encampment closures, including at some of the largest in the city, are scheduled for March and April at the time of publication. Updates to this schedule can be found at dmhhs.dc.gov/page/encampments.
Upcoming encampment engagements: March 12 at 901 26th St NW (Fenced Area), March 12 at 27th and K St NW (Whitehurst Hill), March 13 at 2nd and D St NW (Tunnel Exit), March 18 at 3100 Mt. Pleasant St NW, March 19 at 1425 New York Ave NW, March 20 at North Capitol St. and Massachusetts Ave NW, March 25 at Virginia Ave and Rock Creek Pkwy NW, March 26 at 2000 14th St NW (Reeves Center), March 27 at L St Underpass NE (NoMa), and April 1 at 1st and C St NW (DDOT Tunnel Exit).
Franziska Wild and Gabriel Zakaib contributed reporting.
