As Denise Ann Allman packed up her belongings, she motioned a Street Sense reporter over.
“This is like the fifth time I moved in a month. I’m not the one making the mess, they are,” she said, eeferring to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS), the city agency that manages encampments and was closing Allman’s at 26th and L Streets on April 2. As she spoke, the frustration in her voice was clear.
Residents like Allman are feeling the toll of D.C.’s decision to increase the rate of encampment closures. In late March and early April, DMHHS closed five encampments, leading to the involuntary hospitalization of one resident and the displacement of at least 15 other people.
In late March and early April, DMHHS also canceled two encampment closures, one at the L Street Underpass and one at 2000 14th St. NW “because the residents relocated on their own before the scheduled times,” according to a DMHHS spokesperson.
Beginning five weeks ago, DMHHS ramped up the rate of encampment closures, scheduling up to four a week. In the Foggy Bottom neighborhood alone, DMHHS has closed five encampments since mid-March, partially because residents have returned to sites that were previously closed, the DMHHS spokesperson wrote. “We have seen residents relocate to sites in Foggy Bottom that had been previously closed and noticed as spaces where camping is prohibited, which is why we’ve taken further action to enforce the protocol,” they added.
With the increase in closures, the city has also begun offering noncongregate shelter to some encampment residents and will “continue to increase options within our adult homeless services continuum to provide a variety of reconnection services, shelter, bridge housing, and temporary and permanent housing,” the spokesperson wrote. Encampment residents have moved into the Aston, and a new non-congregate shelter, E Street, is set to open this summer.
But residents like Allman say they are becoming frustrated, angry, and burnt out as they try to find yet another place to move to.
“I asked where I could put my tent, I don’t know how many different times. They’re not telling us we can go over there, but everybody in their group is going over there, and then they’ll do the same shit over there,” Allman said.
The closure at 26th and L Street is the largest closure since DMHHS conducted an immediate disposition near Virginia Avenue on March 14, displacing some residents for the second time in three days. The 26th and L closure displaced Allman along with at least 12 other residents, most of whom moved their belongings across the street to a patch of green space that DMHHS closed on April. A DMHHS spokesperson cited “health and safety concerns” as the reason for the closure.
Encampment residents say they are having to move more often and with less time in between moves; DMHHS also closed an encampment on Virginia Avenue and Rock Creek Parkway on March 25, displacing four people, some of whom moved a week later during the closure at 26th and L Street. The agency said that it first identified the Virginia Avenue site six months ago and made the decision to close it “due to various health and safety concerns, inclusive of fire hazards and bulk hoarding.”
“Even as we approach the end of hypothermia season and closure of overflow sites, we want all residents living in encampments to accept our offer of shelter. Accepting shelter will allow us to better address the needs of each individual and assess our shelter capacity overall,” the spokesperson wrote.
On April 6, the daily census of available low-barrier shelter beds showed there were 26 beds available for men and 32 beds available for women, including dozens of beds that will no longer be available by April 15. As of the beginning of 2025, DMHHS estimates there are 200 people living in encampments across the city, meaning most likely, even if every encampment resident felt comfortable accepting shelter, there wouldn’t be adequate beds to serve them.
As Allman continued to pack her belongings, an exchange began between another resident and a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer on the scene.
The resident, who was upset about the increase in recent encampment closures, had been drinking and, at points during the closure, yelling. One officer, Yudis Zuniga, went to go speak with the resident, and they talked for a few minutes before the resident took a few unsteady steps into the nearby road, seemingly to get away from Zuniga.
In response, Zuniga grabbed the resident’s arm, while she tried to pull away. Then, Zuniga grabbed both the resident’s arms and put them behind her back in an attempt to handcuff her. During this, the resident began yelling, “You’re hurting me.” Two other officers assisted in helping Zuniga cuff the resident while she yelled and began to cry.
Another resident watched as officers cuffed his neighbor. He repeatedly asked officers not to arrest her and explained that he could take care of her if needed. “I can’t just watch her?” he repeated as officers forced the resident into a police car.
After the incident, MPD told Street Sense the resident was not arrested; rather, they conducted what is known as an FD-12, a process that seeks to involuntarily commit someone to a hospital due to mental health concerns. The resident was brought to George Washington Hospital, according to an incident report provided to Street Sense by MPD.
In the incident report, MPD wrote that DBH “completed their assessment” of the resident and determined she was “in need of a mental evaluation.” The report also stated she was being “aggressive and insulting” and “was walking in and out of traffic, putting herself and others in danger.”
After the closure, Street Sense spoke with the resident who had offered to care for his neighbor. He grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and spent years working as a corporate trainer before surviving cancer. Since the beginning of COVID-19, he’s been experiencing homelessness. He asked to be identified as “Silence Dogood.” He expressed he thought the way DMHHS and MPD handled the situation was unnecessary.
“She just didn’t want to be touched. She didn’t want them to touch this or touch that. And instead of listening to her or being like, okay, okay, okay, the minute she got loud, they put her in cuffs,” he said. “She was being, you know, kind of troublesome, but not to the trouble of what they did to her.”
In his eyes, he or another encampment resident could have handled the situation differently, in a way that did not require the resident to be hospitalized.
“Let me go talk to her. Yeah, give me five minutes. Let me, let me see if I could do something,” he said. He acknowledged she was yelling and often acts “off the beaten path” but said, “you gotta take it with kid gloves, not handcuffs.”
For him, being forced to repeatedly move hasn’t even been frustrating, just sad. “You have no foundation. You don’t have nothing to rely on. That’s the biggest thing,” he said.
Allman echoed some of the same feelings, but her emotions verged more into frustration than sadness. She explained she didn’t plan to move across the street with the rest of the group, since she had already been forced to move from the spot they were heading to once before.
“I’m not moving across the street. They threw me out of across the street last week,” she said. “No, I’m going to destroy the tent. I’m prepared to go sleep in the bush.”
The next week, after the closure on April 8, Allman did exactly that. She grabbed only the possessions she needed and left her tent to be trashed by DMHHS.
Beyond the closures on March 25, April 2, and April 8, DMHHS conducted two other closures, one at 1st and C Streets NW, which impacted a single resident, and one in Mount Pleasant. This was the 16th closure at the same site in Mount Pleasant. The full story of the effect of repeated closures on the resident, Heather Bernard, can be read on the opposite page.
Upcoming encampment closures: April 9 at North Capitol Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, April 10 at 1000 block of Howard Road SE, April 15 at 11th Street SE (DDOT Underpass), April 22 at 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, April 23 at 3527 Connecticut Avenue NW Cleveland Park Metro, and April 24 at 300 Mass Avenue NE.
Madi Koesler contributed reporting.
