Salim didn’t actually believe they would destroy the home he had built. He told the officials and outreach worker there, he would only move if he saw the bulldozer make its first move.
He had lived on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Waterside Drive for over seven years in a structure he built himself. It wasn’t visible from the road — he had taken pains to camouflage it with tree branches and plants — and it was neat and clean with a stone walkway he built by hauling the stones up from the park himself.
Now, the National Parks Service (NPS) was forcing Salim to move, and he didn’t want to go.
“They can do whatever they want there. I have only this small spot here,” he said, trying to negotiate any way to stay. “If I leave, I lose everything.”
Salim is one of many D.C. residents experiencing homelessness who have been impacted by the rapid increase in encampment closures this year.
As of May 15 this year, NPS — which manages a great deal of available green space in the District — has begun strict reinforcement of its no-camping rule on all of its land, closing at least nine encampments in 2024 so far. But it’s not only NPS that has ramped up closures. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS), the agency responsible for encampments that are on land owned by D.C., has already closed more encampments this year than it did in all of 2023.
Advocates worry that this increase in closures is arbitrary, leads to increased instability and harmful situations, and does little to improve the underlying conditions of homelessness. And they worry that the situation will worsen for unhoused individuals, while doing very little to improve the city overall.
“It would be reasonable to believe that what we’re going to see is people in perpetuity being chased around the city until there’s a fence around everywhere you think you might put up a campsite,” Adam Rocap the Deputy Director for Miriam’s Kitchen, said. “And that really is just ineffective and harmful.”
The increasing use of encampment closures
Encampment closures — when the city or park service removes an encampment and prohibits people from coming back to the site — are relatively new. In fact, “closures” are not outlined as one of the encampment engagement options in DMHHS’ encampments protocol.
The protocol only lists what it calls “standard dispositions” and “immediate dispositions.” For “standard dispositions,” residents must be given 14 days notice before a “clean-up,” during which their property could be destroyed if left at the site. Nowhere does it say residents are not allowed to return to the site, although the protocol states: “if there are pending issues that need to be addressed to secure the site, DMHHS will serve as the lead in coordinating these efforts.” In immediate dispositions, residents are only given 24 hours to remove their belongings and relocate.
In practice, DMHHS also regularly conducts two other kinds of encampment engagements: full clean-ups and trash removals. In the case of full clean-ups, encampment residents must temporarily remove their belongings in order for the area to be cleaned by DMHHS and Department of Public Works staff. This cleaning can involve rodent abatement, grass cutting, power washing and other measures designed to promote public health, and residents are allowed to return to the area after. In trash removals, DMHHS and DPW staff will only remove items that residents designate as trash.
Ann Marie Staudenmaier, a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless who works on encampments and public space rights, noted that before DMHHS started conducting site closures and using measures such as fencing or concrete barriers to prevent people from returning, all encampment engagements fell into the “full clean-ups” category.
“In my mind, a full cleanup is what they used to just do in the old days. They called it an encampment engagement, you know, sort of like benign language to not really say what it is,” she said. “And that just means, they give the 14-day notice; they come and do the cleanup at some point after that 14 days; and then those people would come back to the same site.”
Staudenmaier said beginning in 2023, DMHHS began closing encampments much more frequently.
“In the past, it was really unusual to do a so-called site closure. They started to do those more often, where they would put a sign-up that said, ‘this site is permanently closed to encampments,’” she said. “It’s not something that’s in the protocol that governs these. It’s a thing that they kind of made up to basically to prevent people from coming back to the site.”
The recent uptick in closures, Staudenmaier noted, also predates the recent City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, where the Supreme Court ruled that cities could punish people for sleeping outside with as little as a blanket or a pillow.
Just how much have closures gone up?
Over the course of 2023, DMHHS conducted a total of 13 closures. As of July 2024, DMHHS has already conducted 14 closures, and plans to close at least another four encampments in September, according to the encampment engagements website.
By contrast, DMHHS’s website states that it did not close a single encampment in the two years prior. (However, the city closed 22 encampments between October 2021 and, February 2023 displacing 142 people according to DMHHS Director Wayne Turnage at a city council hearing in 2021.)
Jo Furmanchik, who works as an outreach specialist at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, has recorded an increase in both closures and overall engagements this year. Furmanchik has only been tracking data since July 2023, but she’s noticed in 2023 DMHHS conducted only 4.33 engagements per month, whereas in 2024 DMHHS conducted 7.43 engagements per month — a 71% increase.
Furmanchik tries to attend most encampment engagements in the District in order to give residents information about their public space rights and provide other kinds of support. She said that immediate dispositions add to the total encampments closed each month. For example, in March, DMHHS conducted seven immediate dispositions on top of the seven official engagements.
In 2021, DMHHS conducted only six immediate dispositions. In 2022, that number increased nearly tenfold to 59. That rate has dropped slightly since: so far in 2024, DMHHS has conducted 20 immediate dispositions between January and July, a rate of 2.8 immediate dispositions per month.
NPS has also ramped up closures on federal land — a strategy outlined in a 2022 letter from Jeffrey Reinbold, the Superintendent for the National Mall and Memorial Parks, to Deputy Mayor Wayne Turnage obtained by Street Sense.
In the letter, Reinbold writes that as the pandemic restrictions were lifted, parkland in D.C. experienced an increase in visitation and that this increase led to “growing tension in some parks between returning users and significant growth in encampments.”
The letter also refers to the issues encampments on NPS lands pose to reopening D.C. after the pandemic.
“Administering parks in the Central Business District, we are also acutely aware of the challenges encampments present to maintaining vibrant, multi-use parks that support the District’s goal to reopen the city,” Reinbold wrote.
The letter states NPS had originally planned to gradually enforce their no-camping ordinance by the end of 2023. (The enforcement pause was later extended by six and a half months.)
“Starting May 15, 2024, the NPS is enforcing the no-camping rule on all NPS lands in Washington, D.C. NPS works with the District of Columbia and its social services partners to provide outreach and housing, since NPS itself does not offer social services,” an NPS spokesperson wrote in an email to Street Sense.
The spokesperson added that in 2022, NPS began “enforcing the no-camping rule in areas without encampments and areas where encampments had been previously closed” in order to “prevent new encampments from forming and dissuade the reestablishment of previously closed encampments while encouraging people to use social services.” And NPS has always reserved the right to close encampments “if dangerous conditions persist.”
Two NPS spokespeople told Street Sense NPS has closed at least nine encampments in 2024. These include three closures in Rock Creek park, one closure near the Key Bridge and Foundry Branch Tunnel, one closure in the Foggy Bottom area, and four closures in areas such as the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Theodore Roosevelt Island, and Columbia Island.
The resounding impacts of closures
One of the residents impacted by these changes in policy is Benjamin Crutchfield, who was born and raised in D.C. Crutchfield was displaced twice in two months this summer, by both NPS and DMHHS.
He lived for a year at an encampment in Foggy Bottom before it was closed by NPS in preparation of the 250th Anniversary of the Fourth of July in 2026. He then spent a brief stint at another spot in the neighborhood before being forced to move again. While many other residents were angry about being forced to move, Crutchfield says he only tries to worry about what he can control to manage his anxiety.
“I’m numb now, at first I was taking it hard, but now I realized you’ve got to go with the flow,” he said. “It’s not like I have a choice.”
Crutchfield now lives in another encampment near the Foggy Bottom neighborhood — he and many encampment residents are on the housing voucher waiting list — and he expects he’ll continue to go through cycles of displacement while he waits to receive housing.
The increase in pressure from both DMHHS and NPS means that people end up moving back and forth from D.C. land to parks District land. In the process, they get no closer to housing and often lose their tents, electronics, family heirlooms, and a sense of stability, according to residents and outreach workers.
“It often hurts the goal of ending homelessness. When you displace someone from an encampment, they don’t move into housing. They move somewhere else,” Rocap said. “ And it often sets us back as outreach workers or outreach agencies: sometimes we never find people again after a closure.”
Encampment closures not only make it harder for outreach workers to do their jobs properly, but can also lead residents to less safe situations. Randy Boone has experienced this first-hand: his move after an encampment closure nearly killed him.
Boone, who used to work for the Teamsters Union, and is disabled, had been living in a tent along the C&O canal at one of the sites NPS closed at the beginning of the summer. The day of the closure, Boone moved his tent to the only patch of land he could find: a small sliver of alongside the canal wall near the Alexandria Aqueduct footbridge, in Georgetown. His tent opening faced a drop from the wall onto the other wall below it and that night, Boone fell asleep and then fell off the wall — breaking his neck.
“I don’t know how I ended up down there because I blacked out because my head was all bloody,” Boone said. “Before this, I was just fine. I could walk. I could probably even run if I wanted to. But now I sit here and I got an infection. I got pus leaking out of my neck.”
Boone, who doesn’t drink alcohol or use drugs, was adamant that it was the forced displacement, that led to his injury. In his eyes, encampment closures are part of efforts by the city and federal government to “kick” people experiencing homelessness out of D.C. by “treating them like crap.”
“If they wouldn’t have kicked me out of the park, I wouldn’t have broke my neck. I mean, I could have died,” Boone said. “So I’m just wondering how they can be so cruel to people?”
Since the Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, the criminalization of homelessness has become a national issue. While encampment closures can be dangerous and traumatic for residents, in D.C. they don’t generally lead to legal sanctions the way they do in Oregon or California.
On D.C. land, the no-camping ordinance is not an arrestable offense, although someone could receive a ticket or citation for camping, according to Staudenmaier.
However, NPS land, which makes up 90% of the district’s parkland, is a different story. “The park police can theoretically arrest somebody,” Staudenmaier said. “I have not heard of them doing that, like on a regular basis, they kind of do what DMHHS does, which is like threaten people, cajole people, tell people you have to move.”
While arrests at encampment clearings are rare, Street Sense Media has observed city officials and Park Police threaten residents with both arrest and involuntary commitment when they did not want to move. In April, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department temporarily detained a pregnant resident at an encampment. She relieved herself while in custody, while DMHHS removed her tent and threw away her belongings.
In rare cases, encampment closures can also lead to residents becoming entangled with the legal system, even though D.C. law doesn’t intend to criminalize camping — particularly when they refuse to leave the sites they may call home.
Daniel Kingery lived in McPherson Square for nearly three years. He picked up litter, cleaned the park, tried to help his neighbors in emergency situations, and worked on his human-powered vehicle. The human-powered vehicle, a multi-use kind of automobile, is one of Kingery’s life’s works that he’s been slowly building for years, adding a solar panel here and a pedal there.
Kingery is a staunch libertarian, and refused to leave the park when it was closed in February of 2023. McPherson Square is federal land, and he was arrested by the Park Police for violating the no-camping ordinance.
The closure of McPherson Square Park is the biggest encampment closure in recent years, displacing over 70 people, including Kingery. It was supposed to be accompanied by an extensive housing push, but Kingery says he didn’t see anything of the sort until the days leading directly up to the closure. In the weeks after the closure, city officials confirmed 49 people remained living on the city’s streets.
In the reporting of this story, Street Sense spoke with at least five people including Kingery who have also been displaced from McPherson Square over a year ago, and still live in different encampments scattered across the city.
Kingery’s arrest in Feb. 2023 has followed him since, causing issues with the Park Police — in his eyes, it put him on their radar.
On May 22, 2024, Kingery was arrested again in McPherson Square at 2 a.m. while he was sleeping with only a blanket, and was charged by the Park Police with violating the no camping ordinance despite not having a tent or other structure.
This second arrest led him to lose a portion of his belongings, including many of the tools he was using to build the human-powered vehicle—which the Park Police has still not returned, Kingery said.
Even when they don’t result in arrest or a life-threatening situation, encampment closures can still be deeply traumatic and unsettling for residents and lead to a variety of setbacks that make finding housing that much more difficult.
Eric, who also goes by Beer Can, lived next to Boone along the canal. He told Street Sense that being displaced by the closure left him feeling off-balance and depressed, and caused him to relapse after being 60 days sober from drinking.
“I had a spot where I could come back. I didn’t have to panhandle. I could come back and like actually lay down somewhere and not have to sleep on the sidewalk,” Eric said. “It was a nice place, it was stable. I mean, it was a tent, but it was a stable place.”
What’s behind the increase?
Advocates find it particularly frustrating that there don’t always seem to be clear reasons why closures happen.
“I think everyone could live with the idea that sometimes encampments need to be closed—But that the reasons for those would be pretty well-defined, that there would be a clear process with some accountability about that judgment that the D.C. government was making,” Rocap said.
Furmanchik concurred, and said that when the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless asks DMHHS why they have carried out a closure or an immediate disposition, they are most often told a closure is necessary due to a “health and safety hazard.” But that term is relatively unclear.
“We don’t know what a health and safety hazard really actually means, and they’re not willing to provide more information about what that is,” Furmanchik said. “It feels arbitrary because we don’t have any more information about what they can tell us. And it seems unequally enforced depending on where it is, who it is, and where the site is.”
“Decisions to close encampment sites are not taken lightly, nor do they happen in a vacuum. The health and safety factors that have been cited among identified sites have included mass hoarding on public space, mass biohazards primarily consisting of human waste, high levels of rodent activity, major fire risks, sidewalk blockage, close proximity to schools or medical centers, close proximity to roadways, and detrimental intrusion upon DC Department of Transportation bridges and infrastructures,” wrote a DMHHS spokesperson in an email to Street Sense.
At a recent closure at 21st and E St. Kirk, Johnsen, an encampment resident, echoed these frustrations. Johnsen says that the camp there was relatively healthy and safe, but that officials wanted to shut it down because it was an “eyesore.” While DMHHS listed several reasons for the shutdown, including tables blocking ventilation grates, failures to dispose of trash, and human waste, Johnsen believes that he and other residents would have been happy to address those issues if it meant preventing another stressful move.
His frustrations illuminate another issue residents and advocates have with the encampment protocol and engagements process: there is no formal mechanism to appeal decisions DMHHS makes about an encampment. While public housing residents and other beneficiaries of D.C. government programs have a grievance process if their benefits or housing get taken away, no similar process exists for encampment residents.
“The protocol doesn’t give any sort of appeal rights or grievance rights to the subject of an encampment clearing,” Staudenmaier said.
The ambiguity behind why encampments are closed combined with the increase in closures this year leave advocates fearful that a cycle of closures will continue to shuffle people around the city without moving them closer to housing.
Instead, Rocap advocates that encampments should be approached with the goal of making homelessness brief and non-recurring by focusing on housing first approaches, not with the goal of dealing with an individual encampment.
“We have to keep in mind that we’re trying to end homelessness and housing ends homelessness, and we need sufficiently funded, dedicated outreach to encampments. We need housing,” Rocap said. “That’s the structural solution.”
In the meantime, advocates and encampment residents worry residents, like Salim will continue to be displaced, in traumatizing and distressing ways, and like Salim, they will just move to different spots on city or federal land.
As staff from the Department of Behavioral Health and officers of the Park and Metropolitan Police tried to talk him into leaving, Salim kept trying to explain his presence wasn’t bothering anyone, that he had a home right here where he was, and he kept it and the area around it clean and hidden. And he asked over and over again:
“What is the benefit of moving me?”
This story has been updated to include a comment from DMHHS received after publication.
