As D.C. speeds up the pace of encampment closures, some people experiencing homelessness in Foggy Bottom were forced to move twice in three days, the second time with little notice. Meanwhile, city officials have begun offering some encampment residents spots at the Aston, a new non-congregate shelter in the neighborhood.
In mid-March, D.C. closed six encampments throughout the city, including one of the biggest encampments, Whitehurst Hill, on March 12. Two days after closure, on March 14, city officials displaced many of the former Whitehurst Hill residents again, this time from the spot they’d moved to across the street. Residents had less than 24 hours’ notice for the second closure, in what the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS) calls an “immediate disposition.”
Both the Whitehurst Hill closure and the immediate disposition shortly following it were difficult for residents. Sitting on a tree stump in the early morning light, his belongings neatly packed in duffle bags, Jesse Wall voiced his anger at being forced to move.
“Encroaching on the homelessness population is a political stance, not a human stance,” he said. Wall had printed out complaint forms for his fellow residents to fill out to record their “anguish.” He handed one of these forms to Rebecca Riley, a fellow resident of the Whitehurst Hill encampment, as she spoke to Street Sense reporters.
“My spine feels like it’s cracking right now,” Riley said as she packed the rest of her and her family’s belongings into a cart and suitcase on the morning of the closure. Riley has health problems and said the physical strain of having to move is painful.
Riley has been displaced previously, but said this closure felt particularly pointless because she now has a housing voucher and was supposed to move into her apartment three days later. She told Street Sense reporters a DMHHS worker offered her a spot at the Aston, a nearby non-congregate shelter, but she was unsure if she should take it.
“They didn’t tell me anything about it, which scares me,” Riley said. She explained that the last time she accepted an offer of shelter at an encampment closure, she ended up at a women’s shelter where other women would regularly try and engage her in fights. As of March 25, Riley said to her dismay, she hasn’t moved in yet because the inspection of her apartment has stalled.
Since the recent closure of the encampment at E St. Expressway, which came a day after President Donald Trump called for encampments to be closed throughout D.C., Street Sense has observed DMHHS and other outreach staff begin to offer encampment residents shelter at the Aston. The shelter, which opened last fall, offers individual or semi-private rooms, as opposed to the congregate setting at most low-barrier shelters. While people waiting to move into housing through vouchers, like Riley, were prioritized for the first cohort at the Aston, the city has said it is also open to some encampment residents facing closures.
On the day of the Whitehurst Hill closure, at least three people agreed to move into the Aston, but outreach staff from Miriam’s Kitchen told Street Sense residents could not immediately move in. Instead, Miriam’s Kitchen offered the three residents hotel rooms for a couple of days until the Aston was available to conduct an intake. Friendship Place, which runs the shelter, is currently hiring more staff for the Aston, according to its career website. According to a D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) spokesperson, “participants come into The Aston through a Coordinated Assessment and Housing Placement system, and intake time is coordinated between the Provider and the client. Intake timing can vary by individual.”
Many residents who declined the offer of shelter moved across a highway median to a patch of land located between 27th Street, Virginia Avenue, and Rock Creek Parkway.
Just two days after the Whitehurst Hill closure, DMHHS conducted a chaotic immediate disposition at this location, displacing eight residents, including a number who had just moved two days prior from Whitehurst Hill or a week prior from E St. Expressway. Street Sense reporters spoke to nearly all eight residents who were displaced during the immediate disposition, and they all said they were not told the space was restricted. Most residents were under the impression the area would be closed, but not until March 25, as indicated by metal signs that had been posted for a number of weeks.
“Where are we supposed to go?” an encampment resident, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, asked on the morning of the immediate disposition. “I’m not the negligent one. They are,” she added. The same resident later called Park Police because she wanted to be sure she was not moving her tent onto National Park Service land, where camping is an arrestable offense. It took DMHHS and Park Police nearly 20 minutes of back-and-forth to clarify the property line.
DMHHS initiated the immediate disposition because the land residents had moved their tents to is administered by the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT), which needed access to the land, according to a DMHHS spokesperson. The day of the closure, Jamal Weldon, who oversees DMMHS’s encampment team, told residents and Street Sense DDOT had only told DMHHS the day before they needed the space to be clear.
“We have Cherry Blossom Festival engagements for this weekend,” Weldon said, clarifying DDOT needed to access several concrete barriers stored on the land for an event. “So, they’re going to be coming in here with whatever machinery or whatever they need to do to gain access.”
Residents, who had moved to the location under the impression that it would not be cleared until March 25, were caught off-guard by the immediate disposition. Many of them were angry and disputed DMHHS’s authority to clear the space before the scheduled date.
“You cannot break protocol,” another encampment resident, who asked not to be named to protect her privacy while living outside, said. “It has to be legal. It has to be posted — a no trespassing sign.”
Immediate dispositions, during which residents only have 24 hours to move, are technically legal according to the encampment protocol, but it is highly unusual for DMHHS to conduct one at an encampment of this size.
Residents said DMHHS had not known or not informed them the space would be closed when workers watched them move there two days earlier. Weldon told Street Sense that residents were told during the Whitehurst Hill closure that DDOT had full jurisdiction over the area and could tell residents to move at any time, but neither Street Sense nor outreach workers Street Sense spoke to witnessed DMHHS inform residents they were moving to DDOT land.
“This a DDOT space; no one should be here, period,” Weldon said the day of the immediate disposition. “That’s why the fences are here. Even if they are dilapidated in the front, this doesn’t open them for public access.”
Residents and outreach workers were further frustrated with how DMHHS notified them about the immediate disposition. Seven residents told Street Sense they were not told verbally about the closure. Rather, DMHHS stuck stickers on their tents notifying them of a “scheduled engagement.” The stickers were labeled “immediate disposition – WARNING” with the word warning handwritten on the stickers, and the space to write the “date and time for the above-stated cleanup” left blank. The city’s current encampment protocol does not outline any kind of “warning” system, and this type of notification is unprecedented.
On the day of the immediate disposition, when asked by Street Sense if there was a specific time residents needed to be moved by, Weldon responded: “Immediately.”
“Immediate disposition – I don’t know what that means,” the resident who called Park Police said. “Nobody came in the morning, nobody said anything.”
Ultimately, all residents did manage to relocate, but none of them avoided the stress and frustration of the process. As Wall said the day he was displaced from Whitehurst Hill, “Of course, it caused mental anguish to have to move.”
Wall was among the residents who chose not to move into the Aston. He explained to Street Sense reporters he found the rules at the facility too strict — when he went to check it out, he said he was told that he could be “written up” for cursing. He also said it reminded him of the PEP-V program, where he had a number of bad experiences.
The city only began offering spots at the Aston to encampment residents in March, based on Street Sense’s observations and conversations with encampment residents. Before that, the Aston seemed to operate like a bridge housing facility, intended to serve people like Riley who have secured a housing voucher and are waiting to move into their apartment. But the city had always pitched the shelter as an option for people who live in encampments to avoid congregate shelter but might be open to a more private arrangement.
“Our federal funding for the Aston was premised on us being able to offer this resource for people who are living in encampments,” Sakina Thompson, a representative from DMHHS, said at a March 10 Community Action Team meeting about the Aston. “So that’s one of the reasons why we got the funding for the Aston.”
According to a DHS spokesperson, outreach teams assess encampment residents to determine what housing might be available to them and “a placement option is offered — either during regular outreach or when there is an encampment engagement.”
But opening the Aston up to encampment residents, not all of whom have housing vouchers, creates a conundrum about how people without vouchers are supposed to exit the Aston. At the Community Action Team meeting, during a discussion about exit plans, DHS did not outline how long people can stay. Outreach staff from several service providers voiced concerns to Street Sense — and DMHHS — about this ambiguity.
At the March 10 meeting, Anthony Newman said Friendship Place, which operates the facility, will help work with everyone at the Aston to make sure they have an exit plan, but did not provide specifics on what that looks like for people who have not been matched to housing vouchers.
“It’s just what that exit plan looks like for those people may be different than other folks who are already matched,” Newman said. He also confirmed the Aston will be expanding its capacity in the coming weeks to 100 total residents. Currently, more than 80 individuals are at the Aston, including people who moved directly from encampments, according to a DHS spokesperson.
Eleven days after the immediate disposition, DMHHS returned to the area between 27th Street, Virginia Avenue, and Rock Creek Parkway for closure originally scheduled for the space. Five tents were left behind by residents who relocated to nearby encampments or to the Aston. Only one resident remained, who was forced to move for the third time in two weeks.
Closures across the city
Whitehurst Hill is not the only location where Street Sense has witnessed encampment residents being offered the Aston. At a closure in Brentwood at 1899 9th St., on March 11, one resident accepted the offer of the Aston, while three chose to find another spot to move their tents.
DMHHS closed this encampment due to “various health and safety concerns, inclusive of fire hazards and bulk hoarding,” a spokesperson told Street Sense.
Street Sense has previously interviewed the residents of this encampment, including Charles Williams, who accepted the offer of the Aston. In those interviews, Williams spoke at length about his bad experiences in congregate shelters.
“The last shelter I was in — 1355 New York Avenue — I was arrested twice for fighting because someone was stealing my two cell phones, tennis shoes [and] clothes,” Williams told Street Sense. “So I decided to get a tent, [and] now I have peace of mind. I don’t go to bed mad. I don’t wake up angry.”
Despite preferring encampments to shelters, Williams also expressed frustration at having to pack his belongings, move between different locations, and repeat the same process over and over again.
“I’m going right back to my same spot against that fence [at Gallaudet]. I’ll wait for another notice and then come right back [here]. Going back and forth, that’s all I can do. That’s all I can do. That’s all I can do,” he said.
DMHHS also conducted an encampment closure at 2nd and D Streets on March 13 near the Community for Creative Non-Violence, one of the city’s largest homeless shelters. At this closure, two residents were displaced, but neither were offered housing at the Aston. One resident was offered services by a Veteran Affairs outreach worker. Street Sense also observed Department of Public Works staff seemingly taking and keeping a broom that had been left behind by a resident who angrily left the site of the closure.
The following week, the city rescheduled two encampment closures due to weather, one on March 18 in Mount Pleasant and one on March 20 near the L Street underpass.
DMHHS staff conducted a final encampment closure on New York Avenue downtown – less than a block away from the White House. At this closure, the resident was a wheelchair user who used sleeping bags to attach himself to a bench underneath some blankets. He told Street Sense he moved to the spot in late 2024.
The resident and DMHHS went back and forth on whether the encampment closure was supposed to occur on March 20 or 21, and the resident appeared confused about the current date and time. Following an hour of conversation between DMHHS staff, an outreach worker, and Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) staff, staff members decided to call an ambulance as well as the Metropolitan Police.
When EMS personnel arrived on the scene, they discovered the resident had severe medical issues with his legs, including potential decay and bleeding. The D.C. Fire Department lieutenant said DBH staff had decided to involuntarily hospitalize the resident in what is known as an FD-12 due to his condition, but before that, EMS was able to coax him to accept treatment at the hospital. Once the resident was in EMS care, DMHHS cleared everything left behind from the encampment.
Each of these closures comes on the heels of comments by Trump urging Mayor Muriel Bowser to close encampments throughout the city, particularly near Foggy Bottom and the White House. In response, Bowser told reporters she had discussed encampments with the President’s staff, stating she would “take care of it.”
Wall, who is among those who relocated twice in three days, is angry about the city’s continuing increase in clearings.
“Trump said, ‘Oh we can’t have this eyesore,’ so rather than putting them in housing, let’s clear them out like squish, squash,” he said. His opinion of Bowser wasn’t more positive.
“I got an earful for her,” he said. “What has she done since 2022-2021 with the [District of Columbia Housing Authority]? I see longer lines at Miriam’s Kitchen.”
Madi Koesler and Trevor Skeen contributed reporting.
