Clearing out DC’s homeless encampments will be challenging and expensive, civil rights attorney says
One of the items President Donald Trump has said he wants to do is to clear out homeless encampments in D.C.
However, civil rights activists have raised concerns over how would a such a move work, what resources would be required and where would the people go?
Trump plans to sign an executive order that would address crime and graffiti while homeless encampments would be removed across the nation’s capital, as first reported in The Washington Post.
It would mirror other legislation in other cities that ban homeless people sleeping in public places since the Supreme Court approved such laws last summer.
D.C.-based civil rights attorney Joseph Cammarata, a partner at the firm of Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel, said he believes the District and the federal government can work together to accomplish what he considers a huge undertaking.
“I don’t think cities are meant to have people living on the street,” Cammarata told WTOP. “It would take resources, law enforcement and other personnel to come in and move the people from the encampments and, presumably, put them into some type of shelter, mental health shelters or hospital settings — whatever is appropriate.”
It’s not known how much it would cost, and if the city would be able to depend on the federal government for assistance.
In the past week, D.C. officials have publicly addressed the pending executive order. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser welcomed Trump’s involvement in the city’s homeless population, stating the encampments are “not technically permitted in the District.”
D.C. shadow Sen. Paul Strauss added that the president’s effort of targeting homeless encampments is “on the basis of beautification.”
“Certainly we are a city that has shelter for people who are on the streets, and we want them inside, absolutely,” Bowser said last Wednesday. “We try to work with our residents to get them to a place where they want to come inside, and that’s always been our strategy.”
Yet, Cammarata said the District has not done enough to “stem the growth of these encampments” over the years. He added that it is going to require a lot of resources, including law enforcement and mental health professionals to relocate the scores of people currently on the street into facilities that can help them.
“(D.C.) has to start,” Cammarata said. “Can the city work with the federal government? The mayor has said that she would. And so I don’t see why they couldn’t, and why they shouldn’t.”
WTOP’s José Umaña continued to this story.