Charleston city officials cleared out “Tent City” along the Elk River near the Spring Street Bridge Tuesday. The stretch of property had been an impromptu residence for a portion of the Capital City’s homeless population for years.
Mayor Danny Jones is taking full responsibility for the action, saying he reached the controversial decision after complaints from nearby residents and businesses.
Jones described Waste Management Company, which owns the property where the people were squatting, as being “at wits end” with the problem. The manager of the nearby Foodland said the Tent City residents used the store bathroom to bathe and they destroyed property.
Jones is taking a lot of flack over the decision. Tuesday night’s Charleston City Council meeting devolved after the mayor’s critics angrily denounced Jones and his actions.
Some questioned why the two to three dozen homeless people would be forced out of Tent City during one of the coldest periods of the winter so far. Others said there should have been more notice.
“That’s how you have to do it,” Jones countered. “If you would have warned those people it might have brought a crowd down there to stop it.” He maintains that taking the step during the extreme cold actually makes more sense because it forces the homeless into shelters.
Jones says Charleston has plenty of shelter room for the homeless population, adding that he would have opened up an emergency shelter if necessary. He says space isn’t the problem; many of the homeless want their freedom and don’t want to follow shelter rules, including the prohibition of alcohol and drugs.
This is a heartbreaking and complicated problem, not just for Charleston, but for every major city. Washington, D.C. cleared out a tent city last November because residents were camped out illegally on public property and creating a health hazard. Hawaii officials removed between 100 and 200 people from a long-established tent city in Honolulu last year.
In D.C., Honolulu and Charleston, social services representatives were on hand to try to help the homeless get access to shelters and any other assistance they needed.
Mayor Jones may have invited some of the criticism because of his candid comments to the press that struck some as callous, or his suggestions that critics of his decision could put up the homeless in their houses.
But the fact remains that Charleston’s Tent City was a long-standing illegal encampment on private property and a problem for that part of town. There was no easy solution that would have satisfied everyone, but clearly the homeless are safer and more secure in a shelter than outside in the elements.
What if a Tent City resident had died this week from hypothermia or in a fire as those folks struggled to keep warm? Today Charleston officials would be under fire for NOT doing anything about Tent City.