Photo credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
Photo taken outside of 'Tent City' on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019—one day before the eviction deadline.
The clock is ticking to remove nearly 30 homeless people from “Tent City,” the homeless encampment under the I-794 overpass, following an eviction notice by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation earlier this month.
“Dear Temporary Resident,” the notice reads. “You are hereby given notice to move off of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation highway right of way per Wisconsin statute 86.025, which states that camping on highways is unlawful. [...] You have until October 31, 2019 to gather and remove your property.”
Tent City obtained quite a reputation in Milwaukee as a safe place for the city’s homeless population. It was a gathering point where nonprofits and charitable individuals could bring donations, port-a-potties had been installed, and there was a sense of community. At its peak, the encampment numbered nearly 100 residents. Most of them have been evacuated in the past few weeks.
A Difficult Relocation Process
In order to move homeless people away from the encampment, the Milwaukee County Housing Division has outreach teams doing groundwork daily, assessing the profiles and needs of each individual and then directing them toward appropriate resources. Some of the challenges include homeless people who are unhappy with the options they are offered or whose situations are particularly hard to handle. Many of them have reasons to distrust authority figures, bad experiences in homeless shelters making them wary of outreach teams.
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Photo credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
James Mathy, housing administrator for the Milwaukee County Housing Division, believes that Tent City’s existence caused an unprecedented amount of homeless people to refuse immediate relocation to homeless shelters. “With the encampment being closed, people are finally willing to go to shelters. Even when they go to shelters, it doesn’t make them ineligible for housing services,” he says.
While it seems unlikely that the Housing Division will manage to relocate what amounts to one-third of the former population of Tent City in a day, Mathy is confident that things will proceed peacefully. “When the deadline comes, I’m sure the Department of Transportation will work with us on those issues. We certainly don’t think it is going to come to violent eviction,” he claims. “We certainly have space for the rest of the individuals that are remaining there.”
However, in Tent City itself, the ambiance is bleak for the people who are left. They already had little, and many feel like Wisconsin has been tearing away from them whatever they had left. What used to be a lively community has been reduced to a few tents and discarded trash, all of which has been fenced in by the Department of Transportation after the eviction notice was sent out. And, although officials deny it, the predominant feeling among the homeless is that the evacuation is due to the upcoming Democratic National Convention (DNC) in order to push homeless people out of view of the cameras that will soon abound in our streets.
Most of the people who agree to share their stories demand anonymity; several of them mention fearing retaliation for speaking out and not wanting more trouble. One homeless woman mention being offered a spot in a senior home but being asked to pay hundreds of dollars upon arrival, a sum that had not been mentioned earlier in the process, forcing her back on the streets.
Another resident, a man who also wished to remain anonymous, said, “The DNC should be advocating for the unfortunate.” He pointed out the “hypocrisy” of a forced evacuation of one of the few safe spaces where Milwaukee’s homeless population could gather preceding the DNC’s arrival in Milwaukee. When asked if he felt the evacuation was carried out respectfully, he pointed at the fence that was recently erected around Tent City’s grounds. “Do you think that’s respect?”
Where Do the Homeless Go?
In broad terms, two options are available to the relocated homeless population: temporary housing or permanent housing. The former is a short-term solution to keep people off the streets, especially as cold weather is settling in, and it is provided in part by organizations such as the Guest House and the Salvation Army, which recently opened a chapel and a basement to welcome displaced homeless people. The latter is the only viable option to end homelessness on an individual level. “Our goal is always to offer permanent housing to those that need it,” Mathy asserts.
Eric Collins-Dyke, homeless outreach services manager at the Housing Division, explains that temporary housing is just one step toward permanent housing. “We [rehomed] more than 50 folks over the last month or so, and we are getting folks into various spots, shelters, temporary locations... Once we get them in there, they are assigned a housing navigator and then come back to do a permanent housing program through our rental subsidy.”
Photo credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
James Mathy (right) is the housing administrator and Eric Collins-Dyke (left) is the homeless outreach services manager at the Milwaukee County Housing Division.
“We generally offer long-term vouchers to individuals who are the most vulnerable and who have been homeless the longest,” Mathy explains. “With any of our permanent housing through Housing First, individuals pay 30% of their income to rent; a lot of our clients actually have no income, so they wouldn’t have to pay any rent until they got income, so that’s not a barrier, either. It is based on need, so for individuals that have a disability or a mental illness, a lot of times those vouchers are permanent, and they could be for the rest of their lives.”
“Generally, rental subsidies average $700 a month,” Collins-Dyke reveals. Including all start-up costs, he estimates the cost of housing a homeless individual at “about $1,500 per month. We lack funding in the community for all these housing support costs: security deposits, starter kits, furniture... If they don’t have these, it creates housing instability. So, we’re trying to get more funding for that so, once folks move in, they can have all of that.”
To lighten the load and financially support the homeless population, there are initiatives to raise funds, such as Third Space Brewing punctually donating 20% of beer sales to Housing First and the Street Angels’ 48 Hours of Homelessness fundraising project. To avoid relying on punctual efforts, the Housing First initiative should receive an additional $250,000 investment starting next year, which is meant to focus on preventing homelessness in Milwaukee.
Photo credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
How Outreach Teams Work
There can be a stark contrast between well-spoken city officials claiming that everything is going great and disgruntled homeless people who feel they are treated like undesirables. As such, Shepherd Express followed an outreach team of the Housing Division on the field to witness the point of contact where these two worlds meet.
The sun wouldn’t show itself for another two hours, and the cold was biting when Damir Djidic and Emily Whitcomb, a two-member outreach team, got to work. On Wednesdays, the teams set out at 5:30 a.m. to drive throughout Milwaukee meeting isolated homeless individuals before heading to Tent City in Downtown; meeting them at night is a way to verify if they are truly homeless, Whitcomb reveals.
“We have a shelter call every single morning, and they let us know what beds are available, so we triage people based on their various vulnerability factors,” Whitcomb explains. Using this information, they are able to connect people with appropriate shelter and housing resources. Although homeless people can access shelter directly, she strongly encourages them to go through their team first, “because if we are able to verify that somebody is sleeping outside, we’re often able to advocate so they receive a shelter bed with more success.” In all cases, the first thing a newly homeless person should do is to call 211 in order “to have a housing assessment done, which can be done over the phone,” she says.
People who recently called 211 were the first stops of the morning; whether they sleep in a park, in a car or under a bridge, the outreach team comes to them on their terms. These people are then registered and their profile is established to determine their resources and needs. They are then directed toward the appropriate organizations. If the homeless people in question are in tents, the team calls them to wake them up, sometimes shaking the tent; although some are unhappy to be woken up, a large portion welcome the outreach team and the help they can provide. They are a friendly, human face, and they carry out the process with respect for the homeless, which is rare enough to note.
“We try to establish long-term relationships,” Whitcomb says. Indeed, the outreach team members demonstrate they know the names of several of the people they talk to, including following up on previous interactions. “Housing can take awhile, much of our existing housing subsidy stock is restricted to certain populations, so finding a subsidy lane can take time. We need more dollars coming from more places—but we are always trying to get people to safety in the meantime,” Whitcomb adds. Alongside Milwaukee County's outreach team, others contribute to supporting the city's homeless, including year-round, including the Outreach Community Health Center and Homeless Outreach Nursing Center.
Eric Collins-Dyke summarizes the Housing Division's philosophy: "Beyond all the complexities, traumas and challenges that accompany homelessness, the singular, most salient reason someone is homeless is because they don't have a permanent place to live. It's time we, as a community, recognize that and understand that we can put our immediate efforts into a permanent solution, while continuing to tackle the structural factors that contribute to homelessness."
As for Tent City’s end-of-October evacuation, the outreach works explain that they have a rotation of outreach teams set up to be out every day. The reason why results seem suddenly so blatant, they say, is because they have a strict deadline to keep with Tent City instead of focusing on isolated homeless people throughout the city. Both Djidic and Whitcomb are convinced the Department of Transportation will accept some degree of flexibility. Djidic even jokes about it: “Homelessness will not end on October 31.”
Read all of our reporting on homelessness in Milwaukee here.
