Early Friday morning, the city of Northampton evicted around 10 people living outside at Fitzgerald Lake in a campsite they had named Moose Camp.
Several campers told The Shoestring that more than two dozen police arrived shortly after dawn to trespass those at the wooded location, which residents had hoped could function as a “recovery camp” for those overcoming opioid abuse. City officials have said that as early as Sept. 10, they had given those living outdoors at the lake an Oct. 1 eviction date, though the campers have disputed that timeline. Police had shown up Monday to evict the camp, but a protest of around 60 people turned them away.
On Friday morning, however, police arrived suddenly and told residents they had just minutes to gather their things, according to three campers who spoke to The Shoestring. “Tick tock,” campers recalled the police telling them.
“It was pretty chaotic,” said Daniel McAvoy, a resident of the camp for several weeks. “To be rousted that early, it’s just frustrating to have to pack everything up.”
McAvoy was speaking to The Shoestring on Friday afternoon just down the street from City Hall, where campers and their supporters gathered to protest the eviction. Holding signs with slogans like “stop the sweeps” and “fuck the mayor,” the protesters played music from a portable speaker and sipped apple cider.
In a phone interview, Alan Wolf, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s chief of staff, said that “what took place was exactly what we said we were going to do.”
“As has been the policy for a decade with homeless camps, we do our very best to not do anything,” he said. “But once in a while, a spot is not a great spot.”
Wolf said that police officially trespassed two people Friday morning while asking the rest to leave. He said that Easthampton police and officers from the Hampshire Sheriff’s Office showed up with the Northampton Police Department, which “was not large enough” if the same size crowd had again been present. Normally, the city throws away anything left at a site that it clears, but Wolf said on Friday they organized everyone’s gear and gave them a tag to collect their belongings from the Division of Community Care on Tuesday after the long weekend.
The city’s response to encampments has evolved over a decade, Wolf said. He said officials try their best not to move people. But Wolf has previously said that the Moose Camp posed a fire risk, received complaints from neighbors, was too close to conservation land, and was located on land that Habitat for Humanity was set to take over for development of affordable housing.
Habitat for Humanity, which has had an agreement with the city to develop four permanently affordable homeowner units on the land, just learned about Moose Camp last week, according to executive director Megan McDonough.
However, campers said their fires were safe. And shortly after The Shoestring reached Habitat for Humanity’s executive director last week, the organization sent an email to city officials urging them not to use the project as an impetus to move the camp’s current residents. The organization was willing to give the Moose Camp residents until after winter to leave, Executive Director Megan McDonough said.
Wolf said he hopes the Moose Camp situation doesn’t represent a shift in how outdoor residents and the city interact. He said the only way the current system works is when compassionate city officials, who understand that the broader housing system is “clearly failing some of our residents,” are able to work with social-service partners and residents to move them when needed.
“This has worked for a very long time and we have done our best to handle this with respect and dignity,” Wolf said. “And I know people don’t agree in this case and they wanted to stay in this spot and come up with reasons why this spot was OK. But it just wasn’t.”
For some camp residents, however, it was the only place they felt comfortable.
“It was a really good spot, it had access to the busses,” Ty Nichols, a camper, said Friday.
Nichols said the city should have given residents more time to collect their stuff and that the city’s reasons for sweeping the camp were “excuses.” Nichols said that they and others had worked to show officials their health and fire concerns were unfounded and had spoken to Habitat for Humanity about an April date for leaving. Now, they said, Moose Camp residents have been separated from needed services and from their belongings for the long weekend.
Paris Lawrence, another Moose Camp resident, said they woke to what appeared to be 30 police officers telling them they had only 30 seconds to clear out. Some people had found a place to stay, but “it’s not going to be the safe recovery space we were all looking for,” Lawrence said.
Things weren’t perfect at the camp, Lawrence said. People were drinking alcohol until late in the night, there was drama, and the atmosphere had turned negative in recent days, they said. But now, all of the residents have to start over just as winter is approaching. They wondered where they were going to go and said they were contemplating curling up right there on the steps of City Hall. And residents would have to wait until Tuesday to recover their belongings.
“What do we do between then and now?” Lawrence asked.
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