As Baltimore sweeps encampments, some residents feel discarded too
Pamela Macapagal isn't going away without a fight.
City crews have already closed down about 22 encampments this year. This one in Brooklyn, behind the gas station and Food Mart, may be next. Macapagal, who lives in a small temporary shelter there, has little interest in leaving.
As Baltimore encampments are broken down one by one — with shelter beds and mental health treatment being made available to those who want them — their inhabitants can't help but feel discarded, too.
"It's a free country, but here we have no say-so, which is wrong," Macapagal said. "We're people, just like you are, if we have money or not. We still have rights."
The residents treat these grounds as equal parts sacred and cursed. Here lies the possessions of lost loved ones and memories of those who have come and gone. The group has kept out intruders, invited in social workers, tried their best to keep the place clean. It's where many of Baltimore's oft-forgotten residents have laid their heads when no one else would take them.
Macapagal senses that her days here may be numbered. Leaving the site means risking the loss of all she's known for nine years.
The cats, Jamara and Heaven, and the playful, 3-year-old dog that stands guard. Clothes and tools and cookware. Handwritten notes from Jamar, her fiancé, dead since June. If Macapagal leaves now, what will remain in her wake?
Macapagal is the de facto leader here: Her friend Rico even calls her "Ma." On Monday, fearing imminent eviction, he rushes around the grounds, packing her clothes into suitcases, shaking his head that there isn't more help.
Slowly, residents trickle out from their tents. There's Kenny, looking for work after a stint in jail. Dominic, who helps care for the dog. Rico, who learned the ins and outs of the streets at boyhood. Others who use drugs and don't see an alternative.
"People are very comfortable back here," said Rico, who, like several others here, declined to give his last name. "You're taking it away from people who are already hurting. I don't understand what their gain is."
Of the 22 encampment sites "resolved" this year, city leaders say most residents have accepted services or gone to shelters. Megan, 39, is one of them. A former bus driver, she traded the cold for a warm bed on Monday at a converted hotel with enough space to take her right away.
This encampment, off Potee Street, falls under the state's jurisdiction. It's not known if it will get shuttered. But as city crews close down another one nearby at Reed Bird park, Mayor's Office of Homeless Services staff have made their presence known here, too, and have offered to take residents to shelters.
The city doesn't remove encampments until it has enough beds to offer the displaced, Mayor's Office of Homeless Services director Ernestina Simmons said.
"We want to make sure, when people say yes, we have the resources," Simmons told City Council members last week at a public hearing in City Hall. "We are guaranteeing shelter. But we still have clients who decline."
Many on-site say they either haven't been engaged by homeless services staff, or that they have little clarity on what's to come.
Simmons said there are "pros and cons" to the city's encampment policy, effective this year. Mayor Brandon Scott's administration views the encampments as health hazards and wants to transition community members into long-term housing. The process of shutting them down has not always gone smoothly.
At the state level, a spokesperson for the state's Department of Housing and Community Development did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its encampment protocols. And no details were provided about the Brooklyn site's longevity.
Macapagal, who has chronic pain, said she's received little help from outreach workers. They've offered, she said, to put the animals in a shelter until she can retrieve them. For what the group can't take with them, the city will provide 30 days' storage.
"A lot of things back here that are memories to people," she said last week, walking around the woods. "They mean something to people."
On Monday morning, as outreach workers shuttled some people to hotels, Macapagal chose to stay. This is her home. She'll stay until she can't.
