This story is part of our 2025 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works have been published at bit.ly/DCHCRP.
Since the end of the federal officers surge, local agencies have continued clearings at encampments across the District, all while the Bowser administration encourages former and current occupants to enter public shelters.
As officials and advocates prepare for a couple of clearings across Northwest, at least one resident is telling The Informer that, even with housing insecurity and unemployment, they have no interest in leaving their encampment, nor are they considering a stay in a shelter.
“Everybody was shocked [that] I don’t want to live in a shelter,” said Getachew Gurumu, an unhoused D.C. resident who lives along Arkansas Avenue in Northwest.
The scheduled Oct. 15 clearing of Gurumu’s Arkansas Avenue encampment — a process that includes a full cleanup, biohazard removal and a reminder that the space must remain clear at all times — follows what Gurumu recounted as the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services’ (DMHHS) June visit to the public space.
Gurumu told The Informer that DMHHS officials appeared at the site because of a request he made, six months prior, that the deputy mayor’s office remove resources that accumulated in the space. Gurumu, who appeared at ease with the upcoming clearing, balked at the notion of leaving what he described as a plot of land owned by all congregants of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
“My religion is Orthodox. There is no private church,” Gurumu said on Monday morning. “The Orthodox church means Ethiopian people. That people work [and] they make a church. I built that. Therefore, no one…cannot take me. No one.”
Inside a Pre- and Post-Federal Surge Phenomenon
This month, DMHHS also coordinated encampment clearings near McPherson Square Metro Station in Northwest, and in Southeast along a portion of 14th Street and at “multiple” D.C. Department of Transportation sites. Other clearings are scheduled to take place on the 5400 block of Western Avenue in Northwest, near an abandoned storefront on the 2300 block of Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast, and in a wooded space on the 1500 block of M Street in Southeast.
Years before President Donald Trump targeted D.C.’s unhoused population, DMHHS launched a post-pandemic encampment clearing project that Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor for health and human services, credits with the removal of 200 unhoused residents from encampments erected on local land. By mid-September, shortly after the end of the federal surge, DMHHS counted 120 unhoused D.C. residents living at 79 encampment sites in the District.
Turnage said the majority of those encampments are located in Wards 2, 5 and 6.
“They used to be most heavily in Ward 2, primarily because that’s where the services they need are located,” Turnage said. “But with the surge, I think a lot of the residents who were encamped decided [that] if they were not going into shelter, they would set up their encampments in places that were less conspicuous.”
In 2022, after stays at McPherson Square Park and near the Ethiopian and Turkish embassies, Gurumu set up his home along a fence bordering the Arkansas Avenue side of the Debre Selam Kidist Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
He’s since immersed himself in the surrounding community, which has a couple of coffee shops. Despite ethnic schisms spurred by a conflict at home, Gurumu said he’s creating a situation that proves more ideal than sleeping in a shelter.
“I want to keep my mind,” Gurumu told The Informer. “It’s better for me to damage my body before I damage my brain. Some [people are] mentally disabled. Some [are] like me, poor. Some [are] drunkards and drug [users]. I don’t want to participate in that.”
During the federal surge, after the District expended its near-capacity shelter system by more than 100 beds, the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health and Department of Human Services (DHS) brought 80 additional residents into the District’s now 1,300-bed shelter system.
A census later conducted by DHS recorded 764 unhoused D.C. residents, a significant number of whom live in “unsheltered” places. Turnage said that people living on the street often decline shelter beds for a bevy of reasons.
“Some believe the shelters are unsafe,” Turnage said. “Some have a significant amount of their personal belongings that they can’t take into shelter. Some folks just prefer to live outside. They don’t like the confines of the shelter. They think the shelters have too many rules.”
Some of the newest beds this year came online through the E Street Bridge Housing Program — the District’s second non-congregate housing program that provides semi-private rooms and individualized case management to: unsheltered residents; couples and families without minor children; people matched to permanent housing; and women seeking special accommodations.
In a statement, Bowser administration officials said the program builds upon milestones stemming from the closure of D.C. General in 2015 and the launch of smaller shelters across the District. Turnage said with the new spaces online, he wants as many unhoused D.C. residents as possible to receive accommodations.
“When we encounter encampments,” Turnage told The Informer, “our goal is to close them and help people connect to housing services.”
Though administration officials heralded the expansion of resources as another step in connecting unhoused D.C. residents to shelter, some people, like Brittany Ruffin, said such investments, while well meaning, won’t suffice.
“We know we need more shelter resources for the number of people who experienced street homelessness,” said Ruffin, legal director of systemic advocacy and mitigation at The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.
During the federal surge, Ruffin and members of her team monitored encampment clearings, and passed out information outlining residents’ rights. Ruffin said that she and her workmates often leaned on unhoused residents and other community members for the most up-to-date information about developments on the ground.
“People didn’t know where they had to respond or where they would be safe,” she said. “They didn’t know what to expect. They didn’t know what they would encounter. They are just continuing to live their lives in the way that they feel is most effective for them and trying to do the best they can and figuring out what spaces they feel are safe for them.”
The legal director counts among those questioning whether the Bowser administration’s strategy of razing encampments and connecting residents with shelter will counter policy and budgetary decisions made in the John A. Wilson Building. Earlier this year, the D.C. Council approved a budget that didn’t fund new housing vouchers.
The council also passed the RENTAL Act, legislation deemed by housing advocates as detrimental to rent-burdened D.C. residents.
“The issue is that…displacing people from one place to the other without actually making budget investments into permanent housing solutions doesn’t solve homelessness,” Ruffin told The Informer. “Trying to reduce the visibility of homelessness doesn’t end homelessness, housing does.
Unfinished Business for Getachew Gurumu
Another reason why Gurumu doesn’t want to leave Arkansas Avenue stems from his fight against an eviction that he said happened illegally during the nationwide moratorium in 2020. Since losing his Arlington County, Virginia apartment, he hasn’t had much success in securing recompense for what he alleges as his landlord’s collusion with court employees to illegally remove him from his apartment.
“There is no court, but he gave me the paper,” Gurumu said about the COVID-era eviction notice he received from his landlord. “Who is deciding? Someone in Alington court stole the paper. We couldn’t [do the] eviction.”
While Gurumu counts among those who remain unhoused, he said it’s not for a lack of effort.
“So many people said ‘I’ll give you a home,’ Gurumu said. “I came here for justice. Not human justice, but court justice because I struggled for so many years.”
More than five years later, Gurumu is at his wits end about what to do, and whether there’s any utility in demanding accountability.
“Before you, four, five people were talking to me,” Gurumu told The Informer. “They did not do anything. Everywhere I go, lawyers [say] it’s difficult to serve me in this case. How could it be difficult? No one is above the law.”
