As the National Park Service (NPS) prepares to remove the homeless encampment at McPherson Square Park earlier than originally planned, many of the people who had been living there for several months remain hard-pressed to secure new accommodations.
This has especially been the case for voucher holders who can’t navigate a heavily backlogged system to access the District’s affordable housing stock.
Some residents of the encampment, like a woman who goes by Umi, say that Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage has worsened matters by mischaracterizing those who’ve been living in McPherson Square Park and lying about the help given so far.
“Turnage said that we’re all service resistant, but there was never any intensive social services engagement until Feb. 1, two weeks before he asked the National Park Service to evict us early,” Umi said. “Turnage hasn’t sent Mandarin and Spanish speakers. The Department of Behavioral Health came and passed out Narcan, but where are the psychiatrists and therapists?”
Umi, a single Black woman who’s been housing-insecure since 2014, moved to McPherson Square Park in 2020 after getting evicted from Franklin Square, located just half a mile away. For nearly three years, Umi and a handful of other women have set up their tents next to each other in a section of McPherson Square Park.
Umi said she and her neighbors have established an unbreakable bond. Their story differs from what Turnage and others circulated about heavy drug use and violence at the McPherson Square Park encampment, she told The Informer.
“We built a community. We take care of one another,” Umi said. “We check on each other when the Unity [Health Care] van comes once a week for health care. So many university students came to donate toiletries and no one has been harmed.”
The clearing of the McPherson Square Park encampment has been scheduled for Feb. 15. When NPS initially announced the closure last October, the date had been originally set for April 12. However, some encampment members said Turnage called NPS to speed up that process.
Over the last few months, McPherson Square Park became the District’s largest encampment after the D.C. government initiated the Coordinated Assistance and Resources for Encampments pilot program, also known as CARE. NPS estimates that nearly 80 people currently live at the encampment.
Since news about the closure broke earlier this month, several elected officials and activists have weighed in on the situation. D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) released a statement on Feb. 1 saying that the continued growth of the encampment threatened residents’ safety and that of the surrounding community.
Pinto has since called on the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS) to reach the 50 people she estimated were still in need of housing and behavioral health resources.
At-large Council member Robert White (D) has also been on the scene at McPherson Square Park, speaking with residents and issuing a similar call for DMHHS to connect them to housing. In a statement to The Informer, White said that the backlogs in the system have prevented voucher holders at the McPherson Square Park encampment from getting housing in a timely fashion.
“Deputy Mayor Wayne Turnage must develop an emergency plan…to address all the backlogs in the system that keep people from using the vouchers that are sitting unused,” White said. “That is the only way we can end encampments and the only way to connect people with the support they need. As long as this backlog exists, all we’re doing is sweeping the people living in encampments from one neighborhood to the next neighborhood.”
On Thursday, Feb. 9, Turnage doubled down on his assertion that encampment residents must be ready to accept city services.
According to a statement Turnage sent The Informer, encampment residents at McPherson Square Park who have a housing resource have been offered Bridge Housing, which is temporary housing. The Department of Human Services also continues to conduct conferences with other residents who have completed a Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool assessment, or SPDAT, to determine their eligibility for permanent housing.
Residents who meet the criteria after case conferencing are matched to a housing resource.
As it relates to the backlog that’s preventing voucher holders from accessing housing, Turnage called that a personnel issue.
“We’re looking at master housing for people on vouchers. There are 800 people matched to a voucher but we have a shortage of case managers.”
