Asheville police and city hall suddenly destroy a houseless camp hours before the coldest night of the year, putting lives in danger and leaving services organizations scrambling
Above: The Lexington Avenue overpass, site of the former houseless camp. Photo by Orion Solstice
Blade reporters Elliot Patterson, Veronica Coit and David Forbes contributed to this piece
Around noon yesterday, Feb. 1, Asheville Police Department officers and state Department of Transportation workers demolished a houseless encampment under the Lexington Avenue overpass. This move came during a pandemic, hours before one of the coldest nights of the year. It’s left the houseless residents there scattered, at far greater risk of death or injury. Services organizations said they had no warning and were left scrambling to get supplies to those who had just had their only shelter destroyed.
While Asheville’s mountains may be scenic when shrouded in snow such cold weather can literally kill those forced onto the streets by poverty and gentrification. However, this hasn’t stopped the APD from carrying out multiple demolitions of houseless camps in the dead of winter at a time when shelter beds are more limited than ever due to COVID-19. Such “sweeps” are sadly not a new sight in Asheville. Indeed, repeatedly the local far-right and business owners will demand them. A police department vindictive enough to tear gas crowds and destroy medic stations is happy to comply.
The weather yesterday, possibly even into next week, is frigid enough for an official Code Purple, the warning issued by the Asheville Homeless Coalition when extreme cold weather conditions are expected, putting people sleeping outside at severe risk of injury or death. With Code Purple participating shelters voluntarily add space to allow for as many people as possible to get protection from the cold.
Unfortunately not everyone is able to make use of the added space, as many shelters will not allow in men, people with criminal records or substance users. Others discriminate against queer and trans locals, who are already far more likely to face houselessness. A person’s background, gender or what they use in their personal time or as a coping mechanism does not disqualify someone from the right to shelter and safety especially during extreme weather, a sentiment that city government does not seem to agree with.
Around mid-day yesterday a construction truck and bulldozer, backed by police, annihilated the camp in an act of absolute heartlessness, making an already difficult situation far worse for part of our most vulnerable local community.
According to multiple houseless support organizations, no warning was given. Those taking shelter under the bridge were doing no harm to those around them (making tourists uncomfortable doesn’t count). They had no time to gather their belongings or reach out for help. Service providers had no time to reach them. City government and NCDOT would later dismiss the shelters they destroyed as “debris.”
“We were made aware of the events that took place by seeing a post someone made on Facebook just a few minutes after it happened,” Nicole Kott of Helping Hands told the Blade. “We were not contacted by anyone to help provide assistance to those that were being told to relocate”
Katie Caton, the services director at Homeward Bound, likewise said they had no warning and she found out about the destruction of the camp on social media.
Beloved Asheville, a group that provides medical aid and supplies like tents, blankets and coats to the houseless, also had no notice of the camp’s destruction. In a public social media post, they said they went to the site to give winter shoes to one individual, and instead found the entire camp demolished and their friends scattered. “He only asked us for a pair of shoes, and now he lost everything.”
“With winds blowing up to 50 miles an hour and the wind chill set to get down to 7 degrees, we went under the bridge only to find him and his campmates and everything they owned gone –THIS IS IMMORAL, DEEPLY TROUBLING, and potentially DEADLY to take people’s shelter in the winter in the midst of a health crisis.” Beloved’s post declared. The group called for an immediate moratorium on camp sweeps within our community and said they were pressing NCDOT and city hall to do so.
Kott emphasized that such evictions were against even the official pandemic guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control. Such sweeps are always damaging, she said, but “to do so during an ongoing pandemic and a winter storm is even more reckless and irresponsible.”
Indeed, the CDC guidance states that “if individual housing options are not available, allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are. Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.”
“This is especially true with the new novel coronavirus [strain] sweeping our community which is known to be more easily transmissible,” Kott said. But city hall and other agencies have instead emphasized a winter of camp removals. Combined with their insistence on keeping the tourism industry open this is a recipe for disaster.
The complete lack of warning wasn’t just damaging, it was unusual, Caton told the Blade. Homeward Bound works with Asheville city government on multiple fronts and they usually get a 7-day warning before such a demolition. The organization uses that time to send outreach workers to follow up with people at the camp to alert them and connect them with services and supplies.
Before the pandemic, Caton recalled, they usually got a couple of phone calls a month about such 7-day notices. It was much more common to see an uptick in calls during the winter due to camps’ increase visibility without foliage. “People notice without the coverage. There’s increased talk and concern about camps during the winter.”
City officials have since claimed that police notified local service groups, but given the above information this is clearly false.
Eviction season
Sadly, the destruction fits a pattern. Recently there has been a renewed push from far-right gentry for crackdowns on the houseless. Two right-wing realtors and a real estate lawyer recently called for police to kick the houseless out of downtown. The Citizen-Times even devoted a whole column to one of the realtors, praising her for her “compassion” even though she wanted to punish poor people for existing.
Indeed, after facing public backlash, city hall revealed they had initiated the demolition (alerting NCDOT and sending police) in response to a complaint on their Asheville App, commonly used by gentry to sic the power of local government on anyone they don’t like. This is what the complaint, uncovered by an open government advocate, read:
Notice no actual danger is specified. The complaint doesn’t even lie and say that the houseless people at the camp were harassing anyone or causing a safety hazard or anything else. It literally just says that they shouldn’t exist in an area that’s meant for tourists. This is what cops and city officials felt justified evicting people into the cold.
After the camp’s destruction yesterday some of the local far-right openly celebrated on social media. Sanjit Patel, a far-right conspiracy theorist (he blames a left-wing bookshop for violent crime in West Asheville) lauded the destruction and implied they would be pressing the cops for more.
Indeed the APD has a long record of using such “citizen complaints” from well-off conservatives as the excuse for draconian crackdowns. Multiple cop cars around a single houseless person is a common sight in Asheville. The destruction under the bridge wasn’t the first and unless public anger gets city hall to stop, it certainly won’t be the last.
City officials will often say that NCDOT, which controls many roadways in town, is responsible for camp evictions. Indeed, that’s the excuse city officials are using this time.
But this is deceptive. The police and city hall work closely with the transportation department and often government staff or cops initiate the evictions in response to the wishes of the wealthy. In this case that’s exactly what they did. City government could have ignored the complaint, deciding that public health and people’s lives were a bigger concern. But they didn’t. They notified the NCDOT and sent in the cops. Such clampdowns are one of many reasons for the growing movement to defund the APD. Once again, one of their main purposes is just hurting poor people when the rich tell them to.
Despite the pandemic the Lexington Avenue camp removal wasn’t the first this winter.
Due to several complaints from heartless gentry, in December a camp near Target had signs put up near it loudly proclaiming “No trespassing, enforced by Police Department” in front of an entrance to a well established houseless camp, far from downtown and prying eyes of disgruntled tourists, taking away another place to safely shelter. Such signs are a prelude to police raids and mass arrests.
Then a month later, in the middle of January, another camp near Petsmart dubbed “Bleachery Camp” was also threatened by the cops and eventually dismantled.
Why city government thought the best time to do this was during the dead of a bitterly cold winter with no warning is incomprehensible, unless their intent is purely to kill or threaten houseless people to get them out of sight. There is never a good time to drive out those in need, but to do so now is especially evil.
Even a government agency like the CDC is advocating an end to such evictions In addition to the sheer cruelty, such destruction can and will directly impact our community’s health and safety and put even more strain on an already struggling and understaffed healthcare system.
If you find yourself wondering what happened to the individuals that lost everything yesterday, unfortunately we don’t yet have an answer. Throughout the night, as freezing winds swept the city, the question came up again and again. Community members searched for the residents to help provide them with replacement shelter and emergency services but were unable to find where cops and bulldozers had driven them to. Can you imagine during one of the most difficult times in your life — during a pandemic and winter storm — to come back to what little shelter you have only to find it in ruins?
City government should feel shame, but given their long, awful record on this front they probably won’t. That leaves it up to us, because rage and action are the only things that will change this course of events. It’s time to remind city hall that when you set out to destroy and damage one part of our community, you hurt us all.
—
Orion Solstice is a queer trans activist dedicated to bringing truth and beauty into this world through various mediums with a focus on photography. He is a full time artistic freelancer of a wide variety of arts and loving father of an elderly cat companion and five fish.
The Asheville Blade is entirely funded by our readers. If you like what we do, donate directly to us on Patreon or make a one-time gift to support our work. Questions? Comments? Email us.