LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - Homeless advocates say the city of Little Rock is making a mess when it cleans out camps.
They say camps will go un-touched for months after the residents are evicted, becoming even bigger problems for their surrounding communities.
Caleb Alexander-McKinzie was disturbed by the conditions he saw after visiting a closed-down campsite in Southwest Little Rock that had been vacant since city officials shut it down in March.
“Because it’s been left to rot, all of the things back there that they—when they evicted—that they couldn’t carry on their back are just sitting back there,” he said, “and they’ve been sitting back there for two months, and they’re just degrading.”
Alexander-McKinzie knew about the camp because he volunteers with The Van, a non-profit that provides supplies and assistance for homeless people in Little Rock and North Little Rock. He asked that the exact location of this camp not be revealed, because he knows of other camps nearby that are still active.
He said a couple of people lived there, and that the camp had been used for more than a year.
“The folks who utilized this camp knew their neighbors,” he added. “They knew some of the business owners that were around the area. Some of the business owners would actually leave a hot extension cord out for them to come and utilize, so they could charge their cell phones, or they could plug up a radio, or during the wintertime, if they had an electric heater and they wanted to kind of sleep up there on the slab or something, they would sleep up there.”
Alexander-McKinzie showed THV11 how the residents cared for their campsite.
“You can see they had boards set up here,” he mentioned, walking along a pathway made of pallets, “so they could walk through the camp without having to step in the mud.
“Each of these panels that are laying down over here,” he said, pointing to a different area of the site, “They had built a house. They had built a little shanty to live out here, to survive in, something that was maybe a bit more durable than a tent. You can see there’s mattresses they were using to sleep on.”
He also noted a metal barrel that was occasionally used to burn trash, and that had a trash bag sitting in it. Alexander-McKinzie said the residents would collect bags of trash and ask volunteers like himself to haul the bags away.
“And all that stuff is [spread] out, now,” he said, noting that several trash bags sat on the ground, their contents ripped out of them. “It’s less tidy now, it’s less clean than it was before they made the people move.”
The City of Little Rock posted an eviction notice March 2. It was signed by Terry Hall, the city’s code enforcement supervisor. It said the camp was being closed due to “health, safety, and welfare reasons,” and the crews would arrive after seven days to remove any items from the site and clean the area.
One look at the location made it clear that nobody had cleaned anything.
“The City’s had two months to bring trucks out here, to utilize their sanitation department to come in and clean the area, to justify the reason that they forced these people to leave,” Alexander-McKinzie stated. “And they’ve forgotten about it.”
He also found irony that, not more than 30 feet from the entrance to the campsite, is a sign that reads, “No dumping by order of the City of Little Rock.”
“Apparently,” he said, “it’s serious enough to post that sign, but it’s not worth the city using their sanitation department that we already pay for as taxpayers, and that we already have established, to justify them forcing people out of the only home they have.”
Alexander-McKinzie claimed that most of the camps the city has promised to clean up now look like this one.
“In this general vicinity of southwest, I can take you to four or five other camps that are places just like this,” he stated, “that have been vacated for months, since before winter, where no one’s came and picked up the trash, no one’s came and cleared out the area. They’ve been abandoned, and the entire purpose was just to move the humans that had found this safe space to lay their head.”
Little Rock city officials said that once a camp is vacated, the city sends out crews to clean up and "it usually happens within 24 to 48 hours of the site being vacated."
Alexander-McKinzie said he had not seen or heard from the residents of that camp since their eviction.
“I hope they’re safe,” he said. “I hope they’re well. I hope they’ve been able to get inside. But I also hope that they know that, if they need help, that help is out here in the form of people who want to help them, who want to want to just help them get from one day to the next.”
This article has been updated to add a comment from Little Rock city officials.