News
A homeless encampment in Athens is gone after an anonymous complaint, causing problems for its occupants
By: Theo Peck-Suzuki | Report for America
Posted on:
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — After she lost her home this summer, Athens resident Michelle Anderson spent several months camping on the wooded ridge between West Union and the West State Park.
“I had it looking beautiful up there, kind of like a sanctuary,” Anderson said. “And now it’s just trashed.”
Anderson left the camp in late December after a local nonprofit put her up in a motel room. Not long after, she learned that Athens police had instructed the people who were still there to move along. Anderson went back later to see the damage.
“It was just cleared out,” she said.
Police acted in response to an anonymous complaint made through the Athens city website. They gave the campsite residents a few days to pack up their belongings and move.
My Sister’s Place board president Lisa Brooks, who has worked on homelessness at the national level, praised the police for not forcing everyone to leave right away, as sometimes happens elsewhere. However, she said the city’s response still falls far short of the ideal.
“The goal here would be to have service providers who are trained and ready to work in and alongside and with encampments and people who are unsheltered,” Brooks said.
Brooks acknowledged that Athens does not have these fast-responding service providers. The only “boots on the ground” are the police. Given that, she said, it’s usually better not to contact the authorities unless someone is in immediate danger.
“People have to be OK with, there might be nothing that you can do as a single individual person,” Brooks said.

Brooks said it’s not helpful to call law enforcement on camps for these kinds of violations.
“What choice do they have but to have a fire? What choice do you have, in the middle of the winter, living outside, but to break that law?” she said.
Brooks said the overwhelming majority of unhoused people don’t want to be sleeping outside. Telling them to move along doesn’t make them less homeless, but it does cause other problems.
“The research says, most commonly, they’re going further out … meaning not close to anything, which further disconnects them from any help,” Brooks said. “‘Move along,’ that means ‘move away, move out. You’re less valuable than other people in this community who are housed and all we really want you to do is go away.’”
That’s certainly a concern for Anderson.
“My opinion is, people don’t want to see that there is a homeless problem. … Having everybody outside of city limits, out of sight, out of mind,” Anderson said.
Some may worry that allowing people to camp outside will make homelessness worse, but Brooks said those concerns are misplaced.
“It’s going to get worse if we don’t get involved at a community level and we don’t continue to increase our resources, increase our strategies and develop solutions at a community level,” Brooks said. “And that means everybody working together, communicating with each other, sharing dollars and resources, educating the community on what the protocols are, and moving forward in that way.”