City Clears Encampment, Trashes ​“Trash”

The city’s Parks Department has officially cleared the homeless encampment on the Upper Green — amid a debate over when unattended belongings become discardable ​“trash.”

That clearing of the encampment, which began weeks ago and led to the recent arrest of seven activists who refused to leave their tents at the request of city police, happened at around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. 

Those five individuals who had their belongings tossed said that they weren’t around to hear an 11 a.m. warning to clear the space. 

At the scene on Tuesday, social workers, police officers, and homeless campers and activists affiliated with U‑ACT (Unhoused Activists Community Team) stood around the Green, where the encampment-turned-occupation had once stood just a few hours prior. 

A New Haven Parks clean-up crew dumped piles of belongings into the back of their trucks. The unhoused individuals on scene lined up along the back wall of the United Church on the Green. They had gathered the belongings they could with the time allotted. Together, they watched the cleaners throw away the remaining unclaimed items.

James Lazarus was the only remaining homeless camper who refused to leave the premises of the occupation. Lazarus had pushed the fallen autumn foliage into circles that surrounded him to serve as imaginary pathways and walls. He sat in the middle with all of his belongings in a pile behind him. Social workers, activists, and police officers came up to him, asking him to move. But he wouldn’t budge.

“They just don’t want me to be comfortable. They want to uproot me and they want to make me feel unsafe. They want to make me run,” Lazarus said, after he had neglected speaking to the city workers.

He pointed around himself, to the pile behind him and the leaves surrounding him: ​“I’m home, so I’m not running.“

Since the dismantling of the encampment and the related arrests, the group has seen a coalition of partner organizations show their support, including CT Dissenters, Jewish Voices for Peace New Haven, Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, The People’s Clinic, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Rosette Neighborhood Village, the tiny-home initiative led by Mark Colville. The groups had set up 20 tents behind United Church on the Green several weeks ago to protest encampment sweeps and to call for land to be set aside for people with nowhere else to go. 

A few paces away on Tuesday, U‑ACT lead organizers Colville and Billy Bromage, both of whom were arrested at the protest encampment in late October, argued with Lt. Brendan Borer and city Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero about the timing of the notice to clear the encampment. 

The encampment had received a warning at 11 a.m. Tuesday. According to Bromage, by that point, many of the people sleeping overnight there had left to go about their days — to Fellowship Place, to shower, to get food — leaving their stuff unattended. 

“Are you a human being besides a bureaucrat? I mean, are you a human being?” Colville shot at Bombero. ​“They don’t have a place to put their stuff. Do we get a little bit of courtesy from your office?”

Bombero argued that the occupation and its organizers had received warnings for the past two weeks that such a clearing would happen. Colville argued that such ​“blanket warnings” carry no weight, and that a proper warning should have been issued. Bombero later shared that Tuesday morning was the earliest time in which the department had ​“resources available,” in reference to clean up crews’ availability. 

“It wasn’t trash until someone made it trash,” Bromage said about the belongings that the city threw out.

“It was trash when someone left it unattended,” Bombero responded.

As one truck prepared to take away the homeless campers’ belongings, two campers — Richard and Cherelle T. — ran up to the truck. After a quick conversation, one of the workers threw down a blue sleeping bag, before driving away. 

They had asked the worker to let them go through the truck to find Cherelle’s psychiatric medication and inhalers. Richard shared that the two had been out of the encampment earlier that morning at 8 a.m. and returned just moments ago to find all of their belongings in the trucks. They had lost blankets, clothes, food, and Cherelle’s medications. 

“I feel sad,” Richard said. ​“If I had my phone, I’d call the cops on them because that’s wrong. [The driver] didn’t care. I bet you if his kid’s medicine was in the truck, he would have done something.”

At this point, the police officers made their way to Lazarus, who was initially reluctant to move. But after a tense exchange, he stood up and shoved a few items in his pile into his box. Then, he picked the box up and crossed through his neat circles of leaves to the other side, near the church, leaving his pile behind. From there, he sat and watched the parks cleaners come and throw his belongings into the truck. 

“I get both sides. I’m sympathetic to it, but when we start accumulating stuff that becomes unmanageable for one person, it becomes like a dumping situation,” Borer said, as workers piled the remainder of Lazarus’s items — including bedding, blankets, and tarps — into the truck. ​“We’re just trying to avoid a pile of, I guess, trash.”

As the truck drove away with Lazarus’ belongings, the homeless campers watched. Police officers spoke with Cherelle to see if she could be connected with services to get her required medications. And for Colville, he said that he still intends to occupy the space. 

“They’re doing this particularly cruelly,” Colville said. ​“They want to make sure it’s punitive.”