Amid record heat and facing a court ruling, Phoenix clears another block of 'The Zone'

Amid a record-breaking heat wave, a fourth block of “The Zone,” Phoenix’s largest homeless encampment, was cleared without any major issues on Wednesday.

Larry Clark, who said he has been unhoused in the Phoenix area for 23 years and was living on the block, returned during the cleanup to see the street being cleared out. To stay cool, Clark spends most of his days outside his tent and away from the sun. For him and many others living outside, finding shade can be a matter of life or death.

“The heat will kill you,” Clark said.

It was already 94 degrees when the cleanup started at 7 a.m. By the time it ended around 12:30, it had climbed to over 100 degrees.

The cleanup took place on the east side of 9th Avenue between Madison and Jefferson streets. Of the 29 people who were camping on the block, 25 accepted shelter or other services, said city spokesperson Kristin Couturier, though those numbers don’t include people who might have left the area before the cleanup began.

It has been a busy week for Phoenix’s Office of Homeless Solutions. A trial in Brown v. City of Phoenix, a state court lawsuit filed against the city by residents and business owners near The Zone who claim the encampment is a public nuisance, took place Monday and Tuesday. The city began clearing out The Zone in May, following a court order in that lawsuit.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney, who is presiding over the case, will soon decide whether to continue forcing the city to clear out the area and, if so, how much more time it will have to complete the task. The city has asked for nine more months, but plaintiffs in the lawsuit want the job done by the end of the summer. There are still between 700 and 900 people living in and around The Zone, according to recent counts by the Human Services Campus, a collection of homelessness nonprofits that sits at the center of the encampment.

At one point, it seemed Wednesday's cleanup might not go as planned. Five Phoenix police patrol cars pulled up just before 10:30 a.m. after a man named Yves Taylor, who had been sharing a tent with Clark on the block, resisted requests by city and nonprofit workers to pack up his belongings and move elsewhere.

But three officers in Phoenix’s Downtown Operations Unit explained the situation to Taylor and convinced him to move along. He said he plans to relocate elsewhere in The Zone and is skeptical of the city’s approach to clearing the encampment.

“If you can tell me I can go to another block — what? That’s not solving the problem,” he said.

Another cleanup is scheduled for Wednesday, July 19, on 13th Avenue between Madison and Jefferson streets.

The city is holding cleanups two weeks in a row because it opened a new hotel-turned-shelter on Monday and wants to leverage the additional space, Couturier said. At the trial, city officials said the city plans to continue to clear one block every two to three weeks.

Cloyd Crow Jr., who has been living with his dog, Mercedes, for about seven months in a tent on the block next to be cleared, said he will also probably relocate to another part of The Zone. He’s not open to going to a large congregate shelter, he said, but would accept a hotel room if the city offered him one.

“Some of us are greedy; some of us are grateful. But we all need shelter,” Crow said.

Juliette Rihl covers housing insecurity and homelessness for The Arizona Republic. She can be reached at jrihl@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @julietterihl.

Helen Rummel is a Pulliam Fellow for The Arizona Republic. She can be reached at hrummel@gannett.com or on Twitter @helenrummel.

Coverage of housing insecurity on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Amid record heat, Phoenix clears more of 'The Zone' homeless camp