The clock's ticking to clean up grungy Brent homeless camp. So far, nothing's been done

Gwen Gibson has been fighting to keep vagrants off her private property in Brent for years.

She said panhandlers regularly cut across her yard to get to privately owned wooded areas behind her home, bringing drugs, trash and aggressive stray dogs. Last month, an Escambia County magistrate ordered owners of the property where people are living to clean up the derelict structures, trash and abandoned vehicles left by vagrants.

The 45-day deadline is up April 21, and Gibson and other neighbors say so far nothing has been done.

“Nothing has changed,” Gibson said. “Not one thing. I come home after working a full-time job and taking care of my elderly relatives with dementia and you can’t even relax because you’re worried about a gun shot through your wall. Every day it’s something new.”

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Gibson’s home off Murphy Lane is paid for and the property has been in her family for decades, but over the past several years her neighborhood near Brentwood Elementary and Brentwood Park has become a gathering place for people who are living on the streets. The Alfred-Washburn Center, an organization that provides outreach services to homeless people is nearby, along with several privately-owned wooded areas where people have set up dozens of tents and makeshift camp sites.

Gibson and other neighbors say many people come and go at all times of the day and night, often appearing intoxicated, high or suffering with mental health problems. They hear fighting and gunshots and sometimes see people defecating near their homes or sleeping on the side of the road.

Susan Walls and her sister have lived in the area for five years. Like Gibson, their home is paid for and they can’t afford to leave, so they stay vigilant. Most home owners in the area have posted signs that read “no trespassing” or “private property” so they can call the police on trespassers.

“They’re always trying to camp out at an abandoned home next door," said Walls. "I have to run them off all the time. That’s why I don’t have a voice right now, I have to yell and scream at them to stay away from the place next door.”

Walls and her next-door neighbor, Terill Moorehouse, say they’ve had break-ins, people who are seemingly intoxicated or mentally ill knocking on their door at odd times, as well as a regular stream of people coming and going past their properties into the woods nearby. Moorehouse moved into a rental home off Murphy Lane in December and is living there with her two children, and has another baby on the way.

“We just have a lot of stragglers and it makes it unsafe for our kids,” Moorehouse said. “My neighbor has little ones, too, and the stragglers are always going back and forth. In the middle of the day, a woman went to the bathroom in the woods where we could see. There’s constantly people and they don’t always get out of the street. I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.”

While Brentwood Park has been swept of trash and homeless campers, neighbors across the street on Murphy Lane are still waiting. They had hoped they would get some relief when a county magistrate ordered the owners of the property where the homeless are camping to clean it up, which would ultimately force them to move, but so far, they haven’t seen any activity.

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Pensacola businessman Collier Merrill owns some of the land where vagrants are camping in Brent. In order for Escambia County Sheriff’s deputies to start enforcing the magistrate’s clean-up order, they need to issue trespass violations to those living on the private property, but a sheriff’s spokesperson said the property owner has not yet contacted them about the illegal campers.

Calls to Merrill, the magistrate and Escambia County have provided no answers as to next steps. Gibson said she’s not giving up, though. She said Escambia Code Enforcement has helped her the most and she’s going to keep working with the county to get the issue resolved.

“This can’t go on any longer. It just can’t,” said Gibson. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’ll just keep blowing my horn. It’s so wrong. I can’t fix the whole world, but I know I can fix my driveway where people can’t go up and down on it.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola homeless camp in Brent upset neighbors, cleanup ordered