'He was not stopping': Advocates decry use of forest mulcher on Charles Street encampment

PROVIDENCE − On Monday, outreach worker Alex Gautieri was trying to gather up the belongings of couple living on an empty lot on Charles Street and ferry them across the West River after everyone living on the lot received eviction orders from Providence police on Aug. 4.

"I heard the excavator start and I ran down the embankment, across the river," he recalled.

The front of the small earth-mover, a Bobcat skid-steer loader, was fitted with a forest mulcher, he said, a heavy attachment used in the clearing of land to shred tree stumps, vines, vegetation and anything else in its way. In the encampment, the shredder tore through tents and trash, clothes and blankets, even an armchair.

In its path were two encampment residents – a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, who were still trying to gather their things to relocate, said Gautieri, the statewide street outreach coordinator for the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.

"I made eye contact with him, and he was not stopping," Gautieri said of the Bobcat operator. "I could see the whites of his eyes, and he was still not stopping."

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Other outreach workers stood in the way of the machine, he said, waving their arms and screaming for the operator, a contractor for the state Department of Transportation, to stop the shredding. After coming within a few yards of the workers and shredding many of the couple's possessions, he turned the machine around.

Advocates call the clearing of the Charles Street encampment, and the close encounter with the mulching machine, an act of violence and police harassment against a population that has nowhere else to go.

The encampment had been the site of protests as advocates tried to pressure Providence Mayor Brett Smiley to stop asking the state, which owns the site, to allow the city to evict everyone from the property.

As the encampment was cleared, the state's shelter beds were nearly full

While the state and city evicted people from the encampment after serving them with a notice, the nearly 1,100 shelter beds in the state are full and, based on a count at the end of July, 440 people are living outside, according to the last two-week count by the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project.

The nonprofit agency OpenDoors added seven beds to the shelter system on Sunday, and the state contracted with them for an additional 10 rooms at a Motel 6 in Warwick, for a total of 27 new beds, OpenDoors Co-Executive Director Nick Horton said.

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In an emailed statement, Department of Housing spokesman Joey Lindstrom said 15 people from the encampment were connected to shelter beds; he did not answer questions about why the state signed off on clearing the encampment.

In an emailed statement, Providence spokesman Josh Estrella said the city had "concerns" about the site because of its proximity to the highway and potential flooding. He also cited money that the city has given to the state for shelter beds, but did not say where residents of the encampment were meant to go.

Pushing people out of an encampment destabilizes them, said Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project Director Eric Hirsch, forcing them to find a new place to live, disrupting the community and driving them into other parts of the city, creating the same problems for a new set of neighbors.

"People are scattered, they don't have their outreach workers because they don't know where people have gone," Hirsch said. "How are they more safe unless offered a reasonable alternative?"

Department of Transportation says Providence gave the green light

Department of Transportation Communications Director Ralph Valente wrote in an email that Providence officials told his department that the site had been cleared of people, even though police, outreach workers and residents were still there.

The eviction notice handed out listed a date, Monday, Aug. 7, but no time, for people to clear out.

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"As we started that process on Monday, protestors formed a line in front of our maintenance machines and vocally opposed the cleanup," Valente wrote. "As soon as we were informed of this, we called the police, ceased all work, and left the site. RIDOT has subsequently reinitiated our cleanup efforts with the presence of the Providence police."

Outreach workers at the site say, and video reportedly taken from the eviction appears to show, that the Bobcat loader continued to operate while people were at the site.

Hirsch, who was at the site on Monday, said he saw people in front of the machine, waving their arms and trying to get the operator to stop advancing on the people trying to pack up and leave. He claims it took "at least 30 minutes" to get the operator to move away from people.

"It was like a movie," he said. "I couldn't believe it."

Estrella, in an emailed statement, wrote that Providence police officers went to the site on Monday and "confirmed that all folks they made contact with had left the premises.

Department of Environmental Management investigates complaints

A photo taken by Kevin G. Andrade, a reporter with Rhode Island Current, shows the path of shredded trash left next to the West River in the wake of the excavator.

The Department of Environmental Management is investigating complaints about trash left in proximity to the river, Spokesman Michael Healey wrote in an email.

By the numbers: Report finds 15% increase in RIers experiencing homelessness.

Number of people experiencing homelessness has grown significantly

The number of people experiencing homelessness in general, including the unsheltered population, has grown significantly since the onset of the pandemic.

In 2019, there were 71 people living outside in Rhode Island. By 2021, that number had increased to 181, and by the latest annual point-in-time count at the beginning of this year, that number had risen to 334. At the end of July, 440 people were living outside.

As of June 30, the state had 1,087 shelter beds – 622 for individuals, 290 for families and 175 in motels.

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Material from USA Today was used in this report. Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Charles Street homeless encampment destroyed, and state lacks shelter beds