'These people are not going anywhere.' Outlawed homeless tent city returns in east Akron
A homeless tent village — sanctioned by the private property owner and outlawed by the city of Akron several years ago — is back.
Akron’s zoning and elected officials told businessman Sage Lewis in 2018 that it’s illegal to shelter chronically homeless people in tents behind his commercial property on Broad Street. Forty-six people in the middle of winter were given 30 days to clear out.
Service providers swooped in. Some people landed in shelters. Others accepted housing. Many returned to the wild.
Advocate for the homeless: Sage Lewis continues tradition of camping on Christmas Eve to support homeless people
In 2020, Lewis stepped down from the Homeless Charity, which initially supported what was then called Second Chance Village, and founded the Houseless Movement, a political organization dedicated to aggressively protesting the treatment of homeless people in Akron.
In April 2021, Akron native Rob Pierce pitched a tent behind the Broad Street property on a sliver of vacant land. Lewis didn’t tell him to leave. Instead, he gave Pierce a donated pop-up camper.
Six months later, a second man came with a tent.
As winter approached, dozens of men, women and children stepped out of the woods or off the streets. Lewis didn’t complain to the Department of Neighborhood Assistance.
He wired a fuse box in a nearby home he owns and ran extension cords to their tents, each on its own breaker. He helped them get space heaters, which he said are safer than heating tents portable propane tanks and open flames. He gave them access to a bathroom while regularly hauling off their trash. He even setup free wi-fi.
As the weather warms, Lewis is allowing children, the elderly and the disabled to stay, He's trying to evict people he calls “young alpha males” who’ve grown “stir-crazy.”
On Wednesday, checks were stolen from his mailbox by a man whose “entire life has become a fantasy of epic proportions as he lives in a tent in my back yard,” Lewis posted on Facebook.
That day, Lewis evicted a man who came at him and others with a sledgehammer. Lewis pleaded with the man to see a mental health provider.
“They don’t work,” said the man, who is now back living in the woods.
On Tuesday, two Akron Police Department officers walked into the camp of about 25 tents looking for a suspect in a disturbance at the nearby fire station. Lewis and a couple homeless people tried to help the officers locate the man.
“I’m trying to convince these guys to not be afraid of the police,” Lewis said.
“Sometimes you’re homeless because you’re running from a warrant,” one officer said. “Maybe if you get out ahead of it, you can get back on your feet.”
“Yes!” Lewis exclaimed.
'This is our home'
In the past week, a reporter has observed illicit drug use. Meth or crack pipes are visible just inside tents. Men and women wander the campground, philosophically musing about freedom or the concept of landownership as nothing more than a social construct.
They collect busted bicycles, used artwork and other discarded items, which are traded for money, drugs and cigarettes.
Some expressed no greater ambition than being left alone.
“The dream would be to keep a place where we can get high but we’re in a place where we are secure,” said Promise, who gave a fake name because he’s got an active warrant for his arrest.
“A lot of us are from broken homes,” he said. “We all grew up in the same environment. What we’re doing, we’re only doing to ourselves. We’re all petty addicts. We do our drugs and go about our day.”
“This is our home, bro,” his companion said.
“We’re out of everybody’s way,” the man said.
Akron responds, lawsuit continues
Lewis, who is running again for mayor next year, is a recovering alcoholic who empathizes with the addicted and homeless.
He thought this time he would try to help only a couple people. He can't shelter the hundreds of people who sleep outside in Akron each night, he said.
So he welcomed in two people and is now trying to minimize the footprint of the camp, which he expects to be even bigger this winter.
He wonders when the city will act. His tenants are used to moving when homeless camps are swept away by city and park officials.
The mayor's staff left a meeting on the issue Wednesday, unwilling to comment due to pending litigation. Lewis is still fighting the 2018 orders that shuttered the original tent city. He and the Homeless Charity lost an appeal last week in a case questioning the city’s enforcement of zoning rules that prohibit campgrounds. A previous case challenging the city's rejection of his request for a conditional use permit failed.
His lawyers with the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice vow to take the zoning case to the Ohio Supreme Court on the constitutional argument that the government cannot deny a private property owner the right to shelter those in need.
Asked about safety concerns, the city eventually commented Thursday. The mayor's office acknowledged the challenges of mental illness and addiction in the chronically homeless population and urged people to call 2-1-1 for housing and other support.
“Enabling unsafe and unhealthy behavior only further exacerbates the issues these individuals are experiencing and perpetuates the cycle of homelessness,” the mayor’s office said in an emailed statement. “It creates an unsafe environment for everyone in the vicinity but especially for these most vulnerable members of the community.
“The safety of all Akron residents, including individuals experiencing homelessness, is Mayor Horrigan's top concern,” the city said.
Another community for Akron's homeless taking shape
Lewis is "seeing the starts of another community" — albeit with less structure at the moment.
If he can manage the trash and remove the young men who threaten stability, he sees potential for the homeless who remain to police and govern themselves, as they did before the city shut the last camp down four years ago.
The original tent city, known as Second Chance Village, eventually evolved into a place where homeless found purpose and service providers could easily find homeless people who distrust authority and prefer solitude.
This time, though, Lewis said he's realizing how much effort was made by homeless leaders like Paul Hays.
Hays led the first tent city by making tough decisions that Lewis said his heart won't let him make. Hays outlawed drug and alcohol use, he had zero tolerance for stealing or poor conduct and he managed to keep people — even their tents — in straighter lines.
Lewis is now trying to re-create "some sense of stability. The chaos of homelessness pretty much does not allow you to do anything but survive and do drugs. That's about all you've got time for. But when you feel safe and you have some semblance of stability and security, you can think of what's next."
He's asking the city to be a partner.
"I'm stomping my feet. I'm like, 'dad, Horrigan, talk to me. Let's come up with something.' But it's not his priority. I get it. He's trying to save a city. It's very trendy for these cities to become urban bedroom communities, make them really cool to live in.
"I get it. But these people are not going anywhere," he said.
“Do I wish we had tiny houses? Yes,” Lewis said of an option rejected by Akron’s leaders but allowed in other major U.S. cities.
“Do I wish we had a more secure fence structure? Yes,” said Lewis, who is building a security team and erecting more fencing to address his “No. 1 concern” of safety.
“Do I wish I could work on these things and not be continually worried that the city will come and destroy everything we build? Yes,” Lewis said, knowing that the city is fully aware of his actions.
“All I want is to work on homelessness,” he said. “Hopefully by now we have shown that there are people living all throughout Akron in tents. Why are they choosing to live in tents and not other places? These are the basic questions we need to talk about as a city."
Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron's homeless tent city returns despite city orders
