‘They’re sweeping us again’: Westport homeless camp is cleared. City says for safety

Ashlea “Pumpkin” Handy returned to her tent from showering Sunday morning when she noticed the city vehicles crowding around her homeless encampment near Westport Road and West 43rd Street.

Three days earlier she was in a hotel, taking advantage of a city initiative that provided temporary shelter to individuals experiencing homelessness for 90 days. That program ended on Thursday, leading Handy to return to Westport, the site of once protest encampment Camp Sixx, to settle in.

“They’re sweeping us again,” said Handy, 33, a leader at Camp Sixx, named for Scott “Sixx” Eicke, who died on New Year’s Day in Kansas City while experiencing homelessness. “It really sucks.”

Handy said she’d hoped she wouldn’t find herself back on the grassy plot of land she and others were removed from in early April. For more than two months prior, dozens of people lived in tents outside City Hall and Westport as a form of protest, leading the City Council to approve the resolution providing temporary shelter in hotels for a few hundred people for about 90 days.

Handy returned because, she said, not everyone has received the help they need.

“And once again, out of sight, out of mind,” Handy said as she and about a dozen other people waited for a city bus to relocate them to a park.

Over the weekend, Mayor Quinton Lucas, City Manager Brian Platt, Public Works Director Michael Shaw and Police Chief Rick Smith met to discuss encampments in public rights of way, said Capt. Mike Glass, with the Kansas City Police Department.

Glass, who was among several officers at the camp Sunday, said the Westport intersection is one of the most dangerous in the city, so they arranged for public works to clean up the camp Sunday.

Social services stopped by first in the morning to talk to the individuals and offer them resources and services.

More than 240 beds are available in shelters across the city right now, Glass said. All the individuals at the camp Sunday had declined to go to a shelter.

Misha Smith, a member of the Midwest Homeless Collective, said many people choose not to go to shelters because they’ve had bad experiences previously and fear for their safety. Others have been kicked out because of their sexual orientation, health or marriage status, she said.

“They don’t say no because they just don’t want a bed,” said Smith, who came by Sunday morning to lend a hand. “They say no because their experience has shown them that it’s not safe.”

Once city workers and officers arrived at the site in Westport, Glass said, some people refused to leave the grassy spot.

“We said ‘hey, we don’t want to arrest anybody, but if we absolutely have to, we will,’” Glass said. No one was arrested Sunday.

When they were told to leave, Glass told the group that it wasn’t guaranteed that the city wouldn’t sweep their camp again if they ended up at a park.

Monique Snead, 27, was given the opportunity to go to a shelter Sunday, but declined.

At a shelter about two years ago, she said, all her belongings were stolen, including her clothes. She said the shelter didn’t compensate her for the loss.

So Snead started living on the streets rather than going back to shelters.

Before loading her two backpacks and her work uniforms on the bus, Snead said she hoped to secure housing. She currently works three jobs, including at a supermarket and at a restaurant, but she can’t cash her checks without the proper identification, which she’s working to obtain.

She didn’t buy the reason the city gave for moving her and the others, who stood nearby loading tarps, sleeping bags and hand sanitizer containers into the bus.

“We don’t have nowhere to go,” she said. “That’s not breaking the rules.”

The Westport encampment isn’t the only site in a public right of way, Glass said Sunday. There are other camps that will be approached at later dates, after social services first try to reach out.

But eventually, he said, all such camps in public rights of way will be told they have to move.

Michael Johnson, 48, who sat waiting for the bus Sunday morning, said he had hope that once the hotel program ended, he’d have more permanent housing and resources.

Instead, he said, it seemed that city officials put them in hotels for 90 days, then followed with a lot of talk and little action.

At a press conference Wednesday, advocates and leaders with the KC Homeless Union demanded the hotel program — which temporarily housed nearly 400 people — be extended while city leaders continue to find long-term solutions. Activists and those who are experiencing homelessness said that many of the people who were in the initiative did not get the full 90 days stay.

Meanwhile the city’s proposed tiny homes village initiative, a program intended to provide transitional housing and services to those experiencing homelessness, has not yet become a reality.

Johnson said “the tiny homes would be a great thing ... It would get a whole bunch of people off the streets.”

After everyone had boarded the bus, Shaw, the public works director, said the morning went “extremely well.”

“I think the citizens here were very, very receptive to services or even a change in location. Everyone moved voluntarily,” he said, adding that the city brought a bus after the group requested it. “It was a very collaborative effort.”

The bus drove away just after noon with about a dozen people on board. Three police cars and a police van pulled out of the grass after them.

The remaining city works employees left a short time later.

“This is all about safety for me,” Shaw said, adding that he saw three near-accidents at the intersection Sunday morning alone. “Being houseless is not a crime, but littering in the city right of way is a crime and tenting in the city right of way is a crime, so to speak.”