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OPINION

IT’S TIME TO CLEAR OUT THE MCPHERSON SQUARE ENCAMPMENT

By the Editorial Board
February 10, 2023 at 3:16 p.m. EST

A tent encampment in McPherson Square on Jan. 25 in D.C. (Matt McClain/The
Washington Post)
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On a February morning, a 54-year-old resident of the McPherson Square homeless
encampment shuffles around her tent, grabbing wrappers and dropping them in a
nearby trash receptacle. She doesn’t feel comfortable coming out at night, when
people “do circles around my tent” and make noise. “Right now, I’m just
surviving,” says the woman, who asked not to be named.



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Surviving now entails moving: The National Park Service (NPS), which manages the
park, will clear out the encampment’s estimated 65 residents on Wednesday and
erect a perimeter fence. (Earlier counts placed the population at around 70
occupants.) It’s the right call.

The action follows much deliberation between NPS and the D.C. government. Last
fall, NPS told the city that it would clear out McPherson as part of an
initiative to return federal sites to their intended uses. The District in
January requested that the removal date be moved up from April 12 because of
management difficulties and problems at the encampment, including an incident in
which a woman was doused with a bucket of urine as she made her way through the
site. Three homeless people have died at McPherson over the past six months,
according to NPS, due to exposure or drug overdoses.

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The imminent sweep has raised apprehension among the tent occupants about what
comes next. Will the city make good on its pledge to help them transition to
stable housing? Or will they have no option but to move their belongings to the
next downtown encampment? “I might wind up on a sidewalk again,” says the
54-year-old woman, who vows to avoid homeless shelters because she once was
assaulted at one of them.

That’s the very scenario that worries D.C. advocates for the homeless. Christy
Respress, CEO of city contractor Pathways to Housing DC, says of the
encampments, “It’s not a good policy just to close them just to close them. …
What we are really focused on is housing people, and I think when you close an
encampment, it makes it harder” to engage with the people in need. Ann Oliva,
CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says that “forced removals are
not the way to be accountable to the people who are living in McPherson Square.”

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ALSO ON THE EDITORIAL BOARD’S AGENDA


 * The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
 * The world’s ice is melting quickly.
 * Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is at it again.
 * Hong Kong’s crackdown on free speech continues.

Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only
temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that
women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan
has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students.
Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent
editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt
even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be.
This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of
millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another
on the policies needed to fight climate change.
A court in mid-December sentenced Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a
political rival of the president, to more than two years in prison on the charge
of “insulting public figures.” If confirmed on appeal, his conviction would bar
Mr. Imamoglu from seeking public office. Mr. Erdogan has a long history of
suppressing critics and competition. Read our recent editorial.
A Hong Kong judge sentenced Jimmy Lai, a media magnate known for publishing a
defiantly independent newspaper, to almost six years in prison. His trial for
violating Hong Kong’s repressive national security law, charges for which he
could face life in prison, has been postponed until next year. Read our most
recent editorial on the case.

1/5

End of carousel

Those are valid concerns, though NPS and D.C. are justified in seeking to
restore the 1.66 acres as a green urban refuge. There is no optimal time, it
turns out, to eradicate a tent encampment where residents are exposed to the
elements and where NPS has received complaints regarding “trash and debris
blocking public access, prostitution, open air drug and alcohol use, and public
harassment of residents and visitors to the area,” according to a Jan. 27 letter
from Jeffrey P. Reinbold, NPS’s superintendent of the National Mall and memorial
parks. Though camping at McPherson Square is prohibited, NPS relaxed enforcement
efforts during the pandemic — a smart and humane decision. As life around the
park returns to normal, however, the encampment has become a hazard unto itself.

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“We weren’t designed as humans to live in a damn park,” says Tyler, a tent-city
dweller who spoke as he swept the 15th Street NW sidewalk on Sunday afternoon.

The McPherson clear-out has a serial feel to it. NPS has carried out similar
operations in Franklin Square (February 2020), Union Station (June 2022) and
Scott Circle (December 2022). City officials have swept away other encampments,
including a cluster of tents near Union Station in 2016. “This game has been
going on for seven years now — this game of whack-a-mole” says Eric Sheptock, a
53-year-old former homeless man who stopped by McPherson Square on Tuesday
afternoon.

Set against the backdrop of a somnolent downtown, says Ms. Respress, the
McPherson Square encampment feeds the impression that homelessness is exploding
in D.C. But she notes that point-in-time homeless counts in the city have shown
a steady decrease in recent years. “We hear things in the community — that
homelessness is on the rise, and it’s actually not. It feels that way because
it’s very visible,” says Ms. Respress.

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It will surely be less visible after Feb. 15, when the residents will be forced
to seek new accommodations. Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor for health and human
services, has said that the city and its contractors are seeking to pair
residents with housing vouchers — as of last week, 15 of the occupants had been
approved for housing assistance, according to The Post’s Kyle Swenson and
Marissa J. Lang. “Bridge” housing, such as hotel rooms, will be provided for
those who are eligible for assistance but must wait for the keys to a unit. As
of Thursday, Mr. Turnage noted in an email to interested parties, 16 of the 65
park residents are either refusing services or not present or responsive when
staff arrives at their tents — a drop from 50 such refusals earlier in the
clear-out process.

There are several reasons that tent residents might resist engaging with
officialdom, according to D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2): They
might not trust outreach workers; they might believe they’re already on a list
for housing services; they might be engaged in criminal activity and hesitant to
deal with authorities; and they might be experiencing mental health challenges.
Gregory Hammett, a McPherson Square tent occupant, has his own, more blunt,
assessment: “These people cannot be housed. A lot of these people have bipolar
or schizophrenia. You can’t put these people in housing.”

Colbert I. King: There’s an unraveling of humanity at D.C.’s McPherson Square

Not so fast. Homeless people who might appear at first glance to be ill-suited
to living in an apartment can often succeed in such a setting under the right
circumstances, says Ms. Respress, whose organization follows D.C.’s “housing
first” policy. That means addressing the problems of the homeless should start
with placing them in stable residences — and simultaneously providing the
necessary support services. “If someone needs to be seen every day, you see them
every day,” says Ms. Respress, noting that people are more likely to undergo
voluntary mental health treatment once they’re in housing.

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The District, however, is suffering through a shortage of case managers and
social workers who can convert municipal resources into on-the-ground assistance
to people transitioning from homelessness to housing. Jamal Weldon, deputy chief
of staff for Mr. Turnage’s office, says, “It is not just enough to say, ‘Hey,
these are vouchers that can assist our vulnerable residents. Here are some
apartments.’ … There has to be continuous support for these residents as well.”

Ms. Respress says licensed supervisory social workers are a personnel bottleneck
for her organization: Landing a single recruit would enable Pathways to bring on
enough case managers to serve an additional 125 people.

Whatever the workforce constraints, some encampment residents are unimpressed
with the city’s performance. “They said we were going to have intensive social
services engagement since end of October,” says Umi, an encampment resident who
formerly lived at Franklin Square. “They’re not starting it until February, two
weeks before the eviction. How is that acceptable?” Mr. Turnage, however, says
his people have been “working this site as long as it’s been there.”

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Pressure on city officials from encampment residents and activists for the
homeless is a healthy dynamic. The District, after all, has an obligation to
deliver for its most vulnerable residents and capitalize on its investments in
affordable housing and mental health services. Yet it also carries a concurrent
obligation to protect scarce park space downtown for the benefit of all. There’s
a symbolic imperative, too, to stand against the perpetuation of a tent city
just up the street from the White House.


THE POST’S VIEW | ABOUT THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined
through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions
section and separate from the newsroom.

Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Opinion Editor David Shipley;
Deputy Opinion Editor Karen Tumulty; Associate Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg
(national politics and policy, legal affairs, energy, the environment, health
care); Lee Hockstader (European affairs, based in Paris); David E. Hoffman
(global public health); James Hohmann (domestic policy and electoral politics,
including the White House, Congress and governors); Charles Lane (foreign
affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long (economics);
Associate Editor Ruth Marcus; and Molly Roberts (technology and society).


385 Comments
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The Editorial Board on D.C.
HAND CURATED
 * Opinion|It’s time to clear out the McPherson Square encampment
   February 10, 2023
   
   
   Opinion|It’s time to clear out the McPherson Square encampment
   February 10, 2023
 * Opinion|Remember D.C. Metro hero Robert Cunningham’s name
   February 3, 2023
   
   
   Opinion|Remember D.C. Metro hero Robert Cunningham’s name
   February 3, 2023
 * Opinion|D.C. should be able to deploy its own National Guard
   January 13, 2023
   
   
   Opinion|D.C. should be able to deploy its own National Guard
   January 13, 2023

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