Phoenix restarted cleanups of a large downtown homeless encampment on Friday, piloting a new protocol that some homeless advocates said is more humane and helping unhoused people get into shelters.
The cleanup on Madison Street between 12th and 13th Avenues began at 7 a.m., just as the sun started to rise. The block is part of an area commonly called "The Zone," where between 800 and 1,000 unhoused people reside on any given day, according to the Human Services Campus, a nonprofit organization that offers support services for people experiencing homelessness.
During the cleanup, music hummed through a resident's speakers as dozens of unhoused people set to work, stuffing their belongings into trash bags and reusable totes. Shopping carts were piled high with household items of all kinds: tents, skateboards, clothing; TVs, generators, video games; a basketball; a tube of Bath and Body Works Snowflakes & Cashmere body cream; a blue foam pool noodle. One man carried a hunting bow out of his tent. A very real-looking handgun was unattended on a wood plank.
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Under the new protocol, the city will be cleaning up The Zone block by block, rather than tackling the whole area at once. Residents are given advance notice of the cleanup, and city and nonprofit staff are on hand to help pack up belongings. People experiencing homelessness can then wait with their belongings in an adjacent parking lot while the city sanitizes the streets and removes any items the residents no longer want.
To avoid accidentally throwing away someone’s property without permission, unclaimed items are tagged and left in place for a week, said Scott Hall, deputy director of the city’s Office of Homeless Solutions. If the property is still unclaimed after the week is up, it is moved to a storage unit on the Human Services Campus for 30 days. If the owner still isn’t identified after 30 days, the items are then thrown away.
The cleanups are necessary to keep the sidewalks clean and people safe, Hall said.
“You’ve got feces that might be lying around, or rotting food, or mold,” he said. “As you can see, that stuff starts to accumulate.”
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The cleanups are resuming at a time when the city is embroiled in three separate legal actions over how it has handled the growing homelessness crisis.
In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice began investigating whether Phoenix police unlawfully seize or dispose of unhoused people’s belongings.
Then, this August, neighbors and business owners sued the city over the effects of The Zone, alleging it is a public nuisance.
In November, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona filed a lawsuit against the city, seeking to halt “raids” of unhoused people’s belongings and stop police from enforcing ordinances that the lawsuit claims “criminalize homelessness.”
Elizabeth Venable said she has witnessed past cleanups in The Zone and Friday’s cleanup was “extremely different." In the past, police would criminally cite people and yell at them instead of offering to help, said Venable, co-founder of Fund for Empowerment, a group that advocates for unsheltered people and is a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit.
The cleanup was a test run, Hall said. While the next cleanup has not yet been scheduled, he said the city hopes to resume them at a pace that is manageable for both the city and people living in The Zone. The last sanitizing cleanup was in January.
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U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow issued an order on Thursday evening in the ACLU's lawsuit setting guidelines for how Phoenix can conduct cleanups. The procedures outlined in Snow's order parallel protocol the city had already established for resuming the cleanups, including providing advance notice of cleanups, not seizing property unless there's a reasonable belief it has been abandoned and storing property for 30 days before it is thrown away.
Getting people into shelter s
During the cleanup, residents were offered spots in one of three shelters: the nearby Central Arizona Shelter Services shelter on 12th Avenue, the Washington Street shelter operated by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and The Rio Fesco Hotel on 24th Street, which opened in November and is operated by Community Bridges, Inc.
By Friday afternoon, 30 people had already agreed to move into a hotel or shelter, according to city officials.
Annetta and Richard Spraglin were among them. The couple, who both receive disability benefits, used to have an apartment in south Phoenix. But when their landlord raised the rent to $1,300, they could no longer afford it on their fixed incomes. They’ve been sleeping in their car for about eight months.
“It’s almost Christmas. She don’t deserve to be out here,” said Richard, 60, nodding at his wife.
When the city offered them a hotel room, they were overjoyed.
“We got lucky,” Annetta, 58, said with a smile, before heading to the hotel.
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Raymond Shuff, 42, was also eager to get into a shelter. He's lived in The Zone for two and a half years and is hoping that being sheltered will allow him to find a job and get back on his feet.
He had his clothes, food and personal hygiene items packed up in a Total Wine shopping cart as soon as the city arrived.
“I was ready to go, man,” he said. "They say they’re going to help people get a better life. That’s what I want.”
Juliette Rihl covers housing insecurity and homelessness for The Arizona Republic. She can be reached at jrihl@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @julietterihl .
Coverage of housing insecurity on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix resumes cleanups of downtown homeless camp, gets people into shelter
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