Matt Dougherty, Ithaca Times
In response to the growing challenge of managing homeless encampments on city property, the City of Ithaca has announced the development of a comprehensive Encampment Response Protocol. This comes as more than 100 Ithaca residents face the risk of unsheltered homelessness as Code Blue protections expired on April 15.
As part of the protocol, the City is considering spending up to $150,000 to clean up the triangular-shaped property near Cecil A. Malone Drive and Six Mile Creek that has been polluted by homeless encampments. If the protocol is approved it will also allocate $40,000 to create an encampment response coordinator position to oversee the reporting and relocation process for encampments in lightly managed areas.
Developing a homeless encampment response plan has been the subject of intense debate in City Hall over the last few years. Several draft plans to manage homeless encampments in Ithaca have been recommended, but without an adequate plan for how to house homeless residents the prospect of removing them from their encampments without providing alternative living accommodations has faced intense public scrutiny.
In September 2023, the Common Council approved a pilot plan to create a sanctioned “green zone” encampment area in Southwest Park behind Lowes. The initial plan called for bringing mobile sanitary facilities with bathrooms and showers to the location to attract unhoused residents to the area where encampments will be allowed, but those facilities have not yet been provided.
Then, in December 2023, the Council approved a framework to manage homeless encampments on city-owned property after it was dropped from the earlier plan over concerns that it would criminalize homelessness. The framework will provide a roadmap for the City to follow as it develops a new strategy to respond to encampments in different City-owned areas, such as the triangular-shaped property near Cecil A. Malone Drive and Six Mile Creek that is owned by both the City and the railroad company.
Now, after receiving an official notice of violation from the Tompkins County Health Department and a warning from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) regarding environmental contamination and health hazard concerns relating to the waste from the encampment near Cecil A. Malone Drive flowing into Six Mile Creek, City Hall is once again discussing the development of a plan to clean and remediate the site and manage other encampments on City-owned property.
The notice of violation from the County doesn’t carry a financial penalty, but it does require that the city and railroad company work together to come up with a plan within 30 days to clean up and remediate the encampment site. The plan is due by May 10, and must include a timeline for cleaning up the site and a method for preventing encampments from reoccurring in the same location.
During a Common Council meeting on April 10, City Manager Deb Mohlenhoff provided a comprehensive overview of the city’s efforts to develop a new encampment response plan. Mohlenhoff said that the plan was designed to balance the needs of the unhoused population with those of the broader community and prioritize health, safety, and dignity while aiming to address the underlying issues driving homelessness.
The Common Council approved the framework for the plan on December 6, 2023. It was developed by an internal Encampment Response Team comprising representatives from the Ithaca Fire Department, Ithaca Police Department, Department of Public Works, Attorney’s Office, Planning Division, Ithaca Youth Bureau, and the City Manager’s office.
Before we jump into an explanation of the encampment response plan, let’s take a look at the current state of homelessness in Ithaca. According to the 2023 Home Together Tompkins Plan, “At 34.3%, Tompkins County has the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness in rural NYS,” and “32% of previously unhoused residents in TC become unhoused again within 2 years.” Additionally, the Department of Social Services (DSS) takes 50-75% of an individual’s income for them to stay in a shelter, and requires, “previous addresses to call before [being] placed in shelter, even in cases of domestic violence.”
To make the situation more complicated, other support services like Family and Childrens services and The Alcohol and Drug Council are disappearing. According to the Ithaca Tenants Union member Angel DeVivo, “Family and Children’s Services opted this year not to renew their City and County outreach worker grants, cutting off the main source of outreach services for homeless Ithaca residents.” DeVivo added, “The Alcohol and Drug Council of Tompkins County is [also] ceasing operations, further reducing the available services for struggling people.”
With support services running thin the City hopes that this plan will provide a sense of stability by creating a system to manage encampments on city property in two phases. Phase one focuses on immediately establishing a consistent response protocol for both actively managed and emergency/hazardous locations. Mohlenhoff describes actively managed locations as “[areas] that have a pretty obvious alternate use” or “[places] that have staff that actively manage that space all the time.”
According to the plan, actively managed areas would include parks, public access corridors within natural areas, parking garages, city-owned buildings, and other designated sites. In these areas, city staff will post a 24-hour notice to vacate before removing items, storing personal property, and cleaning up garbage.
Mohlenhoff said that actively managed areas will have “much shorter timeframes for relocation because an actively managed site has other uses.” Mohlenhoff continued, saying that the city is still figuring out how the process of property removal and retrieval will be conducted. She added that “things of importance” like ID cards, wallets, and medications will be safely stored away, and property retrieval notices will be sent to let individuals know where to retrieve their property.
The framework for the plan outlines a five-step process to respond to encampments in actively managed areas. The first step involves giving the occupants of the encampment a verbal notification” and notifying them of amenities that will be made available to them in the sanctioned “green zone” encampment. The second step involves reporting the encampment, which means communicating the presence of the encampment to the Continuum of Care, Outreach Workers, and the City Manager. The third step involves posting a “notice to vacate within 24 hours” at the encampment site, including information about “shelter and housing resources.” The fourth step — outlining measures for removing property at the encampment — is where the Ithaca Police Department could come into play if requested. The fifth step then calls for remediation of the campsite.
Regarding concerns relating to the potential for law enforcement being involved in the relocation process, Mohlenhoff said, “We’re being very upfront that there may be an occasion where law enforcement is present based on extenuating circumstances that became a threat to public safety.” She added that someone from one service agency has said that they no longer feel comfortable responding to calls in the encampments without support from law enforcement.
The second part of phase one concerns emergency/hazardous locations, where encampments pose an immediate threat to public health or safety. In such cases, the city reserves the right to seek immediate closure and removal of the encampment, with staff posting an immediate hazard notice before cleanup operations commence.
According to Mohlenhoff, “This could end up being more complicated just based on what’s the location, what’s the hazard, and what things we might have to do to remediate the site.” She continued saying, “When you’ve been given a notice of violation, the next step for that would be for you to develop, not only a plan on how you would clean up the location but then also plan on how you would prevent that location from getting to the same condition that it was before.”
Phase 2 of the protocol, which will be implemented once additional resources are secured, focuses on lightly managed locations. These areas will be prioritized based on various factors, including the amount of debris, health and safety risks, proximity to residential or commercial areas, and environmental impact. According to the framework for the plan, “The vast majority of encampments have occurred at lightly managed city lands, such as the former Southwest Park, 119 Brindley St, and public lands at the end of Cherry Street.” It adds that encampments are more common in these areas because they “lack dedicated staff to patrol and manage these sites.”
The plan calls for a different approach to lightly managed City-owned land, laying out a four-step site visit process involving working with outreach workers to coordinate relocation opportunities and offering voluntary relocation assistance several times before removing the property from the encampment. All of the steps in this process are to be carried out by the City Homeless Outreach Coordinator.
Additionally, the city plans to spend $40,000 to hire an Encampment Response Coordinator to oversee the implementation of the protocol and coordinate between departments and community partners.
Some members of the Council expressed concerns about hiring additional staff members instead of spending money to address homelessness in other ways. Third Ward Alderperson David Shapiro said, “I’d rather see us invest in structures that keep some of our land that we own safe than new staff in the government.”
Fourth Ward Alderperson Patrick Kuhel asked why the City continues to allocate funds to hire more staff and clean up encampments instead of using those funds to help build emergency housing stock to house the people living there. “I’m just confused how we got to this point,” Kuhel said. “It feels like we’re scratching the surface of this larger problem and refusing to address the internal issues in terms of figuring out what we’re going to do as a government to support people in need.”
In response to the concerns, Mohlenhoff said, “There is not a way for us to do everything that we want to do, and we can’t comply with the desire expressed by Council in December without some sort of additional formal coordinator.” She continued by reminding the Council that it isn’t anyone’s job to manage encampments in the City. “It’s like a hot potato that staff just keeps tossing around from person to person,” Mohlenhoff said. She added, “We need one person that sits in the middle of coordinating the variety of people that need to be available to manage the response.”
In response to the proposed plan Genevieve Rand from the Ithaca Tenants Union told the Ithaca Times, “conservative legislators keep pushing to civilly and criminally punish unsheltered homelessness. Punishing poverty doesn’t solve it, it makes it worse. We need to house people, not criminalize them.” Rand continued saying that “Progressive legislators should shut it down” because voters have repeatedly rejected similar proposals in the past. They added that “bringing it back over and over is anti-democratic and shouldn’t be legal.”
Addressing the root causes of homelessness is a central tenet of the City of Ithaca’s approach. Mohlenhoff says that the plan recognizes that the county lacks sufficient emergency housing units for everyone experiencing homelessness. However, the county is actively engaged in discussions about expanding its shelter capacity.
In terms of funding, the city has allocated $40,000 for the part-time Encampment Response Coordinator position and an additional $250,000 across two budget cycles for cleanup operations and addressing underlying issues driving homelessness. These funds will be crucial in supporting the implementation of the protocol and ensuring its effectiveness in addressing the homelessness crisis.
Looking ahead, the city plans to finalize job descriptions for the encampment response coordinator position, aggressively pursue partnerships for low-barrier shelters, and develop a comprehensive page on the city website with resources and information related to the protocol.
According to Mohlenhoff, “At some point, we will identify a more formal process to help the public understand [what the process of reporting encampments will be.]”