With warmer weather on the horizon, questions surround city about homeless encampments
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Spring is here and so are the homeless encampments.
They're small villages for people experiencing homelessness. There's an encampment along the Allegheny River near Rivers Casino. There's another underneath the Smithfield Street Bridge on the Monongahela River, plus a small group on Grant Street in Downtown. And individual tents once again line the Allegheny River Trail.
In the late fall and early winter, the city cleared out its larger encampments, directing people to Second Avenue Commons. But the need was greater than the space and the shelter quickly reach capacity. It's also been the site of hundreds of 911 calls for fights, overdoses and mental health incidents.
KDKA-TV's Andy Sheehan: "Do you prefer living out here to the shelter?"
Man: "Yes, 'cause usually, certain things are worse down there than they are out here."
The Department of Human Services said there are now 900 people experiencing homelessness in the county, about 150 without shelter. That's up from 880 homeless last year and 105 without shelter.
The county has been trying to get more people into permanent housing and has been offering cash incentives to landlords, but while officials have seen success, the demand is still far greater.
"They said within 30 days we should be in an apartment. I've heard that about a dozen times," the man said.
Without more permanent housing, the city appears to be at a loss about what to do about the new encampments.
"What the city is trying to do is find more long-term solutions to the crisis of homelessness," Mayor Ed Gainey's press secretary Maria Montano said. "This is a crisis that is not unique to Pittsburgh."
The city moved in with bulldozers after KDKA-TV recently showed hundreds of discarded syringes in encampments on the North Side. Montano said rather than remove tents, the city will soon announce a new program to collect and dispose of the needles and clean the encampments on a regular basis.
"What we're working on is being able to ensure those encampments, where they do pop up, are clean and are safe for the people who live there," Montano said.
Next week, Pittsburgh City Council will announce a plan of its own plan to address homelessness.
