A camp with several dozen homeless people set up in the heart of the American capital Washington, about 300 meters from the White House, was evacuated by the authorities on Wednesday.
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Under the eyes of many journalists and onlookers in suits and ties, agents in white overalls and sanitary masks pushed makeshift tents and personal belongings into garbage trucks in a now fenced-off McPherson Square, at the foot of the ministries of the first world power.
“The police showed up around 6am,” Daniel Kingery, one of the last homeless people to refuse to leave the park, which has become a symbol of the social misery of a city that epitomizes the city, told AFP. Many others “gathered their things and left.”
This 61-year-old man with a long white beard and no shoes on his feet claims to have been the first to camp in this public garden about three years ago before it became one of the city’s most important. capital, particularly through the evacuation of other camps elsewhere.
In November, authorities announced plans to evacuate McPherson Square in April, an operation that was eventually brought forward to Wednesday “due to health and safety reasons and because the growth of the camp was threatening the effectiveness of social services support,” it said a statement from the Federal National Parks Service (NPS), which is responsible for many of the capital’s green spaces.
Daniel Kingery told AFP he doesn’t want to go to homeless shelters “which I’ve been told are more violent than this park has ever been.”
“shame”
From early morning “we saw a lot of people who were scared, worried about where to go (because they) didn’t know where to go,” Amanda Misiko Andere, director of the association, told AFP from the edge of the square Funders Together against homelessness.
“We should be ashamed that a block from the White House, a block from an administration that said it was a priority for housing, they couldn’t close a camp in a humane way, that is, with a route to housing.” , added her .
City services, with a very strong Democratic majority, claim to have offered temporary resettlement solutions to some of the homeless in the square, which they have sometimes turned down.
“Two people who refused any social assistance offered by[the Washington City Government]eventually refused to leave the park and were arrested,” the National Park Service told AFP in a statement that evening, adding that they later were released.
According to the latest available figures, about 5,000 people were homeless in Washington in 2021, a rather declining number even as camps have multiplied.
Many large American metropolises, particularly Los Angeles and San Francisco in California, face large homeless people in their centers, a difficult proposition for the elected Democrats at their head.
In an editorial Friday, the Washington Post, the capital’s leading daily newspaper, said it was “time to evacuate McPherson Square.”
It is “being restored and the goal will be to be open to the public again by summer,” the NPS said in its press release.