This article is part of The Hatchet’s 2024 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the day at bit.ly/DCHCRP.
People experiencing homelessness come to Foggy Bottom for its safety and local support resources, though an influx in community complaints over the last year have led to more encampment evictions, advocates say.
Advocates from D.C. homelessness nonprofit organizations said unhoused people often settle in Foggy Bottom after city and National Park Service officials evict them from encampments in other parts of the District because the neighborhood is safe and has a community of unhoused individuals. But advocates said complaints from Foggy Bottom residents about a lack of encampment cleanliness over the last year and a new no-camping rule in D.C. have led to more encampment clearings, which pose safety risks for many unhoused people who lose their community, belongings and connection to outreach workers when they’re forced to relocate.
“The encampments in Foggy Bottom are, for many people, the encampments of last resort in D.C.,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, the campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center and a former outreach worker for Miriam’s Kitchen, a Foggy Bottom-based homelessness nonprofit.
A 2023 census of encampments recorded 100 encampment sites across D.C., with 20 percent of city encampments falling in Ward 2, which encompasses Foggy Bottom. The survey found 210 unhoused individuals living outside and 194 tents or structures.
The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, which is responsible for overseeing encampments on land owned by D.C., closed more encampments so far this year than it did in all of 2023, putting encampment closures on track to double in 2024. NPS and DMHHS officials have cleared 23 encampments so far in 2024, a jump from 13 total last year, including at least seven Foggy Bottom sites in May that evicted about 70 residents.
The largest site, Triangle Park on Virginia Avenue between 21st and 22nd streets, accommodated about 40 people.
NPS on May 15 began enforcing a strict no-camping rule on all NPS land in the District, which NPS officials said came after D.C.’s visitation rates increased as pandemic restrictions ended, leading to “growing tension” between those using parks and people living in encampments. The rule prompted clearings in Foggy Bottom at Triangle Park, Rawlings-Wittman Park, a park near Godey Lime Kilns and 26th and L streets that week.
District officials also evicted about 14 people from an encampment on 21st and E streets in late July, following record-high temperatures in D.C.
Rabinowitz — who conducted outreach to individuals living in Foggy Bottom encampments with Miriam’s Kitchen from 2015 to 2023 — said he knows of people who moved to Foggy Bottom encampments after officials cleared them from other D.C. encampments, including the K Street underpass in NoMa and McPherson Square.
Rabinowitz said when officials clear Foggy Bottom encampments, officials break up groups and force people to live in dangerous locations, like under bridges and highways. He said when officials remove unhoused individuals’ tents during cold or hot weather, they are risking people’s lives by exposing them to hypothermia or third-degree burns.
“National Park Service and the Bowser administration have made it illegal to be homeless in most parts of the city, and Foggy Bottom is one of the few areas left where people feel like they can exist,” Rabinowitz said.
Lucy Medaglia, who had lived in Triangle Park since March 2023, said earlier this year that she moved to the park in Foggy Bottom after officials evicted residents from McPherson Square in February 2023.
Shelly Byers, who lived at Triangle Park since March 2023, also said she had previously been cleared from McPherson Square. She said encampment clearings make it difficult for her and others to find support resources, like nonprofit outreach workers, because the workers don’t know where she moved.
“We get attached to them, they get attached to us and then suddenly we’re all over the place trying to find a place to live,” Byers said.
She said many encampment residents don’t move their belongings until officials arrive to conduct the cleanup, and after officials put fences up around the encampment to prepare to clear it, they don’t allow residents to collect their things. She said most people living in encampments are hardworking, productive members of society, adding that she has worked her whole life.
“Why should they be able to punish people for living outside?” Byers said. “I mean, people have lived outside since the beginning of time.”
Jo Furmanchik, an outreach coordinator at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, said Foggy Bottom has parks, shaded open land and underpasses, like near the E Street expressway, and is accessible to transportation, which gives unhoused people a level of comfort in the neighborhood and mobility across the city. She said D.C. has faced a higher level of homelessness and encampment clearings in the past year, while city officials haven’t expanded funding for housing, leaving unhoused people displaced.
“This effectively turns encampment clearings into an endless cycle of chasing people around the city without providing meaningful solutions for the problem,” Furmanchik said in an email.
Ami Angell, the founder and director of outreach at the h3 project, which conducts outreach to those experiencing homelessness in D.C., said Ward 2 likely has the highest concentration of encampments because recent encampment clearings in wards 5 and 6 have displaced people to areas like Foggy Bottom. She said some people living outside move between wards to escape reminders of previous trauma from clearings or other personal incidents.
“It’s not moral, really, to move folks that are so vulnerable and literally in trauma and in crisis, tell them that they can no longer reside where they are without giving some other option to them,” Angell said.
She said city officials often prioritize clearing an encampment after it gains heightened attention due to violent incidents — like the 2021 stabbing at the K Street underpass — or after neighbors voice complaints about trash or needles near the encampment.
Angell said Foggy Bottom encampments haven’t garnered such attention until the past few years when neighbors began to complain about trash accumulation, which could have prompted the D.C. government to order clearings. Before the Foggy Bottom and West End Advisory Neighborhood Commission passed a resolution in April denouncing the plan to clear the Triangle Park encampment, some community members said they couldn’t visit Foggy Bottom parks with encampments because of concerns about a lack of hygiene in the area.
She said some unhoused people, particularly women and LGBTQ+ individuals, rely on encampments for safety because they are more likely to be assaulted or harassed if they live on their own.
“Once individuals find one individual or a group of individuals that they feel comfortable with, just we like to have our community gatherings, that’s the same,” Angell said. “But especially when you’re outside, because of the safety issue as well.”
Andy Wassenich, the director of policy at Miriam’s Kitchen, said nonprofit organizations near Foggy Bottom like Miriam’s Kitchen and Georgetown Ministry offer meals, laundry services and showers, which could also draw unhoused people to the neighborhood.
Wassenich said encampment clearings in Foggy Bottom, as opposed to temporary cleanings, don’t address what city officials perceive as individual disruptions, and instead, cause unhoused people to suffer because they have to choose their next space to live after being forced out.
“In those situations, they definitely feel unsafe,” he said of encampment clearings. “Especially if someone says I can’t be here, where do I go?”
