For the past eight months, David Harold Pugh has found his “spot” outside the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC. He keeps all his belongings, including a guitar, tied up together on a two-wheeled buggy.
“This is shelter. It’s a safe place where I can put my buggy up against the wall, and it’s up against that beam so nobody can roll it,” said Pugh. “I roll it on its back, and then I sleep alongside of it, so nobody can get it without me waking up.”
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He’s one of the more than 5,000 people in the city without a permanent place to live and now facing uncertainty about where to find shelter after Donald Trump said homeless people in DC must be moved far from the city.
Crews tore down a major encampment near the Kennedy Center on Thursday, with federal law enforcement removing residents and clearing out the remaining encampments across the city overnight. The removal is part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard across the city.
Pugh believes the Trump administration is out of line for blaming crime on unhoused individuals. “It’s not illegal to be homeless,” he said.
Despite the widespread encampment closures, Pugh told the Guardian he didn’t have any plans to visit a shelter this week and wanted to stay close to his spot. “If they tell me to roll, I’ll roll and I’ll come back when they leave,” he said.
In an encampment across the city, near the interchange of Rock Creek Parkway and Whitehurst Freeway, one homeless individual, who identified himself as G, had already packed up his belongings. He said he’s had to bounce around to various locations over the last few weeks.
“It’s just going with the punches,” said G. “So you just never get settled. It feels like you [are] on the edge.”
G is also just days away from moving off the streets and into permanent housing. He said the only thing he’s missing is a new social security card, which he will have very soon, but until then, he’s not sure where he will go.
“What am I supposed to do for six days? Am I supposed to tell the national guard, or whoever, I got six days? Gonna get six days, and I literally have the appointment at the social security [office] on the 20th,” said G.
With encampments now closed around DC and just a few days before he can secure stable housing, G said he may consider staying at a shelter.
“I know the shelters might be full. I don’t even know where a shelter is, they haven’t gave us any list. No, nothing. They just made us fully aware of possibilities,” he said.
According to the DC office of the deputy mayor for health and human services, unhoused residents who want shelter won’t be turned away, and the city is prepared to expand capacity as necessary.
But if homeless individuals refuse to leave encampments, the Trump administration said its options are limited.
During a news briefing earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said homeless individuals could face fines or even jail time if they refused to go to a shelter or receive addiction or mental health services.
“We’re in the business of making sure people have the information, they have the connection to resources if they choose, but then people are, you know, left up to make their own decisions,” said Kierstin Quinsland, chief program officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless service provider in DC. “However, it is extremely concerning that people are being threatened with arrest if they are refusing services.”
Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said many unhoused people sleep outside in DC and across the nation because rent is too expensive. “Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money and simply does not work. The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails,” said Rabinowitz in a written statement.
Quinsland said advocates and community partners have mobilized to keep an eye on encampment closures to make sure unhoused individuals are offered support and “treated as respectfully as possible”.
She said one of their biggest concerns about these federal police sweeps is losing contact with homeless residents. In many cases, Quinsland said advocates work with members of the city’s unhoused population for weeks, months or longer if they’re trying to move them toward permanent housing.
“Trust is an issue in homeless outreach, you know. A lot of folks [who] are outside, they decline shelter for a reason, because they don’t trust services,” said Quinsland. “So these relationships that we have with folks are precious, and they are hard fought.”
Advocates also warn that these citywide encampment closures may separate homeless individuals from critical support and social services.
“If they’re moved somewhere where they don’t know where they can get a meal, they don’t even know how to get back to the neighborhoods that they’re familiar with,” said Quinsland.
Ahead of the encampment closures, Quinsland said outreach street teams with Miriam’s Kitchen have been passing inexpensive mobile phones to unhoused residents to help them stay connected.
“Making sure that they have our phone numbers, have our business cards with them, to make sure that wherever they may end up, we can remain in contact,” she said.
With Trump’s temporary takeover of the DC police department in place for the next few weeks, Quinsland said there’s also been discussion about busing homeless residents to neighboring areas like Montgomery county, Maryland, or parts of Virginia to be “out of sight of Donald Trump”.
But that’s just a temporary fix, she said, as homeless service providers need more funding to address the issue.
“The long-term answer is, if we have the political will to put money in the city budget for housing, then we can do that,” said Quinsland. “This year, there is zero dollars in the budget for permanent supportive housing vouchers, so that’s not a help.”
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