People experiencing homelessness are camping in downtown Roanoke under strategically chosen overpasses and overhangs in higher numbers than before the pandemic.
They’ve been snoozing by night and sitting, eating and talking by day near museums and the downtown post office. By settling down on public sidewalks, they aren’t currently subject to arrest or removal.
“Homelessness is not illegal,” Capt. Andrew Pulley of Roanoke police said.
But the improvised dwellings have what some call extremely bothersome side effects. Excrement buckets, food scraps, garbage and assorted personal property accompany some of the encampments.
“They’re making huge, disgusting messes very close to people’s houses,” downtown resident Michael Reed said.
In a slideshow he forwarded to the city, Reed depicted evidence of his claims, including images of public urination. He said he isn’t against the provision of help for homeless people and wishes the city would build a shelter, but thinks it would cost too much.
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“We are now rethinking our decision to live downtown,” he told the Roanoke City Council on Oct. 18, explaining he represented eight homeowners on Norfolk Avenue.
And some of downtown’s new residents appear like they intend to stay, having outfitted their dwellings with rugs, furniture and even potted plants.
The highly visible downtown camps might suggest an increase in homeless individuals, but homelessness has steadily decreased in the greater Roanoke area, officials said.
Still, more of the area’s homeless population has lived outside since the lockdowns that accompanied the pandemic, as opposed to in a shelter. They moved in greater numbers to downtown this summer, officials said.
About 17 people slept on the sidewalk on the north side of Church Avenue the night of Oct. 13-14. The Church Avenue garage, which begins on the second floor of the building, partially shields the sidewalk from weather. Lights burn all night.
Roanoke Human Services Administrator Matt Crookshank said, between the Roanoke Rescue Mission and other, smaller facilities, the community has enough room for all of the unsheltered to stay inside at night.
Roanoke’s Homeless Assistance Team, an outreach project focused on getting people into housing, carries the message to the streets. Some accept, some decline.
Many of the homeless-assistance clients “have some sort of barrier that prevents them from going into the shelter environment and, a lot of cases, it is a mental health issue or substance use,” Crookshank said.
During the pandemic, he added, “we’ve seen higher levels of substance use in the community, higher levels of mental illness, especially in the population that enters homelessness.”
No Roanoke ordinance prohibits sleeping or camping on a public sidewalk, though the city has outlawed camping in parks including along the greenway. City police do not cite sidewalk sleepers at this time, as long as a portion of the sidewalk remains for others to pass, Pulley said. Sidewalk sleepers also must not block a door or violate a fire or safety code to respect the law, he said.
While homeless camps have been cleared away on private property, such as one along Aviation Drive near Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport, the downtown sidewalk camps remain occupied.
Courts weighing in on the sidewalk issue include the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. In 2018, it let stand a ruling that invalidated a criminal law against sleeping in public places in Boise, Idaho, when no shelter was available. Enforcement of such an ordinance under those circumstances would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, the court said.
April Hrisanthacopoulos said she has slept on the Church Avenue sidewalk most nights of the past three months that have passed since she left the Roanoke Rescue Mission for medical, financial and social reasons.
“It’s a little rough,” she said. “It’s not pleasant because I can’t get really get a good night’s sleep out here.”
Noise and disruptive behavior kept her awake, she said.
According to the latest statistics, homelessness in the Roanoke region occurs at about one-tenth of the rate seen in major cities of California, Massachusetts and New York where homeless populations have increased. California, which has four times the population of Virginia, has nearly 162,000 homeless people compared to about 6,000 in this state, according to data released by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The annual homeless head count for the Roanoke area has posted lower numbers for years — including a 9.4% drop between the January 2020 count and the January 2021 count. Homelessness means a person lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. The count estimates the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in the counties of Alleghany, Botetourt, Craig and Roanoke and the cities of Covington, Roanoke and Salem.
Between 2012 and 2021, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Roanoke region fell by 55.4% from 561 to 250, according to the Point-In-Time report by the Blue Ridge Interagency Council on Homelessness.
This year’s count, which took place in January, found 238 people in shelters and a dozen outdoors. That could point to the possibility that some of those not yet sheltered will move indoors as temperatures decrease and this balmy fall ends.
The top five causes of homelessness in Roanoke, starting with the most significant cause, are being a victim of domestic violence; having a relationship conflict; being evicted from “doubled up” housing (meaning a home with a head of household plus at least one other adult); job loss; and a lack of affordable housing, the local report said.
HAT, the city’s outreach program, offers diverse supplies to people experiencing homelessness, such as hygiene products, food and clothing — even tents — but its focus is housing. It can assist with paying the security deposit, obtaining identification, getting to medical appointments and getting a job.
To address the big picture, city officials recently decided to spend a chunk of a $64 million pandemic-relief grant on the expansion of affordable housing. This new initiative follows multiple earlier efforts.
Quinton Cruse and April Ragen, who on Oct. 13 were tenting under a downtown overpass, say they must find a home because she is two months pregnant.
During a recent interview, she sat in a black office chair beside a chest of drawers that contained provisions, some donated, such as paper towels, wipes and clothing. He sat on an inverted bucket. They fell in love a couple of months ago at the Greyhound bus station parking garage, they said. She wears the letters of Cruse’s first name spelled out on in nail-salon lettering on her fingernails.
Cruse most wants permanent housing for the baby. “She can’t have it in the tent,” he said.
JoJo Friday passed by Cruse and Ragen while walking back to her car from a cafe. Friday, who lives in a house, said she has offered the couple food and that they have offered her and her husband food.
“We pass by, say ‘hi’ once in a while,” she said. “I peek in if they open their flaps.”
She would never open the tent’s door flaps if she found them closed, she said.
“I consider it, like, their house,” she said.