Baltimore City clears people without housing out of Wyman Park Dell: ‘It’s going to be bumpy road’

Baltimore City forced people without housing out of a public park in the Homewood neighborhood last week.

Signs up for around three weeks in the Wyman Park Dell indicated that the city would require people to move Wednesday morning, but bulldozers and tractors were on-site two days earlier, March 4.

City Councilwoman Odette Ramos, who represents the area, said people first started moving into the park sometime during the coronavirus pandemic, which started in March 2020, and the encampment continued as a moratorium on evictions was lifted in April 2021.

“Our outreach teams were able to successfully engage the residents residing at the encampment prior to March 6,” the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services spokesperson Jessica Dortch said. “All residents have been safely connected with shelter or other resources, leaving the site vacant. Over the next 90 days, our outreach teams will continue to monitor the location to ensure it remains vacant.”

Former residents of the park near the Johns Hopkins University campus say they and their former neighbors have found a variety of living situations since being forced to leave.

James O’Brien, 29, first moved to the park in December 2022 after being evicted. He lived there in a tent with a gas heater, cot, air mattress and several blankets until a few weeks ago, delivering Uber Eats on his bike to earn money for food.

O’Brien said that when he left the park last week, he initially went to a downtown shelter that was infested with bed bugs. His left arm is still covered in bites. He said he has moved his tent elsewhere in North Baltimore and hopes to return to college to finish a chemical engineering degree.

The signs were not explicitly from a city agency and did not cite any law or ordinance.

“There is no identifying marking of the source of those signs. They do list the mayor’s office as a point of contact, but the signs themselves make no attempt to identify their source,” O’Brien said. “Maybe cite any kind of legislation whatsoever if you’re going to make us move.”

The signs said “any violators will be subject to enforcement actions starting March 6 … any violators will be subject to enforcement actions.”

Kirsten Gettys Downs, executive director of the Homeless Persons Representation Project and former district public defender in Baltimore City, said it is unclear whether the police would arrest trespassers in the park or if the city would prosecute them.

“Criminalizing those that are homeless is the systemic issue that we really find to be the most problematic,” Downs said. “In several instances, the city has said that those signs only apply to those that they have designated as homeless, so this is selective prosecution and selective law enforcement on a certain segment of the most vulnerable population.”

Stephanie Lovelace said she has been living in the park adjacent to North Charles Street since the spring. On Feb. 22, staff from the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services offered her, her husband and another person camping with them space at the Sleep Inn hotel, she said. Last month, the city bought the Holiday Inn Express and a Sleep Inn, in the area of Gay and Front streets near the mouth of Interstate 83.

Lovelace said when she was offered a place at the hotel, city officials told her and her husband they could bring only two tote bags’ worth of belongings, forcing her to leave behind clothes, camping supplies and the rest of her belongings in the park. When they returned to the park a few days after moving into the hotel, their belongings had been stolen except for a single white shoe left in the mud.

“We pretty much lost 95% of everything we owned,” Lovelace said. “They gave us two totes. They were a decent size. In one of the totes, we need an emergency kit in case something happens. In the other tote, having seven kids and two grandkids — we’ve got quite a bit of things.”

Ramos said the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Service mistakenly treated Lovelace as an extreme weather shelter occupant and has pledged to pay for the property she lost. The councilwoman added that she is still pushing for a municipal identification card program first passed by the Baltimore City Council in 2016 that has yet to launch. The cards would help people without driver’s licenses or addresses to sign up for federal, state and city benefits.

“It’s going to be bumpy road. This is not easy. I am hopeful, and we will still hold [the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services] accountable. We as a city have to meet the challenge, and we have to make sure the resources are there to do it,” Ramos said.

She added that a backlog of applications applying for rental assistance means new applicants are on a waiting list instead of receiving immediate help.

“The eviction crisis still moves on, and any money that we have been allocating has been going to the backlog of applicants,” Ramos said. “It is needed. It is really, really needed. From a prevention of people experiencing homelessness, we the city and the state are lacking in that regard.”

Lovelace said the food at the hotel is bad and repetitive, laundry costs money, and the neighbor from the park they’d moved with left after a few hours. She said the hotel is largely empty except on freezing nights when the city uses it as a warming center. A security guard runs a metal-detecting wand over her every time she enters, visitors are not allowed, and there is a 10 p.m. curfew. Lovelace said they have stayed because they have been allowed to keep their cat and the staff is friendly.

“We have been on the verge of leaving several times. The food is not any good, and the TVs don’t work,” Lovelace said. “The staff in general here are great. They have real cared for us. I can’t say anything bad about them. They care about us and our cat.”