(Image: CHS)
The city has acted quickly to clear the camp of asylum seekers that has filled the Central District’s Powell Barnett Park for the past week.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said Tuesday most of the remaining families had already moved out of the park and that any remaining tents and material were to be cleared by 8 AM Thursday morning:
This morning, about 30-35 people were in the park, including mutual aid workers and other people who are helping to break down tents. Our Unified Care Team posted notice that all individuals will need to leave the park by 8 am this Thursday. UCT will provide anyone still remaining at the site at 8 a.m. on Thursday with the option to store any personal belongings and will conduct a thorough cleaning of the site.
Next will come clean-up and any any needed repairs. “Following resolution, the Parks Department will evaluate the park for environmental and hygienic impacts, cleaning and restoring it as necessary to ensure it is available to the broader community for its intended purpose,” the mayor’s office statement reads.
The relatively swift resolution of the encampment followed demands earlier this week from neighbors and the Leschi Community Council for the city to mount an emergency response to issues around health, trash, and bathrooms for the more than 100 campers who were using the site as state and local government and nonprofits worked out how to pay for and house the refugee groups from Congo, Angola, and Venezuela. The asylum seekers have been living in a series of temporary camps and county and donor-supported motel rooms while the campers go through the long process of immigration and trying to establish legal status in the country.
Tuesday night, most of the tents in the park appeared abandoned and long lengths of yellow police tape had been stretched around the camp as a clean-up continued.
While the Powell Barnett camp appears on its way to being safely cleared, some of the demands from residents about the city’s resources for emergency responses to quickly-forming camps like this one must still be addressed. This was the second time the refugee groups had arrived in the Central District to set up a camp in recent weeks.
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