The latest on downtown homeless camp closings in Greensboro:
If there is a concerted effort to close down multiple longstanding homeless camps on the outskirts of Greensboro’s downtown then nobody’s talking. Like any good conspiracy theory, there are threads of suspicion that run off in numerous directions without any real motivating nexus.
But in conversations with homeless advocates, law enforcement and neighbors who’ve lived in harmony with discrete camps for years on end a pattern emerges that suggests some force – like one small pebble dropping into a pool of water – has sent ripples of change across more than a dozen homeless camps near downtown.
Property owners have sudden changes of heart about allowing homeless people to camp on vacant or wooded lots. Rumors of camp closures, in addition to actual forced evictions, move small pockets of homeless people, causing large camps – like the one at Freeman Mill Road and Spring Garden Street near the entrance to the Downtown Greenway – to swell. Others peel off, looking for more serene camps like the one just beside Chestnut Street in the Aycock Historic District, bringing unwanted attention to people who’ve lived out of sight and mostly out of mind from the surrounding community.
via Camp closures bring sudden change to Greensboro’s homeless..
