Homelessness in 2022 in the United States increased by 3.1 percent—and this increase is nothing new. Every year, we see the homeless population continue to rise all across America. Already this year, 582,462 people across America are experiencing homelessness according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ithaca is no exception, it too has a high homeless population. Many members of this population have found homes in encampment communities, where they can build shelters and live in relative peace. The City of Ithaca has, for some time, been trying to find a way to improve the living conditions of the encampments in Ithaca through various projects aiming to eventually house the homeless population. A project called TIDES (The Ithaca Designated Encampment Site), which was discussed in April of 2022, was one of the first instances of another type of solution being proposed— one which focused more on providing the encampment areas with resources such as kitchens, bathrooms, and showers. The TIDES project did not go through, but there is a new project that is being proposed along a similar vein to TIDES, a project which might not have the positive impact Ithaca is looking for.
To learn more about the encampment areas, as well as what Ithaca is doing to combat homelessness, I spoke with Natalya Cowilich, the coordinator of two outreach programs. The first program is called the Downtown Community Outreach Worker Program, a street-based outreach program in the downtown corridor of Ithaca. The second is called the Rural Outreach Worker Program, a pilot program that was founded recently, and covers all of Tompkins County. According to Cowilich, both programs work within the community, aiming to build relationships with disadvantaged and homeless people in places such as local libraries and food pantries. They also work with hospitals and crisis lines, acting as an alternative to getting the police involved with people in crisis. Both teams have two members with limited budgets and resources. They have been working to get homeless and disadvantaged people food, hygiene products, and other help they might need. The programs have made a real impact and were able to house over forty people from encampments over the last few years. They have also helped numerous others through their work within the community.
Alongside her current endeavors, Cowilich has also worked closely with the encampment communities—specifically the encampment community commonly referred to as ‘The Jungle’. The Jungle is an encampment along Ithaca’s waterway and railroad tracks that can hold anywhere between eight to fifteen people during the winter, and up to sixty-five to seventy in the summer. Cowilich and her team worked to provide the people there with water, snacks, connections to housing services, and telehealth communications. Cowilich explained that “Our approach as an outreach team, as outreach workers, is to meet… [people in the encampment communities] where they are, encourage connection to housing, but let people go at their own pace and be ready for them when they’re ready for us.” This approach, which takes into consideration the feelings of the people in the encampments who are being directly affected by programs, is different from the project Ithaca is considering now.
To revisit the City of Ithaca’s program, TIDES, in more depth; it was a project whose goal was equipping the encampment community with showers, individual cabins, and kitchens. The plan, as I previously mentioned, did not go through. However, a newly proposed and less costly project is still being negotiated. The new project’s plan is to essentially move the people that are living outside into different, designated, outside, and fenced-off spaces. These new spaces would be the first step to finding a permanent home and adding stability to the encampment sites. Critics of the project note that although it is theoretically a helpful proposition, upon closer inspection, the flaws of the plan become apparent. Cowilich illustrates some of the failings of the project, saying, “From a service provider standpoint, I don’t love the plan. Moving a homeless person from one area outside to another… only prolongs their homelessness. The plan is problematic, in my opinion, and it doesn’t align, necessarily, with trauma-informed care practices.” She goes on to elaborate on what the plan would involve, “The city has an idea to move everybody to a certain concentrated area, and… keep them there, and then, policy-wise, they would make it illegal to camp in other places.” Inevitably, this would result in more policing of the homeless population, as well as more limitations being placed on their already limited lifestyle. Restricted locations can also have a serious impact on homeless people’s lifestyles—what if the new encampment sites are far away from their job? What if they no longer have access to the resources they need? The project appears to lack foresight in these areas. Cowilich also argues that it also doesn’t take into account the more complex struggles that homeless people face.
Homeless shelters aren’t free. According to Cowilich, they can charge up to seventy-five percent of a person’s income. If the people at the shelters are attempting to save up to try and improve their living situation, the high price that shelters charge is often not worth, as Cowilich describes it, “sleeping on a mat on the ground.” Some of these shelters also provide an unsafe environment, especially for marginalized groups, such as women and people of color. Many people leave these homeless shelters to camp so that they can keep themselves safe, and this safety often comes from isolation. Some argue that forcing homeless people into the designated campsites proposed by the new project, currently populated mainly by white men, could be harmful to the marginalized people forced to live there.
Though there are definitely problems with the new project, Cowilich said it best when wrapping up our interview: “There are a lot of experts and compassionate people in this field in our community, we have an entire outreach team that has organically come together since the beginning of the pandemic, [including] healthcare professionals, people that are experienced with the legal system and incarceration, people that have come from all walks of life have teamed up to try and address this. And we’ve been pretty successful, for the most part (…) there is progress being made, despite the rhetoric out there that nothing is being done.” Homelessness is undoubtedly being fought by members of the community, as well as the city itself. There are people like Cowilich and her team who are making a real difference, and helping to make Ithaca a better place. Wherever the new proposed project goes, programs such as the Outreach program will continue to better the community.