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Lansing residents excoriated city officials for more than an hour over plans to clear an encampment of unhoused community members near Old Town during a City Council meeting Monday night.
The city filed a lawsuit last week to pave the way for clearing the encampment.
Shawn Brock says he was unhoused until earlier this month and was lucky to find a shelter that had space and could handle his medical equipment.
“These people are our neighbors. They’re not just somebody that we can throw away,” Brock said. “When survival becomes against the law, we’ve lost it.”
The city’s lawsuit says the area has no running water, sewer access or restrooms.
Michael Gorishek volunteers for Punks With Lunch Lansing. He says clearing the encampment will only make it more difficult for organizations to get support to the community members being displaced.
“I was just there, and those folks, they’re just existing. And they don’t have any place to go,” Gorishek said. “And it’s not a great environment for them. I mean, that’s not desirable. But at least they have each other.”
The city’s lawsuit calls for two property owners to cover the cost of any cleanup the city has to do.
Kitt Cushman is a resident of the encampment. She says the residents would clean the area themselves if provided with the tools to do so.
“My people have cleaned,” Cushman said. “I know someone who lost over 100 pounds because every day and night, when it first got warm enough for us to start cleaning… he lost all his weight cleaning up the camp. We will do the work ourselves if you give us the dumpsters.”
State Rep. Emily Dievendorf (D-Lansing) is among those who spoke at the meeting. Several of the speakers wore red shirts reading "the rent is too damn high."
Housing was a major them of the City Council’s meeting Monday, with Councilmembers unanimously voting to pass an ordinance requiring landlords to cover relocation costs for tenants of red tagged properties.
Councilmember Trini Pehlivanoglu says she hopes the ordinance could help prevent some people from becoming unhoused by providing support before it reaches that point.
“That’s so that we do have people who are comfortable coming forward and saying, ‘I’m living in this unstable housing situation, and it’s not healthy for me and I need help, because I can’t get help anywhere else,’” Pehlivanoglu said.
While a previous draft of the ordinance would have required landlords to have an insurance policy that would cover the costs, that is no longer mandated. Instead, landlords will also have the option to sign a waiver recognizing they would be on the hook to reimburse the city for temporary relocation costs.
Pehlivanoglu says she visited the encampment that now faces being cleared and saw “the humanity of it all” and “people taking care of people.”
“It’s difficult for me to say that it’s completely safe, because I don’t know that it’s completely safe when you’re outside, exposed to the elements,” Pehlivanoglu said. “But my question is always what is going to happen with these people next?”
A hearing for the city’s lawsuit is scheduled for Aug. 13 in Ingham County Circuit Court.
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