A lack of communication has left many living in Bangor’s largest homeless encampment located behind the Hope House Health and Living Center wondering whether they’ll be removed from the site this week.
Notices stating that people who haven’t accepted services from outreach workers would be evicted from the encampment known as Tent City arrived after some people had their shelters marked with X’s made of green tape. The tape told city officials that a person has been working with outreach workers.
People living in the encampment, however, said they were never told what the X’s meant, which caused fear that those with the mark would be forced to leave the encampment.
The marking of people’s belongings, seemingly without their knowledge, is very different from how the city and outreach workers used tape in the closing of an encampment on Valley Avenue last spring. That shift is creating confusion and raising questions about the lack of consistency in how the city monitors the homeless encampments that have formed in Bangor in recent years.
Prior to the Valley Avenue encampment being closed and cleared, people living there were given rolls of yellow duct tape and told to mark any of their belongings they didn’t want anymore. Clean-up crews then knew to throw away anything marked with the tape, which gave people full control over what happened to their belongings.
The yellow duct tape method is entirely different from how outreach workers went about indicating who was cooperating with the city, and will therefore be allowed to stay in the encampment behind the Hope House.
The green X’s were “informational only and not part of a site closure which is what occurred along Valley Avenue,” according to Debbie Laurie, Bangor’s city manager.
Those marks then allowed workers to create a list of names of people who were collaborating with outreach teams.
“The X’s were not nor ever planned to be any sort of designation beyond allowing for the compilation of an accurate listing of individuals,” Laurie said. “Outreach team members shared that with the individuals at the time. Individuals who are engaged have been made aware throughout that they will not be asked to leave.”
Laurie’s explanation, however, doesn’t align with what some people living in the encampment told the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday.
People living in Tent City said they weren’t told what the X’s meant, which led some to scrape off the mark over fear it meant they would be forcibly removed from the site. Others believed the X’s mean they’re safe from the sweep.
Some residents noticed inconsistencies in who got an X, as some people who engage with outreach workers didn’t get the marking, leading to further confusion.
City officials are planning to remove certain people in the encampment who have refused to accept services from local outreach workers in recent months. Some in the encampment have been linked to violent behavior and drug production and distribution, according to Laurie.
Outreach workers distributed the notices on Monday, informing them they must leave the encampment, which sits on city-owned land, by Friday, Oct. 20, or they will be considered to be criminally trespassing.