Madison's tent city

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, and Hatchet is wrestling with a homemade plywood shelter, trying to get it secured to a dolly so he can roll it several hundred yards down to his preferred campsite at Reindahl Park on the far east side.

The shelter belonged to a friend who recently passed away in the park, while Hatchet — who asks that he be identified by his street nickname — was in the hospital for COVID.

“I was in quarantine for like two weeks. And I came out and all my stuff was gone,” he says. “So I’m starting over again.”

It will be the third time this year trying to scrounge together the items needed to live outdoors. Although he would rather have an apartment or house, Hatchet prefers living outdoors to dealing with the homeless shelters, where he sees similar hassles but less freedom.

“Outside, you have the freedom to walk away from trouble,” he says, as he flicks a lighter trying to ignite a cigarette. “If you’re going to have trouble with someone in the shelter, you’re locked in there with them overnight. And then if you walk out, you’re locked out.”

But Hatchet has proven resilient over the past two years of being homeless, surviving a bout of COVID, the loss of friends, and stolen belongings. Last winter, he camped out through the winter at McPike Park on the near east side and endured a few brutal nights when he couldn’t get his makeshift stove going. He spent a few nights sleeping in a dumpster (fortunately one free of garbage).

“You know, they hold the heat the best,” he says. “And actually, that was the best thing ever.”

It’s in the 70s today, and kids are playing soccer in a nearby field. Right next to Hatchet’s new plywood shelter, people whack a tennis ball back and forth on the court.

But winter is on Hatchet’s mind. So he’s working on getting this inherited plywood shelter set up to endure another Wisconsin winter outdoors.

If city officials have their way, Hatchet’s preparations won’t be needed. Madison is working on establishing two homeless encampments with mini-shelters that will have heating and electricity. They’re intended to offer a transition to permanent housing.

One of the sites is proposed for city property on Dairy Drive on the southeast side, near Firehouse 14. The city is also searching for land for a second encampment. Setting up the encampment at Dairy Drive alone is expected to cost $900,000, which will pay for 30 shelters, bathroom and water facilities, and other site improvements. The city expects that operational costs and support services at the site will cost about $70,000 a month.

Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway says that establishing the formal camps is a chance for the city to reset its approach to dealing with homelessness.

“The pandemic really pushed us to have to take a completely different approach to the issue of homelessness and providing shelter and options,” she tells Isthmus. “Everything has really had to change. That’s ultimately a good thing because no one was happy with the situation we were in, but change is hard and complicated and there’s a lot of different needs and opinions. Ultimately, I hope we’ll look back on this and say it was a good thing.”

Whether the new plan succeeds or not depends on whether folks like Hatchet will buy into it. Hatchet has heard about the city’s plan, but isn’t sure what to make of it. The Dairy Drive location seems too far away, making it hard for him to get back and forth to the resources he needs. (The site is more than six miles south of Reindahl, but the city has said it will look at providing transportation for people living there.)

He’s open to other living arrangements, but it’s clear that he’ll need some convincing. Why wait for the city to build him a tiny shelter when he’s got his own, right here, that he’s able to make livable in a location not too far from where he needs to be?

“If we’ve got to move again, here again, I mean, that’s just setting me behind,” he says. “And I’m just gonna be back in the same boat with a bunch of other crap I really don’t want to deal with.”

Camping in city parks has traditionally been forbidden, but the pandemic changed the city’s philosophy for dealing with it, says Jim O’Keefe, director of Madison’s community development office. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged cities not to evacuate or disrupt homeless camps fearing that that would spread the virus and put the homeless at greater risk.

In spring 2020, Rhodes-Conway issued an emergency order that suspended the city’s ban on camping and created a mechanism for establishing where temporary camping could occur — Reindahl Park and two locations in the Starkweather Creek Conservancy were chosen.

Several people like Hatchet also camped out in a section of McPike Park on South Ingersoll Street. O’Keefe says this park was never officially designated for camping, but city officials allowed people to stay there because the camp was close to services like the Beacon, a day resource center for people experiencing homelessness, and downtown shelters. The city shut down that camp in February.

The mayor attempted to shut down Reindahl for camping in May, but the Common Council blocked the move. O’Keefe says that shortly after, the number of people staying there grew.

Ald. Gary Halverson, who represents the district that includes Reindahl, is upset that it was ever designated for camping. He says there’s been a long history of drug dealing and prostitution around the park, and he didn’t like adding vulnerable homeless people to the mix.

He says that people using the park have been harrassed. “Last week, a gardener was chased down by someone,” he says. “There was a stabbing that occurred there [recently]. It’s just a bad, bad situation that we shouldn’t allow to continue.”

Captain Kelly Donahue, who leads the Madison Police Department’s North District, says that since the encampment has been active, there have been two overdose deaths in the park and one suspected homicide.

There’s also been an increase in calls to the park, although that varies from day to day. Drug dealing has increased and she has heard anecdotally from neighbors and homeless advocates that there’s been sex trafficking in the park.

“We have taken some reports on sexual assaults in the park, but we don’t have a lot of actual evidence of sex trafficking,” she says, adding that the term means different things to different people. “To me, the people who are at risk of sex trafficking are people who feel they don’t have any other option because of their addiction.”

O’Keefe agrees that problems have increased. “I don’t mean to suggest that everyone using Reindahl Park as a place to live has been involved in those incidents,” he says. “We have talked to campers who say they don’t feel safe at that location.”

On a Saturday in mid-September, a woman who declined to give her name, but says she doesn’t live in the park, tells Isthmus that she has friends and family living there and stops by to help them out.

Although she says she generally feels safe at the park, there are sections she would not want to go in alone. “The violence is high,” she says, but doesn’t elaborate. “I can’t really put it into words.”

Halverson says it’s simply not a good environment for people who are homeless.

“If we’re setting up a place for people who just want to be left alone and camp, we’re not helping those people and we’re fostering an environment that’s just going to grow,” he says.

Madison is not the only city with homeless encampments. A 2014 report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty that surveyed news reports from 2008 to July 2013, found there were more than 100 tent communities in 46 states and the District of Columbia.

As the number of encampments has grown, Maria Foscarinis, the group’s founder and former executive director, says she’s noticed more sensitivity from municipal officials toward the people living in them.

“I think there’s a greater awareness now that simply bringing in the police and arresting people or forcibly removing them is not a good approach,” says Foscarinis, whose group is now called the National Homelessness Law Center. “There isn’t data to back this up but that’s my sense.”

Foscarinis says that people are living in encampments for simple reasons — housing is too expensive and the shelter system is inadequate. A lot of shelters don’t allow people to stay with their partners or bring their pets or belongings.

“The shelter system is unpleasant and also just doesn’t work for a lot of people,” she says. “Even if we were to say shelters are the solution, there’s not enough of them.”

Foscarinis says that courts have restricted cities from making homelessness illegal. “You can’t make it a crime to sleep in public in cases where there’s no alternative for people to sleep,” she says. “That’s a bottomline protection.”

She notes that a decade ago, both Dane County and Madison passed ordinances declaring housing a human right.

“Housing should be a right, it’s recognized in international law,” she adds. However, if a city creates places for homeless people to live, it gives them more leeway in clearing encampments.

But cities need to do everything they can to provide affordable housing.

“There’s no magic to this,” she says. “You’ve got to make it possible for people to afford housing.”

She says there’s a growing awareness that zoning laws that preserve single family neighborhoods — and keep out multifamily housing developments — are a barrier to affordable housing. When multifamily developments are proposed, they’re often met with resistance in traditional family neighborhoods, a scenario that has played out several times in Madison.

“Just as shelters aren’t a long-term solution, encampments aren’t a long-term solution,” Foscarinis adds. “The solution is housing.”

Jeana Corrado considers herself the camp host at Reindahl Park. She and a handful of others have been living here for the better part of a year.

“When new people come in, everybody’s always directed to us because we’ve been here for so long,” Corrado says. “So if they need to know how to get a tent or clothes, we know how to do that. I still collect clothes, jackets and winter stuff for people who come in and don’t have it. I look at myself as a welcoming committee.”

The 90-acre Reindahl Park is located in one of the city’s busiest areas, close to East Towne Mall and the I-90 interchange. The park slopes slightly off of East Washington Avenue on a hill that’s covered with mature shade trees. Many homeless people have pitched their tents under these trees, but the park stretches back close to a mile to Bartillon Drive, and in between these borders there are numerous camps. Some are neat and orderly; others surrounded by trash or people sleeping out on the ground.

Corrado and her friends have made their home in a wooded area on the western edge of the park, out of view of East Washington Avenue. Her friend, Curtis Bell, is proud of what they’ve created.

Around a fire pit, they’ve set up about 10 large tents, some reinforced with scavenged plywood, two-by-fours and tarps. Old cabinets line one side of the campsite. They’ve run a hose from the nearby community gardens to create a shower.

“We know how to do a lot of things. We matter,” Bell says. “We really matter. We could build this with nothing.”

He acknowledges that people living there have problems — mental illnesses, addictions, criminal records. He says he’s been accused of being a pimp, which he denies. He started living at Reindahl more than a year ago after he relapsed. He left his partner to protect her from his addiction, he says.

“We don’t want to be nobody’s problem. We’re not a problem,” he says. “That’s why we’re away from our families and everybody else. Because here, we’re not a problem.”

He describes the camp as an idealistic community where people can be themselves and 

be supported, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. When he accidentally sliced his leg open recently, a friend stitched him up with a needle and fishing line — as good of care as he would have received at a hospital, as far as Bell is concerned.

“We have people who nurse, we have people who do therapy,” he says. “So many people come here and we have resources for them — food, clothing, information.”

Corrado estimates that about 100 people are living in Reindahl Park at the moment. O’Keefe puts the number at 50 to 60, but adds that the population is always in flux.

Corrado likes living in the park because of the community and the freedom. “I can’t afford bills right now. So, I don’t have to worry about paying those bills,” she says. “So I can worry about trying to keep my sobriety, which you know, isn’t always happening. But I’m doing my best. I’m taking it one day at a time. And it’s good. I’ve got more sober days than I have other days.”

Madison is buying 60 housing shelters from Pallet to use in two different sites, including Dairy Drive. Each will cost about $5,500.

Brandon Bills, Pallet’s spokesperson, says there’s a lot of confusion about what to call the structures that the company builds. “Some people call them sheds or tiny homes,” says Bills. “Our preferred language is sleeping cabins because that’s truly what they are.”

Pallet was created about five years ago, growing out of a construction company, Square Peg Development, that had a mission of hiring people with a history of incarceration, homelessness or addiction.

“Employees at that company really understood the challenges of being unhoused,” Bills says. “Right now, the standard is congregate shelter, or permanent housing, which is everybody’s end goal but it’s expensive and takes a while to achieve.”

So a team of workers at Square Peg designed shelters for the homeless. They’re not meant to be permanent, but an alternative to traditional shelters. And they’re meant to be built quickly.

Each shelter is delivered on a pallet — thus the company name — and can be assembled in an hour, Bills says. They are insulated, have electricity, heat, air conditioning, windows and beds that can be fastened to the wall during the day, like a Murphy bed.

“Each unit has its own locking door. People can move in and lock that door behind them and get a safe night of sleep,” Bills says. “Or during the day, they can leave and lock that door behind them, and go about their business.”

The shelters intentionally don’t have running water or toilets, Bills says, because that would be too expensive. But they also want to force people to occasionally go out and interact with others onsite, including social workers. Sometimes when cities pay for hotel rooms for homeless people, they will lock themselves in their rooms and never leave, because they’re so traumatized, he says.

The demand for Pallet’s shelters has been booming, especially during the pandemic. The company is building about 50 shelters a week and plans to double that soon.

O’Keefe says that the Dairy Drive site — and the second, yet to be named location — will have communal toilet and shower facilities.

Although the camps won’t have social workers 24 hours a day, the plan is to have them regularly staffed with people who can address mental health, trauma, and substance abuse, and help people access permanent housing.

None of this will be cheap, O’Keefe admits. Aside from the $900,000 construction costs, he expects there will be a monthly cost of around $70,000 for services and utilities, just at Dairy Drive alone.

“Some people have said that’s a lot of money for just 30 people,” he says. “We are not setting up a site at Dairy Drive where we expect people to live. Rather, we’re providing accommodation for people who don’t have a place to live while they’re getting [permanent] accommodations.”

He also expects that there will be turnover, as people get more stable housing, others could move into the camp. He doesn’t expect 

here would be children living in the camp or that people would be able to live there indefinitely — although, unlike the men’s homeless shelter, he doesn’t anticipate there will be a time limit imposed.

The Dairy Drive site might not be operational until the end of November, O’Keefe says. The city hopes to announce the location of a second camp in a couple of weeks.

The city will probably allow the Reindahl encampment to continue until both city-operated camps are up and running, O’Keefe says.

How long could the city-operated camps exist? Rhodes-Conway isn’t sure.

“Ultimately, what we want is for people to have stable, long-term housing,” she says. “I don’t think anyone envisions congregate housing or hotel rooms or what we’re trying to do at Dairy Drive as a long time thing in people’s lives. But we’re probably looking at a time frame of years, not months.”

Rhodes-Conway notes that there’s a lot happening to help the homeless right now. She says the city is supporting the Salvation Army’s efforts to redevelop its property on the 600 block of East Washington Avenue into a larger campus that will include affordable housing apartments. The city purchased the former Karmenta nursing home at 4502 Milwaukee St. and converted it to use as a temporary emergency shelter for the organization, roughly at a cost of about $3 million, according to O’Keefe. After the Salvation Army redevelops its property on East Washington, the city plans to then redevelop the Karmenta nursing home property.

The mayor says that the city has also worked with Occupy Madison in expanding its OM Village to a second site at 1901 Aberg Ave. And the city is actively working on finding a new men’s homeless shelter. O’Keefe says the city is considering five different sites — the locations have not been publicly disclosed — and he expects staff will have a recommendation for one in a couple of weeks.

The mayor praises Dane County’s Hotels to Housing program, which is using federal aid to put up people in hotels while it helps them find permanent housing.

Rhodes-Conway isn’t sure which of these various programs will become permanent. “All of this is really going to be looked at and come to fruition over three, four or five years and we’ll see what pieces we need to hang onto and which pieces we can transition out of.”

Hatchet has been looking for jobs and says he almost had one at a liquor store, but some legal trouble set him back. Asked what kind of work he’d like to do, he mentions a job he had a decade ago, working for a Greek food truck that traveled around the country selling food at festivals, fairs, air shows and concerts.

It’s the kind of job that would allow him to sleep outside, travel and eat well.

The business was based out of Hollywood, Florida, and Hatchet says he was poised to take it over when the owner retired. But then a hurricane hit and destroyed the business and Hatchet’s plans — making Hatchet a climate refugee. He moved back to his home state of Wisconsin and has struggled since then.

He’d rather have a home, but the logic of paying so much for a place where he would spend so little time often seems pointless. “I wouldn’t mind being back indoors. But being able to afford it is a different story, obviously.”

When asked what he would say to the mayor and Common Council about how they could help him, Hatchet is at a loss.

“I’m honestly not really that sure what I could say to that, because, you know, I’ve just been kind of self sufficient the entire time,” he says. “And, you know, just trying to keep my nose out of everybody else’s business.”

But then he thinks for a minute and adds that he could use some bus passes.

On the other side of the park, Bell acknowledges that his idyllic community that he and his friends have created is not long for this world. Eventually, the city will evict them. But he doesn’t have much confidence in what the city is planning.

He’s got his own dreams and points to a treeline at the northern edge of the park and says, “I guarantee you that at some point that treeline is going to be developed into a residential area. Give us a mile or a half-mile. We can fence ourselves off. Let us get busy and see how it works out.”