Tommy Washbush
The tiny shelters at Dairy Drive have heat, electricity and air conditioning, but no running water or toilets; residents use communal bathrooms.
Madison officials have called the city’s encampment of tiny shelters for the homeless at Dairy Drive on the far east side a success.
The encampment at 3202 Dairy Drive opened in November 2021 with 30 small shelters and communal bathrooms. They were designed to provide housing for people who had been camping in Reindahl Park and other parts of the city and were unable or unwilling to access the traditional shelter system.
Jim O’Keefe, director of Madison’s community development office, says that of the 50 people who have stayed in the encampment, 20 have found permanent housing.
“That’s a pretty strong success rate given that this is by and large a group of people who have in the past turned away from shelter facilities or other services in the community,” he says. “I don’t want to suggest it’s been universally successful. There are about a half dozen who have been asked to leave the facility, mostly because they’ve violated terms of agreement.”
But others in the community have concerns. Nino Amato, a former alder who has been active in city and state politics for 40 years, sees the camp as a colossal failure.
“This borders on physical and mental abuse to put people in an 8-by-8-foot box, with no running water, no toilets,” he says. “There are campers that the city could have bought, with three times the square footage, that would have included a bathroom and kitchenette.”
Amato and Miles Kristan have made a couple of videos criticizing the encampment, claiming that there is open drug use happening on site and that children are living there. They also draw attention to graffiti and violence at the site.
Brenda Konkel, the executive director of Madison Street Medicine, the nonprofit that operates the site, acknowledges that there have been problems. But she says the camp provides a safe place to sleep and a way for people to access services.
“It’s a legal place to sleep at night, which doesn’t really exist [elsewhere],” she says. “It provides an opportunity for couples, people with pets, to sleep at night while they’re seeking other opportunities. The cabins are way better than a tent. It has heat, electricity and AC. Their basic needs are met.”
One of the videos that Kristan and Amato made show Amato confronting a woman at the gate to the encampment, asking her about used needles seen on the premises. The woman responds that “When we practice harm reduction and give people a safe, healthy place to use, it lowers the chance of people overdosing and going to the hospital.” (In the video, her voice is slowed down, which makes it sound as though she’s slurring her words).
Safe consumption sites are facilities that allow people to use drugs in supervised settings with medical personnel nearby in case of an overdose. These types of facilities have operated in Europe for years, and two opened in New York City last year.
What’s happening at Dairy Drive isn’t that, city officials say. People are not using drugs out in the open. But, O’Keefe says officials know that many homeless people are struggling with addictions and they didn’t want to deny them shelter because of it.
“Drug use is not forbidden. It’s certainly not encouraged,” O’Keefe says. “Some of those who use that facility were likely using before they arrived at Dairy Drive. We’ve chosen for that not to be a barrier [for them to stay there].”
Sara Allee-Jatta is the clinical director and counselor at Kabba Recovery Services, which is providing counseling at the Dairy Drive camp. She says that clean needles are provided at the site, as well as naloxone, the drug that is administered to people who have overdosed. Allee-Jatta says that she has revived five people who were overdosing, but says there may have been others who were revived by other campers.
“The difference between the use happening here and the use on the streets is there is more communication and education that staff can give to the residents,” she says. “We can talk about ways to increase motivation for change.”
Kristan and Amato say that they support the strategy of safe consumption, but Dairy Drive isn’t the place for it. “This is not a methadone clinic, it’s a plot of land in the middle of an industrial park,” Kristan says. “They’re not supervising people…. There’s massive failures going on. And we’re talking about millions of dollars of COVID [relief] money being used.”
Amato claims that two people have died from overdoses at the camp. But others offer conflicting reports about the number of deaths. Allee-Jatta says that one person died from an overdose at the camp, but the person had other health issues. Konkel says that another resident died from an overdose, but it didn’t happen at the camp.
Konkel says that many of the people who are living in the camp have serious health problems after living on the street for years without health care. Some residents, Konkel adds, have been hospitalized but she declines to go into details to protect the privacy of her clients.
There have been some incidents that drew law enforcement to the encampment. Last March, one of the residents was arrested for allegedly burning down his shelter. That same month, a woman was stabbed there.
Capt. Jamar Gary, who leads the Madison Police Department’s east precinct, which includes the camp, declined to comment on any public safety issues occurring there. He told Isthmus to file a public information request for data on incidents at the camp.
In a video critical of the encampment, Nino Amato, right, asks a woman at the gate about needles seen on the premises.
Critics also say the location of the camp is terrible. “It is a food desert,” says Amato. “The closest grocery store is a mile and a half away, across Broadway and Stoughton.”
Konkel agrees that the location isn’t the greatest. “To take the bus anywhere from there is a journey,” she says. “Just to get from our site to Walmart and back can take three hours.” The city provides bus passes and gas cards to people living there and a van regularly takes people to the laundry or grocery store.
Konkel dismisses some of Amato’s and Kristan’s other complaints as uninformed. “Kids do not live at the campground,” Konkel says. “Kids visit their grandparents or parents that live at the campground.”
Amato thinks that the city got ripped off in buying the shelters. Amato claims the city spent more than $15,000 each, but could have bought camping trailers with kitchens and bathrooms for about $13,000.
O’Keefe says the city spent a little over $10,000 to buy and install each of the shelters. Konkel notes that if the city had bought campers with kitchens and bathrooms there would have been added costs to connect each of them to water and sewer lines. “It looks like it might have been cheaper, but providing the infrastructure to support those trailers would have probably ended up costing more,” she says.
The camp does have bathroom and shower facilities in a separate building. There is no community kitchen, but people have access to hot plates and small appliances they can cook with. And there is a large recreational trailer that people can use to watch movies or cook, albeit in small numbers.
Kristan claims that the fence is locked with a chain and that emergency personnel have had trouble accessing the site. Konkel says the locks were ones that the city police and fire departments gave them to install.
Kristan says that he worries that he’ll be labeled as anti-homeless for criticizing the camp, but says that’s not the case. He notes that he used to run a free store for homeless people at the top of State Street. “We care deeply about the homeless, but we want the best programs possible,” he says.
Konkel believes that the encampment has been a success in getting people out of the cycle of poverty. One thing that she likes about the approach is that when job, housing or income opportunities become available, the clients are easy to find. When people are living on the street, outreach workers have to track them down to follow up on these opportunities.
She would like to see the camp continue, perhaps in a location that’s more accessible to services and jobs. And she’d like community space where residents can cook, relax or meet with counselors to be included.
O’Keefe asks critics to remember the Dairy Drive camp is “not intended to be a permanent shelter. It’s meant to provide temporary resources while people connect to housing.”
In October, the Common Council agreed to continue operating the camp through the end of 2023, for an additional $1.1 million. “After that, we’ll see,” O’Keefe says. “One of the biggest challenges will be funding. We’re benefiting from federal funds and those are not going to be available a whole lot longer.”
