There was an article in today's Washington Post regarding a VDOT decision to clear homeless people from some road right-of-way. VDOT decided to clear them in response to complaints from one of my colleagues who was concerned about people walking to their tents in the dark at night. A VDOT right-of-way next to an interstate exit was probably not the best place to camp out. However, from reading the article, it sounds like VDOT simply chased them off the land.
Homelessness is a serious and often overlooked problem in Northern Virginia. There has always been a significant homeless population in the U.S. 1 Corridor. On occasion, there have been efforts to clear people off homeless camps in our community.
However, when this has been done in the Mt. Vernon area, it is usually done in coordination with our charities on U.S. 1 such as New Hope Housing and United Community Ministries. In fact, one of these events was resulted in the creation of the Ventures in Community Hypothermia Outreach Program (VIC-HOP) that the General Assembly commended last year.
Homelessness is typically secondary to other problems in people's lives - frequently mental illness. Whenever the homeless are cleared from property, it ought to be done in coordination with case workers to ensure that as people are moved, they are not just pushed along to become someone else's problem, but are given an opportunity to receive services that might help them break the cycle of homelessness.
From the news reports, it sounds like this was done the wrong way.
UPDATED - Here is a some video from a Channel 9 News Story on the eviction.
