While advocates protest encampment raids at City Hall, Mayor Smiley chats on right-wing radio

Mayor Smiley's "done nothing. The only thing he's taken responsibility for is to raid these encampments and cause trauma to those people."

Advocates from the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project [RIHAP], Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere [HOPE], Mathewson Street Church, and others escalated their protests at Providence City Hall on Wednesday morning, setting up around a dozen tents on the Dorrance Street steps in response to Mayor Brett Smiley’s refusal to halt police raids on homeless encampments. Some of the tents had signs on them calling out the Mayor. [See: Mayor Smiley's policy of raiding homeless encampments protested at City Hall]

On Monday Interim RIHAP Director Eric Hirsch and other advocates met Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez and Mayor Smiley’s Chief of Staff Emily Crowell demanding an end to police raids of homeless encampments until the city provides acceptable alternative housing or shelter to the residents. City officials refused to end the raids.

“We still are protesting the raid on the Charles Street Encampment,” said Professor Hirsch to reporters. “The mayor said that was on private property, but the property owner was absentee. There had been people living there for five years and he didn't know it. He didn't keep up his property. He didn't fence it off. He is the one who should have been punished, not the people who were living there. What about their private property rights? What about their tents? What about their vital documents, many of which were destroyed in the raid?” [See: Oped: Following a script, the Charles Street Tent Encampment was raided today]

“At our meeting, Colonel Perez apologized to one of the people who was at that encampment for the behavior of his officers, and we hope that he will follow that up with instructions to his officers about how they should respect people, their private property, and their privacy,” added Professor Hirsch.

In addition to the above, the way people are being treated when encampments are cleared is a human rights issue, said protesters. They demand that the mayor, police chief, and police officers respect the Homeless Bill of Rights provisions on the right to equal treatment by police, the right to privacy for people in encampments, and the private property rights of people experiencing homelessness.

“There's a state law called the Homeless Bill of Rights, which says that you have to treat people who are homeless exactly as you treat people with homes and that you have to respect their privacy and private property,” said Professor Hirsch. “Every single raid that has happened has violated the Homeless Bill of Rights. The Providence Police and other police departments, such as Woonsocket, for example, have broken that law, and our police departments ought to be the first people who are following state law.

“That's what we're objecting to. We want the mayor to say he won't raid encampments until he's providing something better than the tents. He's provided nothing. He keeps saying, ‘Here are the people we've contracted with. Here are the people we're giving money to.’ He's done nothing. The only thing he's taken responsibility for is to raid these encampments and cause trauma to those people.”

What’s different today?

“What's different about today is we're on the verge of winter,” said Professor Hirsch. “It's getting really cold, and we still haven't heard Mayor Smiley say what we want him to say, which is that he's going to stop the raids of homeless encampments. We met with the mayor back in May. He said that he was interested in the rapidly deployable pallet shelters and that he would look into it. They say they're still looking into it, which says to us they're not going to do it.

“The mayor says that he's for the quality of life in the city. What about the quality of life of the people who are living outside as winter is coming? He doesn't seem concerned about that at all. He counts the number of ATVs that he destroys, but how about counting the number of shelter beds he's offering to the hundreds of people who are living outside in his city?

“We'd like Mayor Smiley to be the first to say, ‘Here's a site for the rapidly deployable shelters.’ He said he was interested in building them. That would be a good first step.”

Rapidly deployable shelters, also called pallet shelters, are part of Housing Secretary Stefen Pryor’s Winter Shelter Strategy. In addition to adding shelter beds to the system, Secretary Pryor is piloting new rapidly deployable shelters in either Pawtucket or Providence. A location for 30-45 rapidly deployable, temporary shelter units is needed. Experienced service providers, such as House of Hope, will partner to provide services to those piloting pallet shelters.

“There are more people in encampments in Providence than in any other city or town in the state,” said Professor Hirsch. “The latest estimate is that 422 people are living outside. We started these protests more than two years ago, and there still hasn't been an effective solution to get people off the street. We're not willing to accept that people are living outside, during the winter in Rhode Island, and we're going to keep protesting until that problem is solved.”

“Over those two years that you just mentioned, homelessness has gone up quite a bit, maybe doubled, and we're seeing an increase in not only homelessness but the rate of homelessness,” I noted.

“It's probably more than doubled in terms of unsheltered homelessness,” replied Professor Hirsch. “We used to be around 50 to a hundred living outside, now we're at 450. That is just not acceptable. We're not Los Angeles, we're not Seattle, we're not Portland - we've never accepted having this many people living outside.”

[See: Report: We need to find solutions for 712 unsheltered persons this winter]

Mayor Smiley was not at City Hall. Instead, he was on WPRO radio being interviewed by extreme right-wing radio shock jock Gene Valicenti, who has a history of villainizing the unhoused. [See: Governor McKee talks about homelessness on Gene Valicenti, annotated]

Note that Mayor Smiley never calls out Valicenti on his words. The mayor never mentions the rights of unhoused people and doesn’t even defend groups like Crossroads Rhode Island, which Valicenti would like to see defunded.

Gene Valicenti: Mayor, right now, the advocates for the homeless are protesting you at City Hall. You're here on the radio station with me, but they're over there protesting you, Mayor. What's this all about?

Brett Smiley: My understanding - we just found out about it - is that they're calling an 8am protest, so they should have just arrived at city hall. They're continuing to be upset. It's nothing new. They have continued concerns about our policy concerning encampments in the city. We had a meeting yesterday between them and the Chief of Police and my Chief of Staff, and we thought it was a productive conversation, but apparently not, because they're showing up at City Hall this morning.

Gene Valicenti: How much do you want to get into this? Because you moved the encampment out over by the DaVinci Center. [The Charles Street Encampment] ... I guess some remnants of those one just to another spot, some to the highway or another spot in the woods...

Brett Smiley: Some did. The part that's sort of frustrating, and I don't know if it's frustrating to listeners or not, [but] my policy's been the same all year. My answers are the same every month that I come on [this show]. We've been pretty consistent in how we handle encampments in the city, which we think strikes the right balance of respecting the neighbors and the neighborhoods in which these encampments exist while also trying to provide services and the offer of shelter to those who are living in encampments. So we're going to continue down that same path and it can feel counterproductive to continue to argue over something that we have a firm and clear policy on. Let's figure out other ways to work together.

Gene Valicenti: The governor says he's going to spend more money. The state's going to buy a building. Housing Secretary Stefan Pryor seems to sound like it's under control. We're throwing more millions at the advocates, which I question the wisdom of doing, but I'm not writing a check. If I wrote the check, it'd go different places, but we're throwing more millions at Crossroads and the rest of them.

Valicenti then moved on to one of his favorite topics, hounding, harassing, and persecuting unhoused people he’s noticed around town. [See: Michael Nugent was arrested for being unhoused today. The official charge was trespassing.]

Gene Valicenti: Now, the guy who came to be known as Marriott Man, because he would camp out in front of the Marriott, had another spot over the overpass. He's been moved on. He popped up behind the mall over by the 903 and I said, "Well, that's a spot that's not as conspicuous." He doesn't want to go anywhere. He wants to be left alone. This guy. Tom spoke to him directly. He doesn't want a shelter bed. He wants to be left alone. But you're telling me that everything's not great because the 903 people are starting to complain about him. Is that right?

Brett Smiley: Yeah. We have a lot of people who live right there. He is currently on a little sliver of private property and when someone's on private property, it takes the property owner to ask the city to move someone. We've not gotten that request yet from the property owner. If we were to, then we would go through the same process that we've gone through in many other places and that we've gone through with this individual in particular. So right now, so long as the private property owner doesn't object, we continue to send the police and service providers by to keep an eye on him, make sure that he's safe, and make sure that there's no litter and other things because we do respect the people who live next door, but we won't evict him if the private property owner doesn't ask that we do.

Gene Valicenti: So in the meantime, the people living at 903 don't like looking at the setup. Okay. I guess they will ring your phone up and tell you that.

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Professor Hirsch ended his comments with a plea for Rhode Islanders to “call their elected officials, particularly in their town or city, and say that they want to help, that they want more shelter beds, and especially that they want permanent housing for people who are living outside. We need people to support that.”