The Birmingham Times
Two days after the city’s annual lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony on Sunday night in Linn Park and one week after a “first of its kind” symposium on homelessness that drew 25 different service providers, the City of Birmingham on Tuesday announced that it had removed homeless people who had been camping in the park downtown across from City Hall.
The removal also came at the same time as the City Council approved an additional $1.7 million in funding for a homeless outreach organization.
The removal was done with “compassion and support,” the city said.
“For the last two weeks, city staff have taken complaints regarding unhoused residents in Linn Park,” the city announced Tuesday afternoon. “For several days we sent HEART Birmingham to engage. One person in particular refused to remove his tent.”
Heart Birmingham is an outreach led by Urban Alchemy, which has a contract with the city to respond to homeless issues.
“Please note, tents are not allowed in the city parks without approval from the Park Board,” the city said in its Facebook post Tuesday afternoon.
The city later updated its post with more details: “Over the last two weeks, our teams have been responding to concerns about individuals sheltering in Linn Park. We approach these situations with one guiding principle: every person sleeping outside deserves compassion and support.”
Whie the city said organizations have unsuccessfully tried to provide services to those in Linn Park, individuals in park’s homeless encampment who spoke to CBS 42 said that’s not the case.
Jonathon Riggs, who was living in the encampment, said no one has come out. “They haven’t called us or anything,” Riggs said. “None of them has contacted us at all. No one has told us [where] we need to go ahead and get it done. We’ve asked numerous times every organization out here. We’ve tried and tried, and they just didn’t do it.”
The city said it is committed to ensuring Urban Alchemy and all of the organizations it partners with are delivering the services they are being funded with.
While the park was being cleared a 7-1 vote from the Council provided additional funding to Urban Alchemy. The lone no vote came from Councilor Hunter Williams, who has raised concerns about the homeless outreach organization.
“I think that there’s, in my opinion, a lot left to be desired when we look at the total cost of what this contract is,” Williams said. “When we got data like they’ve only referred four people to a shelter throughout their entire term here and a lot of other data that I found troubling based on the amount of taxpayer money that’s going towards this organization. I think that we need to look really hard at supporting local groups.”
Council President Wardine Alexander said the funding will help Birmingham’s homeless population, particularly the most vulnerable.
“Urban Alchemy provides wraparound services, and what I like best about it is that with primarily we’re focusing on encampments, and this is where often people who are living in these situations,” Alexander said. “They don’t want the help. They have to learn how to gain confidence and respect for the people that are trying to help them.”
Told of the removal of the homeless from Linn Park after the council meeting, Alexander said she was not aware.
The purpose of extending the contract with Urban Alchemy was to help handle such situations, she said. “We can put more forces out there to help people,” Alexander said. “I don’t know the timing and how soon someone will be able to get over to assist.”
Alexander said she would talk to the mayor’s office about the incident.
“I know this has just happened,” she said. “I’ll have to talk to the administration to see how quickly they can engage in situations like this. We want to provide the needs necessary to assist these residents.”
The removal came one week after more than 25 different service providers attended “The State of Homelessness: Redefining Community” symposium at Regions Field designed to focus on responses to Birmingham’s homelessness challenges and to create a path forward.
AL.com and CBS 42 contributed to this post.
