photo by: Bremen Keasey/Journal-World

Signs of protesters that said "Stop the Sweep" during the Lawrence City Commission meeting Tuesday night. At least a dozen people spoke out against the city's plan to remove a homeless camp near the Amtrak station in East Lawrence. Organizers have also circulated a petition.

Several weeks after the city announced it would be closing a homeless camp behind the Amtrak train station in East Lawrence, more than 200 people have signed onto a petition against closing the camp, and a group of protesters showed up to Lawrence City Hall on Tuesday to urge leaders to reconsider.

Ahead of the Lawrence City Commission’s meeting on Tuesday, the group of about a dozen protesters held signs outside of City Hall asking the city to “Stop the Sweep.” As the Journal-World reported, the city announced in a news release in August that it planned to remove the camp behind the station at 413 E. Seventh St., and that residents would have to leave by Tuesday, Oct. 15.

Rowan Scheuring helped organize some of the protesters at Tuesday’s demonstration. On Wednesday, she told the Journal-World that removing encampments has not been shown to reduce homelessness, and that the protesters thought it would be costly and cause further trauma to the community. Scheuring said she thought the negatives of clearing the camp would outweigh any potential benefits and that the city should be aiming to use its resources in a better way.

“We believe the focus should be providing people with resources they need to have safety and stability without the threat of displacement,” Scheuring said.

Along with the protests and speaking during public comment, Scheuring said she and other organizers began circulating the petition against closing the encampment. That petition has been signed so far by 237 people. The petition argues that the lack of a specific transition plan from the city to connect unhoused people to shelters or other housing would leave residents of the camp with “less and less (housing) options available to them.”

In its release in August announcing the closure of the camp, the city said it would work on “finding the best solutions” for each person who would be removed from the Amtrak camp. The city said people who were displaced would receive “wrap-around services to aid in their recovery from homelessness and get connected to shelter or housing.”

The Journal-World reached out to the city on Wednesday about the protest and the work being done ahead of closing the camp, but city spokesperson Cori Wallace said nobody with the city’s homeless services was immediately available to comment on the issue.

People concerned about homeless camps in Lawrence have worried about the environmental effects and the potentially dangerous conditions for people living there.

Sarah Hill-Nelson, CEO of The Bowersock Mills and Power Company, helped found a local nonprofit called Lawrence Cares that aims to address homelessness issues. Hill-Nelson told the Journal-World on Wednesday that she has walked through multiple encampments in the area because her company is right on the Kansas River. While she understands the need for empathy for people living in the encampments, she called some of the conditions in the camps “inhumane” and said she was worried about the environmental ripple effects of the encampments.

“It’s not healthy conditions for any humans or the environment,” Hill-Nelson said.

There have also been questions about the legality of the Amtrak camp. In 2022, the city acknowledged that the camp was located on city-owned property that was zoned for open space, a zoning category that generally does not allow for overnight camping. Additionally, as the Journal-World found in 2023, the property along the Kansas River is the site of a conservation easement held by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks that agreed in 1989 to forever protect the property as a winter nesting site for bald eagles.

Still, Scheuring said organizers are going to continue to ask city leadership not to clear the camp. They are also seeking more information about the city’s plans to provide wrap-around services to people experiencing homelessness.

Along with the different organizations protesting, a handful of residents of the Amtrak encampment spoke against the removal of the camp at Tuesday night’s meeting. One of them, Dustin Bolt, said the problem of homelessness “doesn’t go away” if a camp gets closed down. He added that he had experienced homelessness in other states but that Lawrence “had something special,” and he said he hoped that people who were homeless or displaced could work with the city to come up with a good solution that could set an example for other communities.

Another commenter, Jay Drum, said they lived in the Amtrak encampment for five years. Drum said people living there feel they have been singled out by the city.

“We are not homeless. We go to bed in the same place every night,” Drum said. “We are a family. We are a home.”