Photo City of Vancouver workers erected a sign that declared “Property Closed to Camping” as they cleared tents Wednesday morning along West Mill Plain Boulevard. Neighbors in the Hough neighborhood had complained for almost a year about the so-called “sound wall camp,” which grew to about 50 people in recent months. The city last month ordered the camp’s removal. In the early morning hours, a neighbor peeked over the sound wall from his backyard to watch campers leave. A homeless man balanced an armchair on a shopping cart as he moved his belongings. Flames engulfed a tent as police escorted its handcuffed owner from the scene. For months, city staff have fast-tracked the effort to shelter about half of the people living there before closing the camp. Police removed anyone who remained Wednesday as city workers gathered sprawling trash.

But neighbors fear campers will return. “It has been a long road. In all honesty, I feel like I have a glimpse of relief, and I have some hopefulness,” said Rachel Trevino, a 41-year-old mother of three who lives in a house behind the sound wall. “I’m also still concerned and waiting to see what is actually going to happen.” Escalating tensions After months of emailing complaints, neighbors flooded Vancouver City Council meetings in November to complain about homeless people wandering the neighborhood, screaming, fires and public drug use at all hours. Some said they had considered selling their homes. They begged the city to close the camp. City officials initially worried closing the camp would push campers farther into the neighborhood. Spots for camping are becoming scarce as the city uses its November 2023 civil emergency declaration to close areas to camping. That’s part of the reason the sound wall camp grew in the first place, said Jamie Spinelli, the city’s homeless response manager.

Unsanitary conditions, proximity to traffic and growing tensions between housed and unhoused people drove the camp’s closure, Spinelli said. The city had been spending $3,000 per week cleaning up garbage at the camp, she said previously. Slow and steady Neighbor Shannon Stamps, 48, advocated for moving the encampment. Her house is near an enclave where people often sleep and gather, with many ending up on her front steps. She looks forward to the day she can walk her dog without the fear of encountering someone smoking fentanyl or sleeping on her porch. “My life will get better,” Stamps said. Stamps said she understands why the city removed the encampment gradually, as it was the most humane approach. However, she said she wished the city had moved more quickly. “It’s not that we’re trying to be inhumane. It’s that this is impacting our lives as well,” Stamps said. “It’s making us a prisoner in our homes.”

Although the city’s process for dismantling the camp was slower than many neighbors wanted, it could provide a model for future camp closures, Spinelli said. Since September, city staff from the Homelessness Assistance and Resource Team have been moving people into the city’s four Safe Stays, each comprising 20 huts that have room for two people, as Vancouver Housing Authority apartments became available to current Safe Stay residents. (After The Columbian’s reporting on illegal activities in VHA buildings The Meridian and The Pacific, VHA has kicked out “problem tenants.”) That pathway to housing has not been available during previous camp cleanups, Spinelli said. Where will people go? One week before the closure on a rare sunny day, Andrea Clark parked her mobile scooter at the camp. Three young men murmured greetings as they sharpened tactical knives on wooden sticks. Clark’s right foot was hidden by a medical boot. Her left foot is completely gone, the pant leg tied in a knot just below her knee. Clark, a 45-year-old former preschool teacher, said she had arrived at the camp about a month earlier after her shelter couldn’t care for her following her leg-removal surgery.

Although Clark said she didn’t like living in the camp, she didn’t know where else to go. She previously lived in a camp behind Vancouver City Hall (or, as she called it, “The Mayor’s Camp”) before the city cleared the area for development as part of the Waterfront Gateway Project. By Tuesday morning, Clark was nowhere to be found along the sound wall. Some campsites were wrapped up neatly, packed onto wagons with bungee cords and ropes. Others were strewn with soaked trash. The people who remained in the camp expressed disappointment about the camp’s closure, but most said they were tired of living in unsanitary conditions anyway. Many had plans to move to another nearby camp called “The Block” or “Share Camp” because of its proximity to the Share men’s shelter downtown. That encampment expanded as sound wall campers migrated there. On Wednesday morning, the area was crammed with tents. Will it come back? The city plans to enforce the camping ban if tents reappear along the Mill Plain sound wall. Neighbors worry “no camping” signs won’t be enough.

“I don’t think the signs are going to work the way that the city intends for them to work,” Trevino said. “We see on a regular basis, people blatantly — in the open, in the daylight — breaking rule after rule that the rest of the community has to follow.” She said she’d like to see some sort of physical barrier. “Whether it’s boulders or fencing or something else — I do think that more than paper should be applied to this problem,” Trevino said. Spinelli said she doesn’t recommend fencing or boulders and thinks the city’s efforts will be enough to dissuade campers from returning. “We’re not trying to limit all public use,” she said. City staff may replant shrubbery that’s been trampled once the city’s public works department sanitizes the area, Spinelli said.

On Wednesday morning, some people from the sound wall encampment pushed shopping carts full of their belongings deeper into the Hough neighborhood. “There are not a lot of places for people to be anymore,” Spinelli said. “I think we will start seeing some trickling into some of the neighborhoods, and people will be just more out in the open.”

This story was made possible by Community Funded Journalism, a project from The Columbian and the Local Media Foundation. Top donors include the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, Patricia, David and Jacob Nierenberg, Connie and Lee Kearney, Steve and Jan Oliva, The Cowlitz Tribal Foundation and the Mason E. Nolan Charitable Fund. The Columbian controls all content. For more information, visit columbian.com/cfj.