Kaitlyn Hughes | features editor |

Groups of tents and makeshift shelters find a home within Pittsburgh’s landscape. The belongings of the unhoused make up temporary communities throughout the city.

As of Jan. 30, 1,026 recorded individuals in Allegheny County were staying in emergency shelters or experiencing unsheltered homelessness, according to Allegheny County Analytics. This is an increase from the 913 people in 2023.

Local officials removed the encampment on Grant Street in Downtown last week. It was the oldest homeless encampment in Pittsburgh. But the process of forced relocation of the unhoused and prohibiting the act of finding shelter in public spaces are unproductive means of creating a solution to homelessness.

This was not the only campsite within the city that was slated for removal in the past couple years. The encampment on First Avenue was taken down last fall due to criminal concerns.

The closures of homeless encampments goes beyond the city limits.

This past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities can ban people from sleeping and setting up camps in public spaces.

This leaves the residents of the encampments vulnerable to displacement or criminalization.

As of 2022, 40% of the 582,500 people experiencing homelessness in the United States were unsheltered, meaning they slept outside, in a car, abandoned building or other public spaces not meant for human habitation, according to BMC Public Health.

Solving the problem goes beyond cleaning up the encampments.

“The current system we have, it works sometimes, but there’s not enough of it in place,” Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said in an article from KDKA news.

Not only does the problem remain unsolved, but other issues begin to arise.

A group of researchers led by University of Colorado professor Josh Barocas developed a simulation model to study the long-term health effects of involuntary displacement of people experiencing homelessness who were injecting drugs.

Research from the model, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that there would hypothetically be a 151% increase in overdose mortality, an 11% reduction in life expectancy and a 50% increase in hospitalization. This is because forcible displacements cause people to become detached from health care services.

Criminalization is also an unsuccessful method. In fact it is an expensive and ineffective way of addressing the issue.

From 2006 to 2019, across 187 cities, bans on camping have increased 92%. Whereas a 1,300% increase in the growth of homeless encampments have been reported in all 50 states, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

These policies only make it harder to exit homelessness. Someone who is unhoused may be sent to jail leaving them with a criminal record that makes it harder to get a job or a house.

The homeless plaintiffs for Grants Pass v. Johnson wrote that this process of criminalization is punishing involuntarily homeless residents for their existence, according to The New York Times.

Allowing the campsites to remain does not come without struggle.

Homeless encampments can have a harmful impact on public areas, according to Bio-One, a California based crime scene decontamination company. Camps are prone to disease outbreaks because of the lack of sanitation facilities and the sharing of drug paraphernalia.

Pittsburgh’s Office of Community Health and Safety determined that action needed to be taken on the Grant Street tent city.

“Recently, we’ve seen an uptick in criminal behavior that was very concerning, a lot of human waste and trash that was posing a public health risk for not only the people living there,” said Assistant Public Safety Director Camila Alarcon in an interview with WTAE Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.

She also mentioned instances of sexual violence against women and human trafficking occurring within the encampment.

Alacron said that everyone who was displaced by the removal of the encampment was offered alternative shelter.

Even though the city gave the residents within the encampment other places to live, they were only temporary options such as hotels or homeless shelters. The shelters throughout the city that offer assistance to the homeless are often underfunded.

Displacing people will only continue to make the problem surrounding homelessness worse in other areas.

There are solutions beyond relocating and criminalizing the homeless.

The National Health Care for the Homeless Council urged local jurisdictions that are currently removing people from encampments to stop. Instead, they suggested connecting individuals to permanent housing, health care and supportive services.

Rapid re-housing can end homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It helps to move individuals experiencing homelessness into permanent homes through case management, social services and short-term financial assistance.

Within the Steel City, the Pittsburgh Landbank returns unproductive property, such as abandoned buildings, to beneficial reuse. These land banks provide a cheaper option of residency, which could be a resource to those experiencing homelessness.

Research shows that those who receive rapid re-housing are homeless for shorter periods of time. Giving someone a temporary home would give them the time and space to try and improve other areas of their lives, such as employment or overcoming substance abuse.

As the problem increases, it is clear that the current methodology being used to tackle homelessness within Pittsburgh and throughout the country is not working. Instead of looking down at the ground while passing someone holding a cardboard sign, take it as a signal to help.