Tempe's clearing of homeless camps has ripple effects for Phoenix, aid workers

For three and a half years, Mary and Jeffrey Yahner called the “River Bottom” home.

The massive encampment stretched across 70 acres of Tempe’s Rio Salado riverbed and was a refuge for somewhere between 75 and 200 unhoused people, according to estimates from the city and local advocacy groups. It was a precarious place to live, prone to flooding and human-caused fires, and a hot spot for emergency calls. But to the people who lived there, it was a community.

That was until Aug. 31, when city officials shut down the encampment, citing health and safety concerns and pledging to offer services like shelter and health care.

But after being forced to move, the Yahners didn't get housing and didn't feel safer. The couple described being routinely pushed out of public spaces by Tempe police in the months following the clearing of the River Bottom, bouncing from place to place as they tried to stay out of sight.

“The cops said, ‘We don’t want you here. Tempe does not want you here,’” Jeffrey Yahner said.

Homelessness experts and advocates say shooing people away from public spaces causes more problems than it solves: It scatters communities, making it harder for nonprofit outreach workers to deliver services and complicating matters for nearby municipalities trying to manage their own growing homeless populations.

More than a dozen people who used to live in the River Bottom and five outreach workers and volunteers told The Arizona Republic that since the encampment was cleared, Tempe police have been uprooting unhoused people throughout the city, prompting many to leave Tempe and relocate elsewhere.

Clearing out encampments through “sweeps” or “cleanups” is a common tactic throughout the U.S. as cities are under increasing pressure to address street homelessness. 

Local governments must juggle the needs of their homeless populations with complaints from housed residents and business owners about the safety of the streets, neighborhoods and parks — priorities often viewed as incompatible.

Being homeless in Tempe “is not a crime,” said Lt. Sean Still of the Tempe Police Department. Even so, Still confirmed that “urban camping,” or staying in parks, on sidewalks, or within the bounds of any other type of public property, is illegal throughout the city.

The department's Office of Community Policing has issued over 100 urban camping warnings since the River Bottom was closed, said city spokesperson Susie Steckner. That doesn't include warnings issued by other officers, which Steckner said the department doesn't track.

Those warnings often end up displacing people. Although police officers may offer to connect people experiencing homelessness to social services, an urban camping warning is fundamentally a notice to leave.

Tempe currently has about 95 shelter beds and saves some spaces for people coming off the street, said Tim Burch, the city’s community health and human services director. But there are still far too few beds to accommodate the more than 400 unsheltered people who live in the city according to the 2023 point-in-time count, which is widely understood to be an undercount. And many people don’t want to stay in congregate shelters because of past trauma, safety concerns or shelter rules, such as having to separate from their partner or pets.

After months of trying to find somewhere discreet to camp in Tempe, the Yahners eventually moved across the Phoenix border, where they hoped they’d be left alone until they finally got housing. They have been on a countywide housing waitlist for years.

“Tempe’s been known historically to be a friendly place to be homeless,” Jeffrey Yahner said. “It’s certainly not now.”

‘A police state for the homeless’: Tempe police push people into Phoenix

The encampment sweeps illustrate a tug-of-war between neighboring municipalities and a breakdown in regional coordination as the Valley’s homelessness crisis swells.

After the River Bottom was cleared, a new encampment began spreading under a bridge near 48th and Washington streets. A group of people there said they chose the spot just over the Phoenix-Tempe border because it’s outside of Tempe’s jurisdiction.

“They've told us to get out of Tempe and go to Phoenix if we don't want to be harassed,” said Jonathan Gardner of Tempe police. He lived in both the River Bottom encampment and under the bridge.

“They’re intentionally trying to just push us away,” said Lilith Bryson, who also moved nearby after being forced to leave the River Bottom.

Sean Still, the Tempe police lieutenant, disputed claims that Tempe police officers harass unhoused people. He said officers treat people with compassion, giving verbal warnings and offering people services before resorting to criminal citations. If concerns about police harassment were raised, the department would want to investigate them, he said.

"Even though they're unsheltered, they are still considered our residents," Still said.

But he also said it is a Tempe City Council priority to have safe parks and neighborhoods.

“Ultimately, we do want to offer people services, and we don’t want to force services on people who may not be ready and not want the services,” Still said.

Like the River Bottom, the new encampment under the bridge also had problems. It was far from food, water and other resources, and a person was killed there in May. But people who lived there said it at least provided stability, shade and a place mostly free of police interference.

It only lasted a few months. On June 6, Phoenix police visited the encampment and arrested nine people on outstanding warrants. Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said the purpose of the arrests was a criminal investigation, not to break up the encampment. But the result was the same: Most people fled the area and haven’t returned. It’s unclear where they went.

The trend of unhoused people moving from Tempe into Phoenix has implications for Phoenix, which is under intense scrutiny for how it has handled its own growing homelessness crisis.

Phoenix has been battling two competing lawsuits since 2022. One was filed by business and property owners near “The Zone,” the city’s largest homeless encampment, who say the downtown encampment is a public nuisance. The other was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which alleges the city unlawfully cited people and threw away their belongings during encampment sweeps. The U.S. Department of Justice has also been investigating the Phoenix Police Department since 2021 over several issues, including its treatment of people experiencing homelessness.

Kristin Couturier, spokesperson for Phoenix's Office of Homeless Solutions, declined to comment for this story.

Unhoused people, nonprofit workers and outreach volunteers criticized Tempe’s current approach, saying the city relies on policing rather than providing adequate services.

“They say it’s not illegal to be homeless. But it totally is. There’s nowhere you can be homeless,” said Austin Davis, a community organizer who hosts weekly picnics in Tempe for unhoused people.

Others agreed.

“It’s become kind of a police state for the homeless within the city,” said Katherine Kouvelas-Edick, founder and CEO of the homelessness nonprofit Aris Foundation, which operates in Tempe. “They’re definitely pushing people outwards.”

Clearing encampments makes outreach workers’ jobs harder

Ever since people fled the encampment near 48th and Washington streets, Ben Jeffrey has been trying to track down roughly 30 of his clients who had been living there. The outreach worker for Carry Me Productions, a nonprofit that advocates for people experiencing homelessness, has searched the streets of Tempe nearly every day but has found only a fraction of them.

The Yahners, who at one point were camping near the community that developed under the bridge, are included among the missing. The housing waitlist they are on requires them to stay in regular contact with services providers, meaning if Jeffrey doesn’t find them soon, they could fall off the waitlist and jeopardize their chance of finally becoming housed. The Republic last spoke to the Yahners in April. Jeffrey last communicated with them in June.

“I want to say, ‘Look, officer, I know it’s a nuisance,’” Jeffrey said of police interactions with people living on the streets. “‘But if they just scatter and we can’t keep track of them, we’ll never help them.’”

Jeffrey is among five service providers and outreach volunteers in Tempe who told The Republic that the repeated displacement of unhoused people makes their work harder.

The reshuffling is counterproductive because it breaks up established communities, causes trauma and makes it harder to keep people connected to services, they said.

When asked about the impact of the city's actions on service providers, Tempe spokesperson Steckner said outreach is difficult among transient populations, who move throughout the city and region "for a multitude of reasons." She added that the city collaborates with nonprofit and community partners daily to assist the unsheltered community and connect them to services.

Tempe began notifying people in the River Bottom of its closure last July, over a month before the Aug. 31 deadline. It also partnered with nonprofits to offer a variety of services, from shelter beds to crisis intervention and medical care.

Several outreach workers said they agreed the encampment needed to be shut down but that they believed the city’s approach, while well-intentioned, was too hasty. It ultimately caused people to be displaced and made people experiencing homelessness distrust the city and nonprofit service providers, outreach workers said.

“Everything that nonprofits and faith-based organizations have been working on, that set them back years, in my opinion,” said Ted Guttierez, a behavioral health support specialist at Mountain Park Health Center and outreach volunteer for the Aris Foundation.

Instead of solving homelessness, sweeps ultimately perpetuate it, said Davis, the community organizer.

“How the hell are you supposed to make any steps forward — address underlying trauma, a substance issue or mental health issue — how are you going to address any of that when you’re constantly having to move around?” Davis said.

Encampment sweeps have health, legal consequences

Encampment sweeps have long been taking place in the Valley, despite the legal questions and health concerns they raise.

Both the River Bottom in Tempe and The Zone in Phoenix, two of the largest encampments in the region, have been or are currently being cleared out. Smaller encampments are also frequently broken up by police or private security, according to reports from unhoused people and advocates.

Research shows sweeps don’t help solve homelessness and may contribute to significant health issues for unhoused people, such as harming their mental health, making it more difficult for them to manage chronic health conditions, and even potentially increasing hospitalizations and deaths among people who use drugs.

In 2022, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness published guidelines for addressing encampments, warning against aggressive law enforcement tactics or closing encampments without providing adequate shelter options.

“When people’s housing and service needs are left unaddressed, encampments may appear again in another neighborhood or even in the same place they had previously been,” the guidelines say.

Ron Tapscott, a Tempe community leader and homelessness advocate, said that’s exactly what’s happened since the River Bottom was cleared out.

“We’re beginning to see homeless people all over the city now, in parts of the city where you never saw homeless people — south Tempe, Chandler,” he said. “So I think they've dispersed the homeless population pretty widely.”

The practice of shutting down encampments has also been a subject of intense legal debate over the past several years. A groundbreaking federal court decision in 2018, Martin v. City of Boise, established that cities in Arizona and other western states cannot criminally cite an unhoused person for sleeping outside on public property unless there are adequate alternatives, such as available shelter beds.

On Sept. 1, the day after the River Bottom was cleared out, the National Homelessness Law Center sent Tempe officials a letter urging them to repeal the city ordinance prohibiting urban camping and warning them the ordinance might violate the Martin v. City of Boise ruling.

But the ordinance remains in effect, and Tempe’s unhoused population continues to be displaced. 

“It’s really become a situation where they just have nowhere left to go,” Kouvelas-Edick of Aris Foundation said.

Republic journalist Miguel Torres contributed reporting.

Juliette Rihl covers housing insecurity and homelessness for The Arizona Republic. If you have information you would like to share about the response to homelessness in Tempe or elsewhere in Arizona, she can be reached at jrihl@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @julietterihl.

This article was reported through a fellowship supported by the Lilly Endowment and administered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The Arizona Republic is solely responsible for all content.

Coverage of housing insecurity on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation.