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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘It's not illegal to be homeless': unhoused Washingtonians evicted from encampments as part of Trump's crime crackdown
For the past eight months, David Harold Pugh has found his 'spot' outside the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC. He keeps all his belongings, including a guitar, tied up together on a two-wheeled buggy. 'This is shelter. It's a safe place where I can put my buggy up against the wall, and it's up against that beam so nobody can roll it,' said Pugh. 'I roll it on its back, and then I sleep alongside of it, so nobody can get it without me waking up.' He's one of the more than 5,000 people in the city without a permanent place to live and now facing uncertainty about where to find shelter after Donald Trump said homeless people in DC must be moved far from the city. Crews tore down a major encampment near the Kennedy Center on Thursday, with federal law enforcement removing residents and clearing out the remaining encampments across the city overnight. The removal is part of Trump's federal takeover of the city's police department and deployment of the national guard across the city. Pugh believes the Trump administration is out of line for blaming crime on unhoused individuals. 'It's not illegal to be homeless,' he said. Despite the widespread encampment closures, Pugh told the Guardian he didn't have any plans to visit a shelter this week and wanted to stay close to his spot. 'If they tell me to roll, I'll roll and I'll come back when they leave,' he said. In an encampment across the city, near the interchange of Rock Creek Parkway and Whitehurst Freeway, one homeless individual, who identified himself as G, had already packed up his belongings. He said he's had to bounce around to various locations over the last few weeks. 'It's just going with the punches,' said G. 'So you just never get settled. It feels like you [are] on the edge.' G is also just days away from moving off the streets and into permanent housing. He said the only thing he's missing is a new social security card, which he will have very soon, but until then, he's not sure where he will go. 'What am I supposed to do for six days? Am I supposed to tell the national guard, or whoever, I got six days? Gonna get six days, and I literally have the appointment at the social security [office] on the 20th,' said G. With encampments now closed around DC and just a few days before he can secure stable housing, G said he may consider staying at a shelter. 'I know the shelters might be full. I don't even know where a shelter is, they haven't gave us any list. No, nothing. They just made us fully aware of possibilities,' he said. According to the DC office of the deputy mayor for health and human services, unhoused residents who want shelter won't be turned away, and the city is prepared to expand capacity as necessary. But if homeless individuals refuse to leave encampments, the Trump administration said its options are limited. During a news briefing earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said homeless individuals could face fines or even jail time if they refused to go to a shelter or receive addiction or mental health services. 'We're in the business of making sure people have the information, they have the connection to resources if they choose, but then people are, you know, left up to make their own decisions,' said Kierstin Quinsland, chief program officer at Miriam's Kitchen, a homeless service provider in DC. 'However, it is extremely concerning that people are being threatened with arrest if they are refusing services.' Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said many unhoused people sleep outside in DC and across the nation because rent is too expensive. 'Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money and simply does not work. The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails,' said Rabinowitz in a written statement. Quinsland said advocates and community partners have mobilized to keep an eye on encampment closures to make sure unhoused individuals are offered support and 'treated as respectfully as possible'. She said one of their biggest concerns about these federal police sweeps is losing contact with homeless residents. In many cases, Quinsland said advocates work with members of the city's unhoused population for weeks, months or longer if they're trying to move them toward permanent housing. 'Trust is an issue in homeless outreach, you know. A lot of folks [who] are outside, they decline shelter for a reason, because they don't trust services,' said Quinsland. 'So these relationships that we have with folks are precious, and they are hard fought.' Advocates also warn that these citywide encampment closures may separate homeless individuals from critical support and social services. 'If they're moved somewhere where they don't know where they can get a meal, they don't even know how to get back to the neighborhoods that they're familiar with,' said Quinsland. Ahead of the encampment closures, Quinsland said outreach street teams with Miriam's Kitchen have been passing inexpensive mobile phones to unhoused residents to help them stay connected. 'Making sure that they have our phone numbers, have our business cards with them, to make sure that wherever they may end up, we can remain in contact,' she said. With Trump's temporary takeover of the DC police department in place for the next few weeks, Quinsland said there's also been discussion about busing homeless residents to neighboring areas like Montgomery county, Maryland, or parts of Virginia to be 'out of sight of Donald Trump'. But that's just a temporary fix, she said, as homeless service providers need more funding to address the issue. 'The long-term answer is, if we have the political will to put money in the city budget for housing, then we can do that,' said Quinsland. 'This year, there is zero dollars in the budget for permanent supportive housing vouchers, so that's not a help.'
Washington Post
4 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
At a D.C. library, camaraderie flourishes through mah-jongg
A brief silence descended on the table as Alejandro Bolivar-Cervoni checked the symbols on the white rectangular tiles in front of him to see whether he had the sets to win the game. 'Mah-jongg!' he said as he tipped the tiles over to show the three other players on his table his winning sets. The tiles clacked loudly as they hit the table, briefly overtaking the lively chatter of people playing mah-jongg at a dozen other tables similarly laid out at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on a warm Tuesday evening last month. 'I think if you look at this room, it's so diverse. … It's so important to feel like I can connect to the broader D.C. community,' Bolivar-Cervoni, 34, said. 'And I think it's like the biggest slice of life, the fact that I get to come here every Tuesday and just get to meet with people from all different parts of the city, all different backgrounds.' Mah-jongg night has become one of the library's most popular programs since the first game on April 1. The weekly sessions have attracted around 70 D.C. residents of different ages, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds and skill levels. Bolivar-Cervoni's reason for learning mah-jongg was a personal one: He wanted to honor the memory of his late friend who used to play the game. He joined the mah-jongg sessions at the D.C. Public Library in late May after seeing an ad on a Capital Jewish Museum mailing list. In two months, he formed meaningful friendships with other D.C. residents who joined the sessions. 'It gives me a lot of civic pride to know my tax dollars go to support this place, and I get to really enjoy it and see this community,' said Bolivar-Cervoni, a marketing analyst manager. Across the table, Ardavan Heavans, 50, shuffled and lined up the mah-jongg tiles, getting ready to play another round. Heavans learned to play the Chinese style of the game from his grandmother in Pakistan when he was 5, and he continued to play when his family came to the United States in 1988. He learned to play the American version of the game when he moved to D.C. 20 years later. He said the game transcends cultures and fosters community. 'The world, you know, is so hectic and politics [are] dividing so many groups of people,' Heavans said. 'So, the game is just magical that it has a way of silencing that noise, even if it is for a couple of hours.' Jenna Fischer, 28, learned to play the American style of the game from her mother when she was in middle school and was looking to pick it back up when she heard about the mah-jongg sessions at the library from a friend. Fischer, who lost her job at the U.S. Institute of Peace earlier this year, said that she would have joined and made time for the game nights even if she still had her job. She said mah-jongg nights have created a space where politics is not a priority and the group of players have built their own community. 'I think it's part of D.C. that I might not always get to meet,' Fischer said. 'It's really great to come back and see the same faces and get to know people, in a very often divided city.' April Ovens, the library's support coordinator, introduced the mah-jongg program after she was approached by game instructors Jennie Mak and Jon Gann separately in March. She did not expect the program to become as popular as it did in four months, she said, but was pleasantly surprised to see D.C. residents of various backgrounds take an interest in learning and playing the game. The library opens its doors to residents every Tuesday evening from 6 to 8 p.m. It offers participants the opportunity to learn two styles of mah-jongg free — Chinese, taught by Mak, and American, taught by Gann and David Horowitz. Mak, 54, teaches the Chinese variation of mah-jongg — the Hong Kong style, which she used to play with her family as a child there. As a part-time Cantonese language teacher, she started teaching the game to her students last year as a way to immerse them in the language. She then branched out to teach groups of people interested in learning mah-jongg across Virginia and D.C., including at the Cleveland Park Library. She contacted Ovens at the beginning of the year when she saw a growing interest in the game among D.C. residents. 'Mah-jongg is not just a game to me. It's like part of my culture,' Mak said. Gann, 59, a film producer, hosts game sessions with Horowitz, 60, a health policy analyst at the Shaw/Watha T. Daniel Neighborhood Library and the Capital Jewish Museum. Mah-jongg originated in China hundreds of years ago and was introduced to the United States in the 1920s. The game is played in several styles, including Chinese, American and Riichi, the Japanese style. Chinese mah-jongg sets consist of 144 tiles engraved with symbols of circles, bamboos, dragons and Chinese characters. American mah-jongg is played with 152 tiles, including jokers, that are similarly designed to the Chinese sets but have numbers on them. The game is played by four people. The tiles are shuffled and arranged to make a wall that forms a square. The players take turns drawing a tile from the wall and discard another tile in the middle of the table until they form a winning hand. In Chinese mah-jongg, the first player to build a combination of four sets of three and a pair of tiles wins the game. The American style uses the same principle, but players also refer to a card issued by the National Mah Jongg League annually that dictates the set combinations that win the game for that year. The combinations change every year. Mah-jongg was typically played by Chinese and Jewish women, but Horowitz said he has seen a flurry of younger people and men walking through the front doors of the library. Mak said the program has allowed D.C. residents to connect with each other in the past few months. 'We've all been through a lot,' Mak said about the impact of politics on D.C. and its residents. She said the players have built a community by playing the game. 'There's a safe place for us,' she said.
