'It is miserable': People in Phoenix homeless camp brace for heat wave during global pandemic

Jessica Boehm
Arizona Republic

"Stay home" is the simple public health directive experts have given to combat two potential killers: the novel coronavirus and extreme heat.

It's also a directive that's impossible to follow for the at least 3,767 people experiencing homelessness on the streets of Maricopa County. 

The largest homeless encampment in the county was located on the streets outside the Human Services Campus just southwest of downtown Phoenix. On any given night, about 500 people slept in tents and sleeping bags in the area.

Maricopa County has encouraged around 200 of those people to move into fenced parking lots where each person is given a 12-foot-by-12-foot space, outlined with paint, to promote social distancing.

The lots may ease the risk of spreading COVID-19, but some worry it has exacerbated the risk of heat-related illness. The lots are made up of black asphalt and gravel, and there is no shade.

As metro Phoenix braces for the first excessive heat warning of the summer, people experiencing homelessness have few options to protect their bodies from exposure.

Little weather relief 

In previous years, the Human Services Campus has opened up some of its buildings during excessive heat warnings to allow indoor sleeping space for 275 people who typically sleep on the streets.

That can't happen in the same way this year, Human Services Campus Executive Director Amy Schwabenlender said.

One of the spaces where people slept last year is now being used as a shelter for people who are high-risk for COVID-19. They cannot fit any additional people in that building without violating CDC guidance related to social distancing.

The other building, the St. Vincent de Paul dining room, will start offering weather relief on Monday. But it will be limited to 40 people to ensure social distancing, Schwabenlender said.

Combined with the regular shelter space on the Human Services Campus, there will be room for a total of 477 people on the campus during excessive heat warnings this year. Last year, 745 were served per night.

Schwabenlender said she's been concerned about the lack of weather relief since COVID-19 social distancing requirements began in March but has received little support from city and county government. Both Phoenix and Maricopa County received hundreds of millions of federal dollars to spend on coronavirus relief.

"If someone wants to truly, immediately do something, give us access to vacant indoor space," Schwabenlender said.

Her request has so far gone unanswered.

Her team is looking to acquire a large air-conditioned tent that could temporarily house people through the summer, but it will take at least a month to get up and running, and the first heat wave of the year is already here.

"It's just kind of gut-wrenching. I'm sitting here and looking outside now at all of the people and thinking, 'How are you going to survive the next four days?'" Schwabenlender said in a phone interview from her office on the Human Services Campus.

'Poor man's air conditioning'

Rusty Williams, 59, stood in a short line outside the post office window at the Human Services Campus. Sporting a hospital mask and a cut-off T-shirt that read, "Wake up and smell the freedom," he was checking to see if his $1,200 stimulus check had arrived.

Social distancing signs are posted to the fence as Rusty Williams discusses the heat at the encampment outside the Human Services Campus in Phoenix on May 27, 2020, when temperatures are expected to reach 106 degrees.

When he made it to the front of the line, he handed his ID to the clerk. 

No mail. 

When the money does come, Williams said he plans to buy a big fan, a stockpile of batteries and a gallon-size bucket.

He'll fill the bucket with ice and set the fan atop it to try to keep his sleeping quarters cool this summer.

"Poor man's air conditioning," Williams said. 

Right now, he only has a four-inch fan that runs off a portable phone charger. It helps a little, he said.

"It is miserable," Williams said of the heat, which at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday already was inching toward 100 degrees.

He's been living on the streets outside the Human Services Campus for about 1½ years. A little over a month ago, he moved into one of the social-distancing parking lots.

The individuals sleeping on the street were not required, but strongly encouraged, to move into the lots, funded by Maricopa County and staffed by the Human Services Campus. But Phoenix police officers started barricading many of the sidewalk areas where people had set up tents, leaving few other options.

Williams said he moved into the lot so he didn't "have to worry about this BS every Wednesday," motioning toward street sweepers and a huddle of police officers.

Every Wednesday, officers require people staying on the streets to tear down their camps and move their belongings for a few hours while Phoenix workers clean the area.

In the lots, they don't have to move every week, Williams said.

He said he's content in his 12-foot-by-12-foot space in the parking lot. The biggest issue is the loose gravel and dirt that covers the ground.

It's pretty rough for people who only have sleeping bags or tents to separate them from the ground, Williams said. Luckily, he's got a pillow-top mattress.

'I'm ready for a change'

Leroy Sparks, 73, sat peacefully on his walker in the entryway to his tent, which shaded his body from the sun.

Leroy Sparks escapes the heat in the shade of his tent in one of the socially distanced parking lot encampments outside the Human Services Campus in Phoenix on May 27, 2020, when temperatures are expected to reach 106 degrees.

He'd adorned the outside of his tent with a small American flag and an artificial flower. Inside, knit blankets served as carpeting. A tall blow-up mattress was made up neatly with bedding.

A month ago, the city told Sparks they'd be barricading his spot on Jackson Street and asked him if he'd like to move into the parking lot instead.

He's been there about a month.

As other people in the parking lot poured water over their bodies to stay cool, Sparks said the heat wasn't bothering him.

"I can handle it. I like the hot weather," he said.

Plus, he wasn't planning on staying much longer, he said.

On June 9, he'll head to Washington to be with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and trade the heat for Pacific Northwest summer temperatures.

"I'm ready for a change. I'm a young man in an old man's body," he said, a smile quickly spreading across his face.

'I just don't know where people's hearts are'

Alicia McKinley, 61, stood outside her camp in a nightgown, hair cap and fabric mask, surveying her space.

Alicia McKinley, who heads the Homeless Leadership Project, discusses the heat at her encampment in one of the socially distanced parking lots outside the Human Services Campus in Phoenix on May 27, 2020, when temperatures are expected to reach 106 degrees.

Her campsite in the parking lot backs up to the portable restrooms. A cleaning truck had arrived to flush them out.

"It smells so awful when they do that," McKinley said.

She moved into the lot after police officers told her she couldn't stay at her space on Jackson Street anymore and asked if she'd move to the new lot.

It wasn't an upgrade, she said.

The gravel is far less comfortable than the dirt where she used to pitch her tent, and ants are infiltrating her area, she said. Perhaps worst of all, there's no shade anywhere in the lots, she said.

"I just don't know where people's hearts are," McKinley said. "This looks like a horse corral."

She said she's particularly angry at the Phoenix mayor and City Council. She pulled out a binder of printed out news articles and legal filings and explained that she believed the city was illegally forcing people experiencing homelessness off the streets.

McKinley said she knows the city and the county have received a substantial amount of money from the federal government to deal with the fallout of COVID-19. They could have done more than fence off parking lots, she said.

"I have to hand those out today," she said, gesturing toward a mini hand sanitizer bottle.

McKinley runs a group called Homeless Leadership Project. She collects donated items and distributes them to the people living on the streets.

She's collected several cases of water and planned to take them to a supporter who will freeze them before she passes them out to keep people cool during the excessive heat.

An empty water jug hangs in Alicia McKinley's encampment in one of the socially distanced parking lots outside the Human Services Campus in Phoenix on May 27, 2020, when temperatures are expected to reach 106 degrees.

"We're just trying to lift people up because everything's so down right now," McKinley said.

Her group also goes to city and county meetings and meets with officials to advocate for better conditions for people experiencing homelessness.

They planned to meet that afternoon to discuss how to hold "the city and county accountable for how they treat people without homes," according to a flyer McKinley passed out.

McKinley said her group had tried to call in to a City Council meeting in mid-May but couldn't get through with the new electronic comment system the council is using to promote social distancing.

She said she will ask the Council to dedicate a space for seniors experiencing homelessness to sleep during the summer and for access to cold water for everyone.

'It's more like jail'

Enrique Troche-Valentine, 64, slowly pushed his wheelchair out of one of the county parking lots toward Andre House, where he planned to find shade for a few hours.

He was flanked by dogs on both sides. The female, Sandy, was his, and the other belonged to a friend who had to run an errand.

"So much for social distance," he said, pointing at a cluster of tents in the parking lot that were nearly touching.

Enrique Troche-Valentine walks with a friend's dogs to the nearby Andre House to sit in the shade outside the Human Services Campus in Phoenix on May 27, 2020, when temperatures are expected to reach 106 degrees.

Troche-Valentine was one of the first people to move into the lots. A case worker encouraged him because he's considered high-risk for COVID-19 because of his age and health conditions. He's had multiple heart attacks, strokes and respiratory failures.

Days after he moved into the lot, he was hospitalized for dehydration and kidney failure.

"I've been in the Valley on and off for 30 years, and I've never had dehydration," he said.

It was only 101 degrees the day he was hospitalized. Now, it's approaching 110 degrees.

He doesn't understand the money and resources funneled into the parking lots, he said. The money should have been invested in more indoor shelter beds or affordable housing instead, he said.

"It's just ridiculous. It's more like jail," Troche-Valentine said of the parking lots.

He only has to weather the lot for four more days.

After more than year on a housing wait list, he qualified for an apartment about a mile southwest of the Human Services Campus. 

"Just me and Sandy in a studio," Troche-Valentine said.

He can't wait to wake up in the middle of the night and be able to use the bathroom without waiting outside in a line. And he's looking forward to opening his fridge and getting to choose what he'd like to eat for the first time in more than a year.

"I'm just going to pinch myself and make sure it's real," Troche-Valentine said.

Reach the reporter at jessica.boehm@gannett.com or 480-694-1823. Follow her on Twitter @jboehm_NEWS

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