Clearing out every Louisville homeless site isn't working. Campgrounds might just help

He goes by Riff Raff and is tall, slender, and at 47 years old, his close-cropped hair is graying.

He’s well-read and well-spoken and homeless. 

On Monday, he was helping a neighbor at what they call CSX — the homeless camp sitting hard against Beargrass Creek on property owned by the railroad company — clean out her tent in preparation for the move.

The Move.

CSX announced last week that they have to go.

Some have been living there for years — Riff Raff has been there off and on for about a year now — but the camp came onto CSX’s radar a few weeks ago after the city cleared out another camp on the sidewalk on Jefferson Street. The size of CSX mushroomed to who knows how many people after that.

Read more:Louisville just closed a large homeless camp. Here's how you can help

By April 29, they’ll all be gone, and CSX will likely come in with garbage trucks and skid loaders and clear out what will be left of people’s lives. The people who call it home will scatter to the wind.

It won’t solve anything.

Riff Raff, who would only give his nickname, the character he once played in an on-stage production of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," said he and his girlfriend don’t know where they’ll go. But they’ll find somewhere — ASAP.

“One thing about it, if you move people from one place to another place to another place, they don’t get complacent,” he said as he smoked a cigarette butt, sitting on an old dirty love seat with a tarp suspended above it.

He said he’s been homeless since he was about 40 years old after an eight-month stint in “the iron-bar hotel” when he didn’t respond to a warrant for receiving stolen merchandise.

After that, he said, it was hard to find a job in the culinary field where he had worked before — often riding the carnival circuit selling the types of foods people will eat next week at the Kentucky Derby Festival’s Chow Wagon.

“I used to tell people my job was making little kids smile,” Riff Raff said.

Now, his job is being homeless.

“I work harder now than I ever did when I had a job,” he said, explaining that his life is now a cycle of getting up, visiting the St. John’s Center for Homeless Men for a shower, bringing back the water he and his girlfriend will need at the camp for the day, flying a sign on a street corner asking for money or going to a hardware store and offering to help do-it-yourselfers work at their homes but hoping they’ll just give him a buck or two. 

Homelessness is a complex issue, he said.

Background:People living in homeless camp near CSX rail line will be forced to leave

Some find themselves on the street because of drug and alcohol problems. Others have a mental illness. Some have criminal records that make it difficult to find jobs.

Riff Raff said he’s homeless simply because it's what his life is now, and he prefers it to having the stresses of rent or mortgage payments and gas and electric bills.

“It’s freedom,” he said.

It's hard to imagine many people want to live like this, however. 

These camps become dirty and smelly and, quite frankly, can be dangerous. 

Desire to live like this is more a symptom of other problems rather than a reason for being homeless.  

The city continues to struggle with what to do with people like Riff Raff and others who remain on the streets.

The desire to live outdoors rather than stay in homeless shelters is an entirely different issue. 

Louisville has put money into lockers for homeless people to store their possessions and has worked with Wayside Christian Mission to open a low-barrier shelter where people can go even if they struggle with drugs or alcohol or have pets that aren’t allowed in other shelters.

Opinion:Use your voice to support Louisville's homeless and protect public safety

But still, that’s just not for some people, Riff Raff said.

“I don’t like shelters,” he said. “I’ve been in jail before and shelters are no different. … We don’t like being told what time to eat, what time to shower, what time to go to bed, what time to get up."

He thinks the city should create a homeless camp or two where it can control things like their location and how it looks to people as they drive through the city.

“I can understand why they wouldn’t want people sleeping out on the streets,” he said. “Especially during the Derby. It doesn’t look good.”

But sanctioned homeless camps is a controversial idea even in the small community of social service providers who help the homeless. Some fear that providing camps will only encourage people to stay outside, which can be dangerous in Louisville winters when temperatures sometimes dip below zero.

Jeff Gill, the founder of Hip Hop Cares, which helps the homeless, agrees with Riff Raff, however. 

“We need some sort of campground for them,” he said. “In other cities, it’s worked.”

Such camps would allow Louisville or its social service providers to set up dumpsters and portable toilets to improve sanitation. They can install fences that shield the camps from public view, and it would end this silly process in which the city simply herds homeless people from one place to another.

Previously:Dirty and dangerous downtown homeless camp must go, city says. Will it fix anything?

It’s not the long-term solution we need.

That will require money for drug, alcohol and mental illness treatment, social workers to help people transition back into society and low-cost housing where they can live while reentering society and the job market.

But just making squatters move from one place to another isn’t solving anything, and it makes it more difficult for them to get the help they need to survive on the streets.

And if we’re willing to house them in brick-and-mortar shelters, why not provide them with a couple of plots where they can pitch tents?

Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.