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Obscure city operation to dismantle homeless encampments sends group packing from Betsy Ross Bridge
A group of homeless individuals living below the Betsy Ross Bridge have have 24 hours to vacate, according to a city official, apparently as part of an obscure city program called "Operation Quality of Life."
Obscure city operation to dismantle homeless encampments sends group packing from Betsy Ross Bridge
A group of homeless individuals living below the Betsy Ross Bridge have 24 hours to vacate, according to a city official, apparently as part of an obscure city program called “Operation Quality of Life.”
The group, some of whom are the same individuals who made an exodus from Occupy Philly to live beneath an I-95 overpass in Port Richmond, have been living there for approximately four months since they were evicted from that location. One of the residents is Harvey Lockeridge, well-known during Occupy Philly for his "homeless reality tours," and who's kept in touch with CP over the past few months. Lockeridge had been worried about being kicked out from beneath the bridge not by the city, but locals who the space for fishing and drinking beer, City officials, he told CP a few days ago, had seemed content to leave the homeless camp alone.
Apparently, something changed: Yesterday, the group received a notice on letterhead from the Office Of Supportive Housing. Titled “OPERATION QUALITY OF LIFE,” all caps, it explained that the City of Philadelphia would be “conducting Operation Quality of Life and clearing” the area. (Read the letter transcribed verbatim below)
Signed, “Anthony (Rocko) Holloway, Director of Emergency Assistance Response Unit / Logistics," the letter states that the city's Office of Supportive Housing, which oversees homeless services, would offer drug, alcohol, and mental health assistance — and it cautioned that the city's Streets department could "confiscate items on city streets and in public areas.”
And what, exactly, is “Operation Quality of Life?”
It's a program, he said, "where we dismantle homeless encampments” around the city, as they pop up. Asked why I'd never heard of the program before, Holloway said he's been in charge of the program for three years, and that a homeless encampment is dismantled under it every couple of months, “usually around Center City.”
If folks don't want to leave, Holloway says, “Then it becomes a police matter,” Holloway said, adding that Project Home would have an outreach team there to offer space in the city's shelter system (an offer some of these folks vociferously refused in the past) and that "in three years, we've never had an arrest."
Oddly enough, the only other reference to “Operation Quality of Life” City Paper could find on the Internet or in LexisNexus is a single 2007 Inqurier article, which mentions the apparent program as an aside:
CITY OF PHILADELPHIA
OPERATION QUALITY OF LIFE
March 26, 2012
ON Thursday, March 29, 2012, THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA WILL BE CONDUCTING OPERATION QUALITY OF LIFE AND CLEARING THIS AREA.
THE OFFICE OF SUPPORTIVE HOUSING (OSH) WILL BE PRESENT TO OFFER ASSISTANCE FOR HOUSING AND/OR CONNECTION TO DRUG/ALCOHOL OR MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT.
THE STREETS DEPARTMENT MAY CONFISCATE ITEMS THAT ARE ON CITY STREETS AND IN PUBLIC AREAS. PLEASE REMOVE ALL PERSONAL BELONGINGS BY THE ABOVE DATE.
AREA(S) OF CONCERN:
4301 N. Delaware Avenue
Anthony (Rocko) Holloway
Director Emergency Assistance Response Unit / Logistics
215.685.9071
That phone number rings off the hook. No voicemail, no information, no referral. How cold.— Matericia- Philadelphia means "the city of brotherly love." :/— moose12
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