A family has been left terrified after a homeless encampment sprang up in the back yard of their $800,000 historic home.  

Robin Bach and her husband have had to contend with death threats from vagrants living in woods they own just behind their stunning 19th Century Walker House in Concord, New Hampshire. 

And those threats are far from empty, with the Bachs – who have two children aged eight and 11 – hearing gunshots erupting from the backyard encampment.  

‘I can’t even use my backyard. My kids can’t go out there,’ Bach told the Concord Monitor, explaining that they play out in front on the sidewalk. ‘I would like my children to be independent and feel comfortable going outside and playing and they won’t.’ 

The couple bought the gorgeous home in 2018 and treated their sons to a backyard swing set in 2020. But its proximity to the nearby violent vagrant population who refuse to leave has left the children too frightened to touch it.  

Bach has called the police 37 times since she’s lived in this neighborhood to report various encounters with the homeless population living mere feet away from where they all sleep.

Several years ago, Bach’s husband had an unnerving encounter with a man who they saw emerging from the woods in their backyard a few times. When he asked the man to leave, the man threatened to shoot him.

Pictured: Bach’s nearly $800,000 home that’s been overrun with a growing homeless population

This same vagrant returned to their property several times after this, which led Bach to file a restraining order against him.

Her children watched as police took him away for the final time. 

This comes as homelessness is on the rise all throughout the country, especially in New Hampshire where the number of people on the streets in increasing faster than anywhere else, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

The Supreme Court just last week issued a ruling on a case originating out of Oregon – its largest city an epicenter for the homeless – stating that camping outdoors is illegal and cities can enforce bans on it.

Thus far, the city of Concord and the police department have had their hands somewhat tied when it comes to clearing out the encampments near Bach’s and other people’s homes. 

Cops need to work with shelters to make sure certain homeless individuals aren’t on waitlists for housing and services before busting up these makeshift tent cities.

They also have to strike deals with private property owners.

Bach alongside her two children, who have resorted to playing out on the sidewalk in front of the family home

Aerial shots of the New Hampshire State House in Concord at sunrise on a misty morning

‘The city won’t clean up any private property,’ said Barrett Moulton, the deputy chief of patrol and police liaison on the city’s homeless steering committee. 

And even if the homeless are set up on a government owned sidewalk or park, cost to the city is a major factor. 

‘But if it is city land then there is a whole process and it’s often expensive,’ Moulton said.

The Supreme Court’s decision on homelessness won’t do anything about the costs associated with cleaning up trash and disposing of tents put up by homeless people, so it’s unclear how the ruling might affect policy going forward. 

Bach is a progressive who has considerable sympathy for people facing homelessness. And while she’d like them off her property, she says she’s concerned that evicting them will just move the issue elsewhere and turn it into someone else’s problem. 

‘It’s Whack-a-Mole. You can’t just ask them to leave, they’re going to go somewhere else,’ Bach said. ‘You have to give them someplace to go.’

And the problem has only worsened since Bach’s been living at what should be her New England paradise home, complete with five bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and a well manicured front lawn.

She said when her family first moved in, one or two tents were usually visible in the woods behind her house. 

Now, there are at least half a dozen of them, some with large tarps and structures, she said.

And when police have removed tents from Bach’s backyard, people have moved back in days later and trash just continues to accumulate in the woods along her road.

As recently as June 5, this area was filled with crushed cans, abandoned clothes, shopping carts and broken furniture.

Trash and shoddy living structures litter the woods behind the street Bach lives on in Concord

In front of the garbage, there’s a ‘no camping’ sign on display

Some areas have so much trash that the grass and dirt below are completely obscured

In order to isolate herself from the growing trash, Bach tried to fence in her property until she learned it would cost her a whopping $50,000

Running out of options, Bach recently got a quote to fence in her property.

It would cost her $50,000.

‘I can’t afford to clean it up. I can’t physically do it myself,’ she said. ‘So the trash remains.’ 

Moulton told the Concord Monitor that the sheer amount of trash and waste that’s been piling up has been the main reason people are calling his office.

‘It’s hard to get past that image of these encampments,’ he said. 

‘It’s a bad look. It’s a bad look for the city when you have as beautiful of an area as Concord is, to have it just loaded with trash, it is something that there’s a focus on to right now.

Since there are few, if any, public dumpsters in Concord, the trash issue will likely stick with the town of roughly 44,000.

‘We have a pretty significant homeless problem,’ Moulton said. ‘They’re going to be somewhere.’ 

For the homeless population in Concord, this means camping outside in the variant weather of New Hampshire. 

Winters often bring snow and frigid temperatures as low as 12 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas this weekend will bring highs of over 90 degrees in Concord.

Bach, who’s been forced to deal with the homeless problem quite literally in her own backyard, still has empathy for those without a roof over their head. She’s urging the city to enact a sanctioned camping area so people can get back on their feet. 

The Concord Coalition to End Homelessness is operating the only emergency shelter in the area, and it’s only open from December through March.

The nonprofit is harshly opposed to the recent Supreme Court ruling issuing the following statement.

‘Penalizing the most vulnerable citizens in our community because of this country’s housing shortage is unconscionable, and won’t solve homelessness,’ they wrote. ‘The solution to ending homelessness is housing.’ 

Even though Bach has certainly had some frightening encounters with the people trying to survive behind her home, she has talked to some of them in an effort to understand their struggle.

Most recently, she spoke with a man who said he holds a 9 to 5 job and cleans up his garbage with contractor bags.

She believes it would be better if the city created a sanctioned camping area somewhere away from where she lives, as its become clear to her that these people need a helping hand.

Sporadic enforcement from police, she said, doesn’t address the root cause of homelessness, nor does it permanently get rid of the tents or the garbage or the occasional threats of violence her family has to endure.

‘We never locked our doors. We were pretty casual,’ she said. ‘Now we have a full-on security system.’ 

‘This is the worst it’s ever been.’ 

Republicans haven’t won New Hampshire in a presidential election in decades. However, as President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance rocked the Democratic Party, political strategists say there’s an opening for former President Donald Trump to flip the state this November. 

Political science experts are pointing to two polls indicating Biden has cause for concern in a state that typically has Democratic presidential candidates’ backs. 

A poll conducted after the debate by New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College Survey Center shows Trump leading Biden by 2 points in the Granite State.  

Last week’s poll follows a a late May survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which gave Biden only a single-digit edge. 

That’s a drop from 2020 when Biden handily won New Hampshire with a 7% lead. 

“I do think we are now in a battleground,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, told Fox News.

The Trump campaign has jumped for the jugular. 

“Joe Biden abandoned New Hampshire when he canned our first in the nation primary, and his policies have given our state more inflation, record-high energy bills, an increasingly unaffordable housing market, and an immigration crisis at our northern Canadian border,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner.

She said Biden’s set to “[lose] the Granite State and President Trump is poised to flip it red for the first time in more than twenty years.”

New England College president Wayne Lesperance, a veteran New Hampshire-based political science professor, agreed, telling Fox News that his state “is in play.”

“Biden’s performance at the most recent debate has pushed Democrats to question his ability to campaign, win and govern. Recent polls in New Hampshire point to continued rock-solid support by Republicans for Trump. Democratic support seems to be faltering with some looking at independent candidates,” Lesperance said. “As long as questions remain about Biden’s ability to go forward, the President will continue to bleed support, putting the Granite State in play.”

While New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Christopher Ager told the Washington Examiner that New Hampshire is “definitely a battleground state after the debate — you can feel the momentum shifting in favor of President Trump,” Republicans have their work cut out for them. With wins in every presidential race in New Hampshire since before 9/11, Democrats hold a significant infrastructural advantage over the GOP. The Biden campaign has 14 offices across the state. The Trump campaign has only one field office. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Meanwhile, Levesque warns that in New Hampshire, “the good news for Biden is he’s weak with the people who self-describe as very liberal. Just 67% support. That means, in the end, most likely many of those people are going to vote for Biden even if they don’t want to admit it right now.”

New Hampshire voters are famously independent. As 2023 came to a close, Republican Jay Ruais successfully challenged four-term Democratic Mayor Joyce Craig in Manchester, flipping the city red for the first time in years, and proving neither party can afford to take votes for granted in the Granite State

Every other week on NHPR, we like to highlight a local non-profit that’s providing a great service for the Granite State. On this week’s episode of Give Back New Hampshire, our focus is on Assistance Canine Training Services.

Founded in 2007, Assistance Canine Training Services trains service dogs for people with mobility disabilities and facility dogs for professionals using animal assisted therapy.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kathy Metz: I’m Kathy Metz, director of operations here at Assistance Canine Training Services.

Kelly Brown: I’m Kelly Brown. I hold the role of executive director of Assistance Canine Training Services, but I’m also a volunteer puppy raiser and a client. I have one of our facility dogs.

Kathy Metz: Our mission is to raise, train and place service and facility dogs. So our service dogs are for mobility, people who have challenges walking, many of whom are in wheelchairs or use scooters. And also our facility dogs go with professionals who utilize them in animal assisted therapy – teachers, therapists, occupational therapists, counselors, anyone who can utilize a dog in a therapeutic way for their patients or those they serve.

Kelly Brown: I speak more to the facility dog front. Our service dogs are wonderful and they work with one person. They provide a service or multiple services for a person in need. The facility dogs are just a little bit different in that they work with an able bodied human being. We have several dogs at different hospitals, people who are going through cancer treatments. They go in for their cancer treatment and there’s a dog there just to provide comfort and support while they’re there. As a schoolteacher, I have one in my general education classroom, and the dog is there all the time. He’s there every day.

Kathy Metz: Most of our puppies come to us at eight weeks old. Whether they come from a breeder or another organization, starting from the time they’re born, they get what we call enrichment, constant handling, constant exposure to different stimulus, different sounds, everything that get them comfortable with their world and make sure that they’re ready to start working and start training.

Connie: Hi, my name is Connie and my husband, Mike and I are volunteers with the ACTS organization here locally, and we have raised one of the dogs for the organization. His name is Hickory. We had him a total of about two and a half years. So Hickory is no longer with us. He’s been placed. And so now we help out as an auntie and uncle.

Mike: Hickory was our first dog when we moved up here from Pennsylvania a couple of years ago. We saw in the newspaper that ACTS had a nice article, and they were looking for puppy raisers and said, yeah, maybe we might make good puppy raisers. From my perspective, the most rewarding part is knowing what the dog is doing for an individual.

Connie: It’s a lot of fun to raise the dogs. A lot of people ask us, isn’t it difficult to let the dog go, especially when you’ve had them for a couple of years? And it is. And we went into this realizing that we had a job to do. And in our case, Hickory had a job to do. And I say if we both did our job correctly or all three of us, then the magic happens. And that’s exactly what happened with Hickory.

Robin Crocker: I’m Robin Crocker, I’m board chair, and I’m formerly the director of canine development, retired from that position. I still do a lot of work advising and working with training of the dogs. The people who work with the dogs are so dedicated, and the clients are so amazing, and the work that the dogs do with the client is just heartwarming. And I can’t step away. I just keep coming back.