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Homelessness advocates call on Smiley to cancel plans to clear Providence encampments • Rhode Island Current
PROVIDENCE — Over a dozen homeless advocates and care providers gathered on the steps of City Hall Wednesday afternoon to demand Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and other city officials halt plans to clear out two of the capital city’s largest encampments on Friday.
The city plans to give 48 hours notices for people to vacate encampments on Houghton Street and a highway embankment between I-95 and Branch Avenue. Combined, those two sites include roughly 70 people, according to the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.
Speakers at the coalition’s rally called the city’s timeframe for people to leave “unacceptable.”
“This is a violent action,” said coalition director Kimberly Simmons. “Imagine if someone came to your house, broke in and decided to wake up and move you immediately.”
The sites have posed “serious safety concerns” since they were first reported to the city “a few months ago,” city spokesperson Josh Estrella told Rhode Island Current.
Letters sent to homelessness advocates and providers April 30 from the Providence Police Department don’t offer specific concerns regarding the Branch Avenue site, but said the Houghton Street encampment needs to be cleared because of soil contamination.
“As such, it is imperative that the site remain appropriately secured and free of occupants to prevent exposure and to enable necessary mitigation and redevelopment,” the letter reads.
He also stressed that the encampment clearings are not raids, as suggested by homelessness advocates.
“The city has a process when an encampment is reported by a member of the public or another entity,” Estrella said. “This involves a multi-department approach of which Providence Police are one piece.”
During the rally, Providence City Councilor Miguel Sanchez outlined six demands to city officials. Topping that list is a request for the city to provide 30 days written notice in both English and Spanish.
Other demands include prohibiting police from searching tents and backpacks when clearing the encampments, along with banning bulldozers and brush grinders from operating during any evictions.
Opening of Providence pallet shelter community delayed
Karen Andes, director of Brown University’s Master of Public Health program, told the crowd the use of police and heavy equipment will lead to further trauma for unhoused people.
“That’s not the way we want to treat people in Rhode Island,” Andes said.
The other big task is for city officials to identify a new parcel of land where displaced people can relocate for temporary housing.
State officials are in the process of opening 45 one-room cabins, also called pallet shelters, within the on-ramp to Route 146 South on a lot located off Victor Street. Shelters were initially scheduled to open “before the end of the first quarter” of 2024, but crews are still awaiting final approvals from the state as it hooks up the shelters to utilities.
That’s not the way we want to treat people in Rhode Island.
– Karen Andes, director of Brown University’s Master of Public Health program
“We are still doing site preparation that’s needed (utilities work, etc.) and obtaining final approvals for ECHO, but we will reach out when we have more information to share,” Housing Department spokesperson Emily Marshall said on April 17, when cabins were mostly constructed.
The state’s Department of Housing on the status of the pallet shellers could not provide additional details Wednesday.
The director of the pallet community previously said residents Riley won’t occupy the shelters either some time this month or in June.
“We cannot tell people to move without having another livable, viable piece of land appropriated,” Sanchez said. “This is only going to create a disaster.”
Sanchez himself did not name any specific location where a new shelter could be built. Simmons also did not offer any sites, but she said neither has the mayor as the city moves forward on clearing these spaces.
In a video recorded by Province-based journalist Steve Ahlquist earlier in the day, Smiley told reporters “it’s not clear to us where they go.”
“It’s a struggle and it’s a case-by-case basis, which is why we work with providers to try to find the best option,” Smiley said. “And we know in some cases that there are no good options.”
Ahead of the rally, Estrella said the city works with providers to “provide outreach, support and services to the varying individuals that have occupied the property.”
Advocates also ask that city officials collaborate with them, along with those living in the two encampments, to better facilitate
“If you have to move people, let us work together to make that happen effectively,” Simmons said.
Estrella did not respond to questions on if the city plans to meet any of the coalition’s demands.
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New East Bay Bike Path bridges are open and ready for bikes
What’s it like to ride over the new East Bay Bike Path bridges? We sent a reporter to try them out.
I’ve long thought bike paths are among Rhode Island’s premier attractions, up there with the beaches, the mansions and the bay.
We like to knock government, but credit where it’s due, the state has done an amazing job building out an incredible pedaling network.
It’s clearly a priority.
At least I thought it was.
But they’ve just dropped the ball on what should have been a beautiful new stretch.
The plan was to finish a mile-long connector from the East Providence end of the Henderson Bridge all the way to the East Bay Bike Path.
There was even $25 million set aside to get it done.
Except WPRI recently reported that it’s now been canceled.
The main fault lies with the Trump administration, which is no friend of bike paths, and moved to kill that $25 million.
But it gets complicated, as government funding always does.
To try to rescue that money, the state DOT reportedly worked with the administration to refunnel it into a road project. Specifically, the $25 million will now be spent helping upgrade the mile-long highway between the Henderson Bridge and North Broadway in East Providence, turning it into a more pleasant boulevard.
That totally sounds worthy.
But it’s insane to throw away the bike path plan.
Especially for a particular reason in this case.
They’d already put a ton of money into starting it.
When state planners designed the new Henderson Bridge between the East Side and East Providence, they included a bike path.
It’s a beauty – well protected from traffic by a barrier, a great asset for safely riding over the Seekonk River.
The plan was to continue it another mile or so along East Providence’s Waterfront Drive, ultimately connecting with the East Bay Bike Path, which runs all the way to Bristol. Which, by the way, is one of the nicest bike paths you’ll find anywhere.
But alas, that connector plan has been canceled.
So the expensive stretch over the Henderson Bridge to East Providence is now a bike path to nowhere. Once the bridge ends, the path on it continues a few hundred yards or so and then, just … ends.
Too bad.
We were so close.
Most of the stories on the issue have been about the complex negotiation to rescue the $25 million by rerouting it to that nearby highway-to-boulevard project. But I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of that bureaucratic process here because it loses sight of the heart of this story.
Which is that an amazing new addition to one of the nation’s best state bike path systems has just been scrapped.
You can knock the Rhode Island government for blowing a lot of things.
The PawSox.
The Washington Bridge.
But they’ve done great with bike paths.
And especially, linking many of them together.
Example: not too many years ago, Providence bikers had to risk dicey traffic on the East Side to get to the more pleasant paths in India Point Park and on the 195 bridge to the East Bay Path.
But the state fixed that by adding an amazing connector that starts behind the Salvation Army building and beautifully winds along the water of the Seekonk River for a mile or so.
That makes a huge difference – and no doubt has avoided some bike-car accidents.
We were close to a comparable stretch on the other side of the river – that’s what the $25 million would have done.
But it’s now apparently dead.
Online commenters aren’t happy about it.
On a Reddit string, “Toadscoper” accused the state of being “complicit” with the feds in rerouting the money from bikes to cars.
And there was this fascinating post from FineLobster 5322, who apparently is a disappointed planner who worked on the project: “Mind you money has already been spent on phase one so rejecting it at this point is wasting money and also against the public interest … but what do I know? I only worked on the project as an engineer … I didn’t get into this to build more highways. I do it … to give back to communities and give them more access to their environment.”
Wow. One can imagine the state planning team is devastated. That’s not a small consideration. Good people go into government to make life better in Rhode Island, and it’s a bad play to take the spirit out of the job by first assigning a great human-scale project and then, after a ton of work, trashing it.
A poster named Homosapiens simply said, “We just accept this?”
Hopefully not.
The first stretch of the path over the Henderson Bridge is done, money already sunk.
What a shame to leave that as a path to nowhere.
It doesn’t have to happen.
Between Governor McKee and our Washington delegation, there’s got to be a way to get this done.
There’s got to be.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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