HOUSTON – Authorities issued a call for residents of a homeless camp near Midtown to leave by the end of the day Monday.
Officials from the Texas Department of Transportation and Houston police were at the homeless camp Monday morning on Fannin Street under the Southwest Freeway overpass.
“We've got to pack up our stuff and get on out of here,” said a man who’s been living at the camp.
Crews could be seen building a fence around the area where the camp is located. Officers with HPD’s Mounted Patrol were on hand to oversee the closure.
“Y'all keep moving us around. You don't understand. We don't have anywhere else to go. We are going to fight to live,” the man said.
TxDOT officials said the camp is being cleared and the area fenced off because of recent safety issues, including people walking on an exit ramp of Southwest Freeway.
The decision to close the camp under the freeway comes on the heels of complaints, lodged by nervous business owners and residents from the nearby Museum Park neighborhood.
“It's not about being in favor or not. It's not a solution,” Judy Francis said.
Francis said camps have been closed down before. She believes drug abuse, specifically kush, is the underlying issue.
“People like to throw around the homeless as a word we are getting upset about and that’s not it. It's really the drug and crime population that's rampant,” Francis said.
The city admits it has been dealing with large concentrations of kush users under 59 in Midtown and that police are actively working to address the problem.
