Police ‘Sweeps’ of Homeless Camps Are Worse than You Think

Police “sweeps” of homeless encampments aren’t what you think — they’re much worse. I know, because I’ve been a victim of one.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that unhoused people can be punished for sleeping outside, even when no shelter or affordable housing is available. Enforcement often involves “sweeps” where officers destroy or confiscate property and arrest or fine unhoused individuals.

To make matters worse, President Trump just announced that he wants to strip almost $4 billion in funding from permanent housing programs, dumping close to 200,000 more people onto the streets.

Stunningly, some of these funds will even be diverted to pay for more police “sweeps” like the one I lived through. In a time of rising housing costs and wages that won’t keep up with the cost of living, this is nothing short of criminalizing poverty.

I spent part of my childhood as a ward of the state before finally being adopted by my grandmother, who already had 13 children and whose house had dozens of people in it on any given day. I worked hard to rise above my circumstances and graduated from high school.

With a new baby and my baby’s father, I set out to make a better life. But unfortunately, I experienced escalating domestic abuse and ended up in a shelter.

I kept working and got my own place. Believing my partner had changed, we got married and had three more kids. But the abuse started again, and this time it almost killed me. My children and I ended up in a shelter once more.

I managed to get another place. But when you’re low-income, you find mostly substandard housing, fire hazards, and unscrupulous landlords. After nearly dying from ovarian cancer and losing my grandmother, mother, big sister, uncle, and last husband, I accepted the offer of a family who was part of my church’s Texas branch to come and live with them.

When that house burned down, I bought a bus and my 18-year-old daughter and I moved into it. Eventually, my daughter went back up north, and I stayed in the bus.

My bus was parked where others like me parked their vans, buses, RVs, and trailers. We looked out for each other — I even invited my neighbors for Thanksgiving dinner.

I moved all my things out of my bus to clean it and get it ready for cooking and hosting. Then I stepped out for some medical appointments and to pick up some last-minute items. It was the day before Thanksgiving.

As I walked back to my site, I turned the corner and saw everything I owned was gone.

A neighbor came out, distressed. She said the police had come and confiscated everything — food, water, dog food, my propane tank, my generator, my heater, and my clothes and blankets. They took my tools, my motorized bike, and my family heirlooms — even my mom’s and husband’s ashes.

My neighbors had tried to intervene, telling the cops that I had just gone out and would be right back. It didn’t matter.

They’d done it throughout the camp. And a young man I knew died that November night — Thanksgiving — after the cops had taken everything he had to keep him warm. I nearly froze myself in my empty, metal bus.

This isn’t how life in the United States should be. We work hard, we overcome challenges, and still, housing is out of reach — unaffordable at the legal minimum wage in every county in the country.

We must address both the unlivable minimum wage and the severe lack of affordable housing in the United States. And in the meantime, police shouldn’t be allowed to plunder everything someone owns just because they’re unhoused. We’re just trying to get by.

This piece was originally published on our sister site OtherWords.org.