Stolen Mail, Illegal Camping, and Piles of Trash Found Under the Stewart Parkway Bridge

Yesterday I visited both sides of the Stewart Park bridge and here’s a breakdown of what I saw. First, on the North Side closest to the Stewart Park Band shell, an illegal camp has popped up, as well as a large amount of trash strewn around the area. The majority of the trash is within 50 feet of the river with some of it spilling down over the banks. On the south side of the bridge closest to Harvard avenue, it appears someone has begun living there as well, though there is no tent. There was stolen mail from a street off Harvard laying on the ground. Also, there were several piles of trash that had been stolen from the YMCA. I’m working on getting the mail returned to the owners and I alerted the YMCA that these people are still stealing their trash. I will organize a cleanup to pickup the trash in these areas if anyone would be up for joining. We must be more persistent than those who insist on trashing our parks and our rivers. We will not allow people to camp anywhere they want in our community. Encouraging these people to break the laws encouraged them to break other laws and is not helpful to them. We need to break the cycle and figure out how to help these people, including helping them incur consequences that are effective. Our current laws are 100% ignored because these people have no fear or respect of the consequences. We also need to open a temporary designated “camping” location and provide some portable toilets and a hand washing station. This will provide illegal campers a place to go and easy access for local aid agencies to offer their help to these people. I will make another post soon about a good location for this temporary camping spot, as well as a long term location.