Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, right, said Tuesday that the city was clearing a homeless encampment after it was the site of a shooting. File Photo Craig Lassig/EPA
Sept. 16 (UPI) — City authorities in Minneapolis on Tuesday cleared a homeless encampment located on private land after a mass shooting at the site left multiple people injured.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other city officials announced the move during a press conference, saying the camp located on the city’s south side was unsafe and unsanitary, attracting drug trafficking and violence. The camp’s demolition comes a day after a shooting at the site that left seven people severely injured. It was the second mass shooting that occurred on the city’s south side and part of a particularly violent summer for Minneapolis.
The camp’s closure comes as cities across the United States have struggled with encampments as they’ve seen soaring housing prices and homeless populations. But Frey insisted the camp and others like it are not a solution to homelessness and are unsafe.
“They are not safe for the people living at the encampment, for the people going to the encampment to buy and or sell drugs, they are not safe for the surrounding community,” he said.
Roughly 75 people lived at the camp and have been offered shelter and other services, city officials said. A video of the camp’s clearing by KTSP shows a crew dismantling structures and loading debris into a garbage truck.
The camp had become a public health nuisance with people living among drug paraphernalia, garbage, spoiled food and human waste, said Enrique Velasquez, the city’s director of regulatory services. He said the property’s owner, Hamoudi Sabri, had been repeatedly cited.
Sabri said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune that his encampment was a response to what he called was city leader’s neglect to the area.
“Instead of emergency response, the pattern has been abandonment – and repeated displacement that leaves people more vulnerable to violence,” he said.
Frey said addressing the camp was “particularly difficult” because of the city’s fraught relationship with Sabri and that he was expecting both sides to go to court over the camp’s closing.