Last fall, we submitted a proposal to the city of Tucson to provide and manage services at Estevan Park, where there has been an encampment for many years. The City’s MO has been sending police to regularly sweep the camp and evict the people who live there. There are bathrooms at the park, which have rarely been unlocked and stocked for use by the residents there. The city sites safety as their grounds to restrict access to the bathrooms. Over the past year, we’ve been part of a group called the Bathroom Access Coalition, whose goal it is to ensure clean bathroom access for all Tucsonans. We’ve also been doing our best to support our unsheltered neighbors in other ways- providing access to electricity for people to charge their devices and microwave food in a well lit area. During the early days of the pandemic, we saw gaping holes of need that the city, shelters, and social services just weren’t filling.
As is to be expected, there were lots of ups and downs. We didn’t have the space or the resources to provide what people needed, and there were lots of roadblocks from the City and Union Pacific, who owns the land directly west of our warehouse. The charging station was, at best, a temporary emergency response to an immediate need. Throughout 2022, we spent a lot of time thinking about two problems- that we weren’t able to meet the needs we were trying to address with the charging station, and that the cops kept evicting the residents of the camp at Estevan Park. We had an ongoing dialogue with the City of Tucson, urging them to stop conducting sweeps, and instead try and address the root causes of houselessness in the city. Through those talks, we eventually found ourselves in a position to propose to the city that we handle daily maintenance of the park- meaning that we were responsible for cleaning, restocking, and unlocking the bathrooms. Our other requests included installing electrical outlets, potable water sources, and ramadas for shade. So far progress hasn’t been made with those things, but we’re hopeful.
The City of Tucson accepted our proposal, which included a $75,000 budget to cover costs of supplies and employees to take shifts at the park to clean the bathrooms and act as a liaison for the folks that live at camp. However, that money isn’t available to us right away- we need to fundraise for the park project, and the city will give us monthly reimbursements for the money we spent, up to $75,000. This means that we have to do a lot of fundraising this year in order to get this project off the ground! Our goal is to have a mobile shower unit at the park available to residents, as well as harm reduction supplies like narcan and fentanyl test strips available 24/7. Keeping bathrooms unlocked, and clean will mean that residents at camp have a reliable place to use the bathroom and take care of hygiene needs. While we wait for the city to execute long term solutions to the housing crisis and rising houselessness, we are doing what we can to make life for our unsheltered neighbors as safe and easy as possible. At the moment, we have three Splinter employees taking shifts monitoring the park, for four hours each day. We get monthly reimbursements for their time, as well as supplies necessary to keep the park clean. Taking language from the proposal we wrote to the city, this is an opportunity for both the City of Tucson and the neighborhood to test out and investigate how we might mitigate the worst impacts of the housing crisis in a humane, collaborative and budget conscious way. Given our work in the area for the last few years, we truly believe that we can reduce the impacts of the housing crisis by building stability, community, and a network of support that allows agencies and unsheltered individuals to more efficiently engage.