Preparations start for large homeless camp cleanup in Colorado Springs

Seven large dumpsters have been placed in the homeless camp southwest of downtown Colorado Springs that will be cleared out and cleaned up Tuesday.

Colorado Springs police, Code Enforcement, Parks and Recreation and Streets Division will conduct the cleanup along with the litter control agency Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful.

Officials said up to 20 people will participate in the cleanup, which will start at 7 a.m. and presumably after the last of 100 homeless campers have been evicted.

Because of the camp’s size — it’s been described by police as the largest in city history — workers expect the cleanup to take two days.

“The city does pay for it when it’s a project of this magnitude with as big of a priority as this has,” said Garrett Schumacher, a Code Enforcement supervisor. “We will front the money. We will try to recoup it from property owners when that’s feasible. But it’s beyond that at this point. It just needs to get cleaned up.”

Some of the evicted homeless campers are unhappy about the situation.

“If you look at it as a negative, it’s going to be a negative,” said Omar Medina, a camp resident. “Why can’t we start looking at it as a positive? What’s the positive of it? It’s that there are people out there cleaning up.”

But it’s not happening enough for city officials to change their plans.

“And it’s not just trash and garbage we have to pick up,” Schumacher said. “There’s also human waste and drug needles. We have to handle that very carefully.”

Some homeless campers said the money spent on cleanup would be better used to provide long-term housing and assistance for the homeless. They also say that camps would be far less messy if the city placed more dumpsters and portable toilets in camps.

Officials said they have tried that in the past, only to have those resources damaged or destroyed.

“It works at smaller camps,” Schumacher said. “But once a camp gets large, people have to walk too far to dispose of their trash, and the dumpsters get used less and less.”

The overall cost of cleaning the camp has yet to be determined.

Police said if campers return to the site, four affected property owners will be responsible for maintaining it.