This past weekend, Inweekly interviewed a woman who had lived two weeks at the Re-Entry Alliance Pensacola’s outdoor camp on the Pathway for Change’s property on Blount Street behind Baptist Hospital.
The city of Pensacola helped REAP open the camp after the city’s temporary camp under the Interstate 110 was shut down earlier this year. The REAP site reportedly housed 38 people when it first opened.
The interview took place a week after the camp’s director, Melissa Johnson, had been fired when a volunteer went before the Escambia County Commission with allegations of mistreatment of homeless people at the camp.
The woman that Inweekly interviewed agreed to talk about the camp under the condition that we would use a fictitious name to identify her.
Seeking safety from a domestic violence situation, Anne was referred to the REAP camp by FavorHouse, which didn’t have any space in its shelter. Melissa Johnson took her to the enclosed camp, pointed out her tent, and left her with 10 men and no other female on the site.
Anne felt threatened not only by the men but also Johnson. “She was very belligerent from the very beginning.”
She also had to deal with an erratic camp supervisor that was “very unstable as well and was a bit abusive.” Anne added, “One minute, you were doing something wrong. The next minute they were acting concerned for you. It was a rollercoaster; you were walking on eggshells.”
Anne and her fellow campers were given food infrequently. She shared, “Meals were very few. And when they did come, we did not get water, hardly at all. We never got ice.”
The camp had no way to refrigerate food. If someone missed a meal, there was no way to keep it from spoiling in the heat.
“It really couldn’t be saved because everything was laid out in the heat, on a table,” Anne said. “They had saved a Chick-fil-A sandwich for me while I was in the hospital. And when I came back, I was worried about it. It had been out in the heat for so long, but I hadn’t had a meal in days. I ate it anyway because I’m diabetic and needed the food.”
She continued, “I got sick; a lot of us were getting sick.”
REAP provided the campers with no hot water. The plastic utensils had to be washed and cleaned in cold water. The emergency exit at the back of the campsite was blocked with debris.
One morning, Councilman Delarian Wiggins showed up at the camp asking about the conditions. Anne feared she should be kicked out of the camp if she told the truth.
She shared, “I had to say, ‘Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine here.’ But I really wanted to say, ‘Please rescue me. Get me out of here. We don’t have water. I mean, I’m dying here.’”
After Wiggins left, Johnson showed up. Anne described the moment: “She is in a huge rage. And she’s cussing and swearing. And we needed to clean the whole f‘ing campsite up because the state was coming in.“We didn’t even have time to finish cleaning up. It was so disgusting.”
She continued, “Those tents had been—I mean, it was like a revolving door, and the stuff people brought in, you can only imagine what was inside those tents. And it was unsanitary.”
Most of the tents had screens that were ripped and the zippers didn’t work. Mosquitoes and other bugs would attack the campers. “You couldn’t sleep well because bugs attacked you. One person totally flipped out and was having a fit running around the camp because of the bugs attacking him.”
Anne’s legs were covered with cuts and bug bites. Several were infected. “I told Melissa I needed to go to the doctor, but she ignored it. She didn’t care.”
Anne and a fellow camper tried to clean the pantry, an unairconditioned shed. “We started going through stuff, and things would literally just crumble as we tried to get them into a garbage can. Things were completely all green mold. Bugs were running as we were pulling stuff out. Canned food had stuff growing on it. It was just… I almost threw up. It was just disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Anne’s health deteriorated over the Labor Day weekend. “We did not have food all those three days. I was found unconscious because I bottomed out, being diabetic with no food.”
Walter Arrington, a homeless health navigator with Community Health Northwest Florida, came in contact with Anne and transported her to Community Health’s behavioral health department. She was assessed and connected with a local provider who could provide her safer housing.
The Inweekly interview lasted over an hour. Anne talked about how the camp was promised food many times, but it wasn’t delivered. She saw REAP staff pick through donations before allowing campers to get to them. She questioned why REAP could have racks and racks of clothes at its Max-Well Center on North Palafox and not offer any to the campers. She complained about some campers having weapons and the lack of any intake system.
“These people should not be running shelters,” Anne said of REAP. “I believe that if you’re going to be running a shelter, you need to have compassion. You need to be non-judgmental, to have understanding. You need to be willing to be supportive, understanding, listen to their story, where they came from, and be willing to help them. But let me tell you, the word ‘compassion’ can go a long way in someone’s healing process.”
Though safe, Anne shared her tremendous guilt about those she left behind at the REAP camp.
“I’m traumatized. I am absolutely traumatized,” she said. “And I have a lot of guilt that they are back there, suffering. I’ve been talking to a therapist that I feel like I should not be sleeping in the bed right now, and they’re not because I care very deeply about them.”
Meanwhile, Councilman Wiggins has called for a moratorium on city funding for the REAP camp to give time for an audit of its finances. The city council will vote on it Thursday night.
