WASHINGTON — They’d known this day was coming for two weeks or more. They’d stressed over it often, prepared themselves as best they could. But nothing could prepare them for this, for the moment it was time to go -- time to leave the only shelter and home some of them had known for months and, in some cases, years.
"I used to have plastic bags piled up to about here," 58-year-old Mike Harris lamented as he rolled his wheelchair to his former living area. "And my tent ... you should have seen my tent," he said. "I had the biggest tent out here."
The pitched tent is one of many for the people experiencing homelessness at the K and 2nd Street underpass in Northeast D.C.
Three to four dozen homeless people tried chaotically to beat the District of Columbia's 10 a.m. move-it-or-lose it deadline Thursday, throwing hefty begs of their belongings to outreach volunteers before the orange garbage trucks moved in and crushed what was left.
"There's no denying what's happening here," began a man named Aaron, who asked that his last name not be used. "One part of society is trying to survive, and another part of society really doesn't care and just wants to get them off the street so the city doesn't look so bad. I'm on the wrong side."
Aaron walked morosely down K Street with Buttercup, his pitbull puppy, trailing on a leash.
"I'd like to get off the streets one day, but I don't think today is going to be that day."
The wind whipped through the tunnels under the trains, turning tents into kites and forcing their owners to chase them down the sidewalk. The passion play lasted more than three hours and had no shortage of emotionally charged and vulnerable characters.
There were the evicted -- the people who paid no rent for their 10 x 10 feet grimy concrete spaces. While many understood the need for pedestrians to safely have room to walk on the sidewalk, many also never foresaw the city giving them a be-gone-by-Jan.-16 ultimatum.
Or else.
There were the volunteers from outreach groups, who hauled away whatever they were asked to and became a buffer between many of K Street’s displaced residents and the city officials entrusted with ensuring both sides of the sidewalk were power-washed clean.
By default, the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services had to play the villains, giving the city sanitation workers and their massive garbage trucks the go-ahead to take and crush what remained. They did not want to be the people who told others with only hefty bags and nylon tents to their name that, though they technically don’t have a home or address, they were still being legally removed from the sidewalk they slept on.
To their credit, agency officials and employees did not hold firm on their 10 a.m. deadline for everyone to be off K Street two weeks after the "no-tent-zone" was posted. They cajoled some and firmly told others, "it's time to get going."
Several encounters became loud and tense, but eventually, everyone moved and everything that stayed was hauled away.
There were also dispassionate observers, most from local media outlets who came to chronicle another sad chapter in the District’s uneven attempts to deal with those experiencing homelessness. Some wore ratty sweatshirts and overcoats, scribbling in their notebooks, clicking their cameras. Others wore pants suits and had their hair and makeup done just so for a potential live hit at noon.
Finally, the collateral damage – the citizens of M and L streets, who happen to also be homeless. Their somewhat livable areas became cramped as the K Street refugees began setting up as early as Wednesday night. Their few feet of space between tents that gave them just a bit of autonomy and privacy was gone.
Harris, the self-proclaimed mayor of K Street (though several of his neighbors disputed that characterization), was so busy giving newspapers, television stations and web sites interviews, he seemed surprised when 10 a.m. came and went and his tent and belongings – including two 150-pound dressers and cot – were still there.
"This is what you call transparency, baby!" he yelled, ripping open the tent and handing volunteers anything he could.
When the last pair of pants and dresser drawer had been taken, the very truculent, wheelchair-bound soul grabbed two of his canes and left his tent to be destroyed, rolling away from his nylon-covered home of the last eight months for the last time.
Asked if there was any part of him that was sad to leave, Harris replied, "no."
"I’m constantly turning a new leaf," he said. "I’m trying to tell people out here experiencing homelessness they can turn over a new leaf. Forget some of your negative histories, forget some of your sadness, and move on in life."
But where to? Shelters, some of which are already full? The underpasses at L and M? How long before those stretches of the sidewalk are declared "No Tent Zones?"
The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to the Washington Post, said 52 of last year's 117 homeless deaths were classified as "accidents," Another 27 deaths were called "natural."
One of them was known as Ms. Bobbie, a 67-year-old K Street resident of many years, who died on Dec. 17 in her cold and dank tent on the very end of the street.
Mike Harris was one of the dozens who memorialized their neighbor with a candlelight vigil on Thursday night -- after all of them were forced to leave K Street for the last time.
"Ms. Bobbie was a friend, someone I really liked," he said. "The cold got her, hypothermia probably. This place tries to get all of us at one point or another."