Rochester city workers swept up the contests of a homeless tent encampment on Loomis Street Monday after a man was found dead inside the encampment on Sunday.
Rochester’s top lawyer, City Corporation Counsel Linda Kingsley, said in a press conference that the situation was heartbreaking, but the city has no choice except to arrest people who continue to trespass on the property. City crews are fencing the land in Northeast Rochester off to keep them out. The land is city owned.
Kingsley said Monroe County social services has been to the Loomis Street site a number of times with offers of alternative shelter and drug treatment programs, but some of the people there refused to accept other options.
Kingsley said there was substantial evidence of heroin use at the site including numerous needles scattered across the ground. She says the city has issued cease-and-desist letters to a pair of volunteer organizations that were working with the homeless there and apparently advised them not to leave the site.