BRATTLEBORO-Actions taken by the town of Brattleboro to remove encampments of homeless individuals in recent weeks have left observers expressing urgency about finding shelter for the community's unhoused population.
In August, camps were dismantled in the Prospect Hill and Morningside cemeteries and under the new General John Stark bridge to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, according to town Health Officer Charles Keir III.
A notice to evict was also given to a man camped on the abandoned rail right-of-way off Riverside Drive, but he then moved from the location of his own accord.
On Aug. 15, another man lost his tents when town authorities dismantled the encampment he'd been sharing with several other homeless people in Prospect Hill Cemetery.
Larry Barrows told The Commons that all his personal belongings, kept in two wheeled suitcases and a large plastic bag in his storage tent, had also been destroyed.
"My kid's Bible, my kid's photos," he said. "It's devastating."
Interviewed at a café in town several days after the dismantlement, Barrows, 65, was bright and engaged, though gaunt and weathered in stature, his speech reflecting the impact of three strokes.
When his camp was destroyed, he said, the belongings he lost also included medications he takes for high blood pressure, among other things.
"I've got some of them back, but I ain't got all," Barrows said. "I gotta talk to my doctor still."
Keir said that "the original complaint that prompted the [Prospect Hill] clean-up [...] was from a neighboring property owner." He confirmed that Barrows's tents and personal belongings had been treated, essentially, as abandoned property.
All the tents - seven of them, by his estimate - and personal belongings at the impromptu campground were taken to Casella Waste Systems for shipment to the company's landfill in Coventry, in Orleans County.
Keir noted that tents are not considered personal property: "We destroy them. They go to the landfill."
"I don't remember seeing any personal belongings that we deemed as salvageable," he continued.
The encampment occupied an area at the eastern edge of the cemetery and could not be seen from all the nearby streets. The Department of Public Works had to ream out a short access lane to reach the site.
The haul of tents, other personal property, and garbage from the operation amounted to 1½ dump-truck loads, by Keir's estimate.
'Full of hypodermics'
To the town, what is and isn't personal property is a matter of interpretation.
Personal property is what is "identifiable as personal property," in the words of Keir, who also serves as assistant fire chief and has been handling the break-up of homeless camps under the town's policy for the last 2½ years.
A big, opaque plastic bag full of who-knows-what, such as the bag Barrows spoke of, is thus treated as trash.
"When you find something like that, you always look inside," Barrows said, incredulous about the town's handling of his belongings.
For his part, Keir emphasized the need to protect town personnel from risks, be they hypodermic needles or rotten food.
Although all tents are in any event sent to the landfill, The Commons asked why it isn't the town's practice to discard, for example, a rotten sandwich that's inside the tent and then save the tent so that it can be used again (presumably by the resident). Town personnel - firefighters - will by contrast enter a burning building at great risk to save an occupant.
Keir responded that "comparing the risk/gain associated with cleaning up an encampment site to that of an occupant trapped in a burning building or in need of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation is not appropriate. [...] I will not unnecessarily expose town staff to the hazards of rotten food, feces, rodents, or hypodermic needles to save camping equipment that is creating a public health hazard."
Keir said town personnel understand that tents are people's homes but have to "weigh that against the health hazards and the safety of the property."
"We don't assume everything is trash," he said. "It's common enough that we'll identify personal property - like a birth certificate, pills, Medicaid information."
Keir relays salvaged items to either the Department of Public Works or the Recreation and Parks Department. In either case the items are stored for two weeks and then thrown out if not claimed.
But, he continued, "I'm not aware of anyone that's actually collected their belongings during the time I've been here."
At the Prospect Hill site, Keir estimated, "at least two or three hundred" needles were found scattered about and were removed using grabbers and needle-resistant gloves.
Within a few days after the dismantlement, more drug paraphernalia had been discarded at the top of the adjacent hillside leading down to Vernon Street.
Keir described the very steep, trash-laden slope as another hazard that workers had to avoid.
The slope is "certainly full of hypodermics," he noted.
Groundworks' role
As a goal in the handling of encampments, a policy document issued by the Town Manager's Office lists the objective that "people experiencing homelessness [be] connected to social services."
More specifically, the document notes that when dismantlement is necessary, the town "notifies Groundworks and their staff meets with the person to attempt to get them to voluntarily move and to assist them in moving."
However, Libby Bennett, the executive director of the nonprofit that provides various services to homeless people, wrote in an emailed statement that "Groundworks did not receive notification from the Town of Brattleboro that these August encampment cleanups were going to happen."
The town, she wrote, "is usually very good about letting us know that they're going to visit an encampment."
As it happened, the staff members at Groundworks were notified of the Prospect Hill dismantlement "by a client who brought in a flyer that was left behind at a tent," she wrote.
A staff person "then went to be present at the cleanup," Bennett wrote.
"We try to give as much notice as possible" to residents if their encampment is to be dismantled, Keir said. "We always try to be as compassionate as possible."
Having posted eviction notices on all the encampment's tents on Aug. 8, a Friday, town employees also visited the site on Aug. 14 to notify the residents personally that they would need to leave, he said.
At that point, "some tents were definitely abandoned [...] while others were currently occupied - those folks were warned. And all the tents were taken down on Friday," Keir said, at which time "the sites were not occupied."
None of the residents were on hand to observe the process. Those present included 10 town employees, in addition to the Groundworks representative and a representative from Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS), he said.
"I wasn't there on those two prior visits," Barrows said, when asked about the town's advance warnings. "I never saw any paperwork. If I had, I would have been more than happy to move my stuff."
Asked if other residents of the site had mentioned the impending action, he said, "Nobody told me anything."
HCRS declined to answer questions about the dismantlement.
'A byproduct of other things'
The process of removing homeless encampments brings Whac-A-Mole to mind: Get rid of the camps here and they resurface elsewhere, or even pop up again at the old location.
Asked what the solution is to local homelessness, Keir said, "I'm in no position to find a solution. That's not in my purview. I sit on various committees that sit on this issue. It's a much larger conversation than this interview can handle.
"The encampment problem is just a byproduct of other things," he continued.
Asked the same question, Bennett said, "Ultimately, homelessness is a symptom of a much larger housing crisis. [...] We haven't kept up with the need."
As to the role of shelters as an intermediate step between an often-leaky tent and actual housing, she said, "We don't have enough shelter beds in this community, or in this state, and the need is growing. Vermont can no longer congratulate itself on having a low percentage of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness."
She referred to a study by the advocacy group Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, which found that the state's 2025 unsheltered population, determined by a so-called point-in-time count, had increased by 62% since the 2024 count.
In an email, Selectboard member Isaac Evans-Frantz noted that at a recent Selectboard retreat, he requested that "shelter be a priority for our board for the coming period of time, but it didn't quite make the cut."
"Housing did get voted in as a top priority for the board, [...] but there's still the urgent need for shelter in the immediate time period," Evans-Frantz said.
Exploring the options
Barrows returned to his former home on the cemetery property after the interview. One tent had gone up within the prior few days, but its owner or owners were nowhere to be seen. An Aldi shopping bag had been carefully hung from a tree limb near to the tent so as to keep it out of reach of animals.
Excepting the problematical adjacent slope, the area was fairly clean. No human feces were visible. The town's dump trucks had left large ruts.
Barrows pointed out a memorial obelisk that appeared to have been disturbed, lying on the ground with large, fresh-looking scratches on it that suggested that a piece of heavy equipment might have hit it.
"If that was my family, I'd sue them," he said, referring to the town.
Asked about the monument, Keir stated in an email that "it is likely that the stone referenced was one that had been previously knocked off its base." He added that no grave markers "had been reported as damaged."
The job of restoring the area was far from complete. Over the crest of the steep embankment, a potpourri of debris lay on the slope. Keir said that the slope was too precipitous for workers to climb down to finish the trash pickup. Asked if he had approached volunteers who might be more willing to work on the slope, he said he hadn't.
He then used the same phrase as many others concerned with the swelling presence of people in Brattleboro who have no homes.
"We're exploring all the options," he said.
This News item by C.B. Hall was written for The Commons.