Forest Park United Methodist Church officials say they're making plans with other Methodist groups to find new accomodations for people living in the tent city.

PANAMA CITY — A tent city of out-of-town hurricane recovery workers and some homeless people erected beside a local church a month ago could be relocated by Dec. 10.

Forest Park United Methodist Church, which has let the approximately 100 tents and RVs stay in its parking lot, previously set the tentative relocation date and recently contacted national and state Methodist church organizations to take oversight of the community and the moving plans, church officials say. It’ll be the second relocation for the tent city — a community of mainly cleanup and repair crews who say they can’t find vacant and affordable hotel rooms in the city.

Sam Reyes, youth pastor at Forest Park and the church’s spokesman for the tent city, said that for some time the plan had been to move the community on Dec. 10 out of the parking lot. However, the move date is not definite, Reyes said.

“Things are in flux,” Reyes said. “We’ve called in other groups who are much more equipped to handle this.”

Specifically, the church has asked the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the humanitarian arm of the United Methodist Church, to oversee the tent city.

“We just had a meeting and in the next few days, things will be under discussion on who will move and where,” Reyes said.

The tent city first popped up on property beside the city’s Sam’s Club in the early days after Hurricane Michael. The community consisted of out-of-town crews in search of cleanup and repair work, but who couldn’t finding lodging in the city. However, nobody asked permission to be there and so the property owners placed no trespassing signs at the site about month ago, leading to the church taking the workers. Over time, the community has grown to include some residents displaced by the hurricane and others who were homeless before the storm.

“There’s some people who showed up from another area who are homeless but came because they knew there’d be people handing out food and aid,” said Chief Scott Ervin of the Panama City Police Department. “And there’s people looking to work or people here to work.”

Ervin noted that the tent city had been relatively quiet up until last weekend, when the department received a few incident calls about the site.

“We’re starting to see some issues,” Ervin said.

Life around the rows of tents, nearly all draped in blue tarps to hold in more heat, was peaceful and sparse just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Most of the residents had apparently already left to work debris cleanup jobs. Piles of donated clothes and supplies were stacked behind fences in the church’s basketball court.

And though there were a few toys by a couple of the tents, there were no children to be seen.

“I’d say almost 90 percent of the people here are working and don’t have a place to live,” said John Stuart, who has a tent in the community. “These aren’t hobos on the railroad … there’s just a few of them who were homeless before the storm.”

Stuart, a carpenter by trade, came from Mims, Florida before the hurricane to help a friend work on a house in the city. Stuart said the hurricane destroyed the house and the home where he was living.

Wearing a gray hat with “Michael Survivor” printed in yellow on it, Stuart pointed to the brown tent he had heated with a donated generator. Stuart said like him, many of the people at tent city either couldn’t find vacant hotel rooms or ones that were affordable.

“The nearest hotel is $165 a night,” he said.

Also, Stuart said he and a few others can’t get federal temporary housing assistance since they weren’t residents of the city before the hurricane.

“Right now all I need is around $130 for gas so I can drive to Michigan and stay with my parents,” he said.

Bill Grace came from just outside Ft. Myers to the city more than two weeks ago to get work removing tree debris. Grace got a late start late Wednesday morning, and was still in the church parking lot with a truck loaded with tools and equipment, including chainsaws. Without any other places to stay, Grace found himself living in the tent community.

“I’ll probably stay here another two weeks, then go to Mexico City, that’s ground zero,” Grace, who was referring to Mexico Beach, said before eating some scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Nearby, Jeff Johnson waited in line to get some breakfast. Johnson said he was homeless and living in a shelter in the city before the hurricane hit. Johnson said he later ended up in one of the early shelters set up by the American Red Cross for displaced residents after the hurricane.

Johnson said he volunteered with The Red Cross, helping people at three different shelters over five weeks before his work ended and he was moved to the tent city.

“I like helping people,” Johnson said, still with a Red Cross badge around his neck.

Warren Watson chose to eat a granola bar for breakfast alone in his tent on Wednesday. Watson said he was in tent city because his Callaway home was damaged by the hurricane, then looted.

“I’ve been working on it, trying to get the house cleaned up after the looters,” Watson said. “Once it’s cleaned up, I’m going to try to sell it and get a fresh start somewhere else.”