Number of unsheltered homeless has climbed each year.

City's $500,000 spending for emergency beds and storage lockers will run out in June.

A $35 million budget shortfall almost guarantees no new money for homeless spending.

City has 21-day rule giving homeless time to leave with their possessions before camps are torn down.

Under the broad concrete shoulders of the towering downtown overpass at Jefferson and Jackson streets, dozens of homeless have created their own open-air shelter.

They sleep in tents pitched against the smooth, cold walls on sidewalks littered with old pizza boxes, candy wrappers, orange peels and cigarette butts.

Some stumble into the heavy traffic headed downtown and panhandle for change. Others smoke meth and sell spice. Around them, the air is thick with the potent smell of human waste and weed.

For nearly a year, they have been there, and the city has finally had enough. The area is too unsafe and unsanitary for people to live in, city officials say.

"We've now provided, I think, as many opportunities as we can for people to store their stuff, to get off the street, to go into shelter," said Eric Friedlander, the city's director of Resilience and Community Services. "And now, it's time. That's why we're clearing it now."

Even some homeless people who sleep there agree it's time to go.

More:Louisville just closed a large homeless camp. Here's how you can help

"Good. You can't live on a sidewalk," said a man who calls himself "Detroit." "In no city in the world are you allowed to live on a sidewalk.

"You can't blame the city for that."

Read more:Storage lockers available for homeless ahead of camp clear out

But the camp's demise by no means is the end of Louisville's homeless dilemma — which becomes more intractable as it grows.

For the few-dozen people removed from the downtown camp and the rest of the city’s street homeless, there’s nowhere else to go. They’ve been scouting the woods and viaducts to create other makeshift camps.

The city spent more than $500,000 from a budget surplus on six months of stopgap measures, including more outreach workers, emergency beds and storage lockers for the homeless. Next month, a homeless camp task force will make longer-term recommendations.

But they won't be enough. The city’s street homeless population has steadily crept up in recent years.

The stopgap funding will run out in June. And with the city now facing a $35 million budget shortfall, any new efforts have almost no chance of being funded.

"I'm devastated by it," Friedlander said of the proposed cuts. "I know what these organizations do. It's primary prevention. … When that goes away, we will have more folks on the street."

Metro budget gap:What cuts may come after tax hike vote?

Camps pushed out of hiding, into the open

A perfect storm of factors brought the encampment to trendy NuLu's doorstep: Camps once out of sight in wooded areas and off main roads were shut down by the city, and the construction of the new Interstate 65 ramp erected a massive roof right outside of downtown's biggest homeless shelter.

Gradually, a camp sprung up across from Wayside Christian Mission. Over the last nine months or so, it has metastasized into something increasingly dangerous.

Where the camp's residents once felt there was safety in numbers in a highly visible spot, they and their advocates now say it's become too drug infested and unclean to live in.

That led to the city posting "No Trespassing" notices at the camp March 8, marking Friday as the earliest possible date the camp could be cleaned out. Friedlander said the city is planning to clear the camp Monday morning.

"Detroit," whose real name is Brian, pointed out problems that others in the camp noted as well: The trash everywhere, the pungent smell, the rampant substance abuse. No one wants to be around that, he said.

Moving will be a hassle, Detroit admits, with his large tent and its intricate setup inside, complete with a real bed. He's not sure where he'll go — somewhere in the woods, he thinks — and wishes he had leads on a safe spot to camp.

"I wish I knew somewhere to go," he said. "I'd go right now."

Opinion:Here's what Louisville is doing to address the city's homeless crisis

More homeless needs than resources

The tent city next to Wayside's shelter might be the most visible element of Louisville's homeless puzzle, but the problem runs much deeper.

There aren't enough shelter beds for all the people who need them, and stable, affordable housing is far out of reach for most.

Natalie Harris, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said the city is having an increasing problem with shelter space. Federal money for transitional housing is harder to come by, and drug addiction and opioids are exacerbating the situation.

Harris said there are 518 emergency shelter beds in Louisville in addition to the 100-person low-barrier shelter at Wayside.

It's still not enough.

So, where will Louisville's homeless go?

“The sad reality is underneath an overpass or in an abandoned building or house, said Jeff Gill, founder of the street outreach organization Hip Hop Cares. "Lack of shelter is a problem.”

It's a fact that more people are sleeping on Louisville's streets than just a few years ago.

From January:More than 100 homeless people found sleeping outside in polar vortex

An annual census of Louisville's homeless found that area nonprofits served 774 unsheltered homeless (people living outside) in 2017, up from 608 two years earlier.

Preliminary numbers from the annual street count in January showed that 118 people were sleeping outside in the city, down from 153 in 2018.

But, there's a big caveat: Another 161 people were sleeping in Wayside's "low-barrier" shelter, which has a lower entry standard than other facilities and accepts people who are high, drunk, have pets, are with a partner or have other challenges.

If not for the Wayside shelter, which opened in December, many of those 161 people would have been sleeping outside.

Many do anyway.

Gill, who also does outreach work for the St. John Center for Homeless Men, said he checks on people at roughly 15 camps around town. Some people live under viaducts or in wooded areas, while others find refuge in abandoned buildings.

As an outreach worker, Gill said clearing camps and the scattering that follows will make it harder to keep track of the people outreach organizations serve. But, he said the city has been patient, and he recognizes the conditions in the camp are a problem.

"It’s so out of control down there — the environment that’s been fostered down there, the accessibility of drugs — it’s become something that’s not really safe," Gill said. "The accessibility of spice out there is like living behind a Circle K and having a craving for a Polar Pop."

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Short-term progress made, but bigger problems loom

Under Monday morning's gray skies, a small grand opening was underway at the old First Link grocery. The old supermarket is still gone, but in its fenced-in parking lot, a new initiative is not even two weeks old.

The St. John Center for Homeless Men hosted the affair with cupcakes and coffee to celebrate the opening of its new storage facility — lockers housed in shipping containers — which they say give homeless people a much-needed place to store items for safekeeping.

"If someone needs food, clothing and shelter, I think it is the local government's job to step in and do something about that," said Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith, D-4th District, during the ceremony. "Until everyone has their basic needs met, it makes no sense to give more to those who have more."

But the success St. John celebrated could be short-lived.

The lockers, like the low-barrier shelter at Wayside, were paid for with surplus funding that Metro Council approved for homeless services in December. The $45,000 in city money for the lockers was one-time funding. St. John will need money to pay for staffing at the facility if it is to stay open.

Sexton Smith said she wants people to understand the true cost of the coming cuts that will result from the Metro Council refusing to approve an insurance tax increase.

"Not having programs or services in place, in many situations, is much more expensive than the actual dollars," she said.

Background:Metro Council rejects tax hike, leaving city to make $35 million in cuts

With $35 million in cuts ahead because of the rejected tax hike, getting more money seems impossible.

"It keeps me up at night," St. John Executive Director Maria Price said.

Nina Moseley, the chief operating officer at Wayside Christian Mission, said it's too soon to say whether Wayside will continue operating the low-barrier shelter past June 30. She doubts the city will find money for it. And it's not cheap to shelter and feed 100 people.

"I guess the city is pretty much set on pulling money away from the external agencies they fund," Moseley said.

That means more people on the streets.

"What we pay for is displacement," said Friedlander. "We’re not paying for mitigation. This money from Metro Council is the first bit of mitigation. It’s a small down payment on what we need to do.

"Unfortunately, we seem to be walking the opposite direction in terms of funding from Metro Council, but that still doesn’t change that long term, there needs to be more services and more investment.”

People like Felecia Yarber, who has called the downtown camp home for two months, don't have time for long-term solutions. She wants to go to detox after the camp is swept, but she's struggled with her meth addiction and her mental state.

Yarber doesn't mind that she's being pushed out, but she's not sure where she'll go.

"It's hard when you wake up and you don't have anything to propel you forward," Yarber said. "I'm weird, and I'm high. … But that has nothing to do with being a person."

Until something changes, Yarber will keep looking for her next camp.

Reach Tessa Duvall at tduvall@courier-journal.com and 502-582-4059. Twitter: @TessaDuvall. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/subscribe.

Ordinance requires 21-day notice before clearing camps

Under a new rule approved by Louisville Metro Council in 2018, the city must post a 21-day notice and notify the Coalition for the Homeless before a camp can be shut down.

The ordinance says the coalition should work with similar agencies to help those who are displaced, including finding "any available assistance with transitional or permanent housing, or other services."

There is an exemption if the Louisville health department says an emergency exists. In that situation, the rule only requires an encampment to be removed under "whatever notice is reasonable."

In those cases, the city must maintain any of the homeless person’s personal belongings found at the camp in a safe and secure location for at least a month, and provide for the safekeeping of any pets at the shelter.