Duggan: Detroit to put end to tent city

etroit — The city could soon take action on homeless residents who have erected a makeshift tent city near the downtown, Mayor Mike Duggan said on Thursday.

"We're going to have to solve that," he told reporters as he toured the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center. "We've had folks from the homeless shelters out there every day for the last four or five days. At some point, we're going to have to enforce the law."

Duggan said the people who are living in an encampment off east Jefferson Avenue, between Rivard and St. Aubin, can't have open fires, let trash pile up or stay in the parks at night. He vowed to spend some time in the shelters to look at conditions, and will continue to send social service workers to the tents to try and move the people inside buildings.

"It's basically 10-12 individuals who have decided being out in a tent is better than being in the shelters. We're handling it sensitively ... one way or another, we'll get them removed."

Stephon Charles Jones, the "mayor" of the encampment, said he has been at the site for seven months.

"We are not trying to make this permanent but this is what we have to do for the time being," Jones said.

An estimated 100 homeless people come through the tent city daily, Jones said.

To keep warm as temperatures plummet this week into single digits, a large fire constantly burns at the site. At night, folks huddle inside one of the six tents equipped with blankets and a kerosene heater. Food is prepared on portable grills.

There was a tent city near Hart Plaza across from the city-county building but the people were asked to move.

"You have people who talk about the homeless but they don't do nothing," Jones said. "We are not bad people. Everybody falls."