PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge has ruled that Philadelphia city officials can clear out a homeless encampment on the city’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway and two smaller encampments elsewhere.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno issued the ruling Tuesday but required the city to give occupants at least 72 hours notice before clearing the site and to store and return any property seized.
City officials didn’t indicate how quickly they intended to act, but Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters before the ruling that officials would continue to work to get more people into shelters voluntarily - which, he said, is “what we’ve been doing from the very beginning.”
City workers had earlier posted a closure notice at the encampments but postponed plans for action after camp residents sought an injunction.
Robreno’s order applies to the parkway encampment of about 150 people and to smaller encampments outside the headquarters of the city housing agency and near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The tent encampment on the parkway was erected on a baseball field June 10. Organizers said the camps were tied to the Black Lives Matter movement and were demanding equal access to fair, safe and affordable housing. Philadelphia Housing Action - the coalition of groups that organized the encampment - said it was conceived as a form of political protest over city policies toward the homeless and the lack of low-income housing in the city.
A lawyer representing occupants had asked the judge last week to block the eviction, arguing that the sites were protected by the First Amendment. City officials argued that the settlements violated city laws prohibiting camping and that the tent village on the Parkway, in particular, posed a threat to public “health, safety and welfare.”
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