The Daily Signal
If Washington, D.C., isn’t going to clean up homeless encampments, it should embrace equal opportunity for all and allow tourists to pitch a tent and save on hotel costs, one city resident says.
“If … it is your policy to continue to allow individuals and groups to sleep, cook, and live on city-controlled grassy areas, then you should announce this opportunity to both American and foreign visitors so that they can enjoy the experience and savings as well,” S.R. Hankinson writes in an open letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.
In the letter, dated April 23 and shared on social media Wednesday, Hankinson explains that he moved last year to the District of Columbia after visiting the city for many years. But, he adds, “until the past few years, I do not recall seeing informal camping sites outside the Kennedy Center, in Georgetown, and outside the State Department on Virginia Avenue.”
“City-provided trash cans, not intended for residential waste, are not able to absorb the domestic trash of all the camp inhabitants—even should they choose to use them, as many evidently do not,” Hankinson writes to Bowser. “Rats are as common as squirrels in the camp areas.”
S.R. Hankinson is Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, which founded The Daily Signal in 2014.
Homelessness rose last year in the District. A total of 4,922 homeless persons were living in the city in May 2023, The DCist reported, a 11.6% increase from 2022.
The city’s informal campgrounds for the homeless can be possible, Hankinson says, only if one of two things are true…
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