A makeshift camp where dozens of homeless people had taken refuge in the heart of Washington, just 300 meters from the White House, was evacuated today by the authorities.

Under the gaze of dozens of reporters and other suit-and-tie bystanders, federal employees in white uniforms and protective masks pushed makeshift tents and personal belongings into garbage trucks in the now fenced-off McPherson Square.

“The police knocked on our door around 6am” recounted Daniel Kingery, one of the last homeless people who had refused to leave the park, which has become a symbol of poverty in a city that embodies power and elites. Many others had already packed up and left.

The 61-year-old barefoot man with a long, white beard claims he was the first, about three years ago, to camp in this public garden.

THE “camp» developed into one of the largest in the city, mainly because other camps elsewhere were evacuated in the meantime.

In November, authorities announced they planned to evacuate McPherson Square by April. They finally proceeded today to evict the homeless “for health and safety reasons and because the expansion of the camp threatened the effectiveness of the assistance provided by social services,” the federal National Park Service (NPS) said in a statement.

Daniel Kingery told AFP he didn’t want to go to a homeless shelter because someone told him that there “the situation is more violent compared to this park where there was never any violence.”

From early in the morning “we saw a lot of people who were afraid, who were worried because they didn’t know where they were going,” said Amanda Michiko Andere, the director of an organization that helps the homeless.

“We should be ashamed that on a street next to the White House, on a street of a government that said housing is its priority, they failed to close a camp humanely, that is, by getting these people under a roof“, he added.

The city services assure that they offered the homeless of the square various temporary relocation solutions, but they rejected them.

According to the most recent data available, in 2021 there were approximately 5,000 homeless people in Washington.