Approximately 40 community members gathered in front of the Ithaca City Hall on Wednesday to protest the homeless encampment sweeps and the lack of a homeless shelter in the City as the weather grows colder.
An encampment sweep is a “forced disbanding of encampments on public property and the removal of both unhoused individuals and their property from that area,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The rally was organized by various progressive groups in the community, including the Ithaca Tenants Union and Food Not Bombs, in response to the Ithaca Police Department posting a notice of unauthorized camping location on Nov. 8 at the 130 East Seneca St. bus station.
IPD cleared the camping location on Tuesday evening, according to Food Not Bombs volunteer Daniel Creamer. Deputy City Manager Dominick Recckio added that during the clearing, personal items were removed from the bus stop, and Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit cleaned up the area.
Protesters banged on drums and plastic containers, chanting slogans like “This is f***ing crazy, man. No more camping ban!” and “Shelter is a human right. This is why we have to fight!” Protestors also directly called out the names of the Common Council members, yelling at them to “do their job.”
Food Not Bombs provided dinner to protesters, and chalk was handed out to write messages such as “Housing is a human right” on the sidewalks.
Among the speakers was Angel DeVivo, a member of the ITU, who expressed concerns over the notice of unauthorized camping issued at the bus stop.
“This warning is IPD threatening, implicitly or explicitly, a sweep,” DeVivo said.
DeVivo also criticized the city and the county for failing to provide an adequate homeless shelter.
“The county has the power to direct the [Tompkins County Department of Social Services] and provide low-barrier shelter, but they expect the city to do their dirty work, cleaning up homeless people and sending IPD to where people are sleeping,” DeVivo said.
A plan for Tompkins County and the city of Ithaca to build a joint homelessness service center and Code Blue shelter on Elmira Road fell apart due to soaring costs and operational concerns. Instead, the county plans to open a Code Blue shelter at 227 Cherry St. on Nov. 24.
Code Blue is a state-mandated program that requires counties to offer shelter to anyone who requests it on nights when temperatures remain below freezing for two hours.
Due to the lack of a Code Blue shelter, local organizations started a community warming center in the First Baptist Church on Code Blue nights.
Catherine Stone, another speaker at the rally, expressed frustration with the city and county’s slow progress in providing a Code Blue shelter in time for the cold weather.
“Where is their sense of urgency? Our leaders know that we live in upstate New York. They know how brutal our winter can be. So why was this not a priority to the city or [the] county?” Stone said. “[This] is a life or death situation. People die in these streets and conditions, as someone did just last year.”
In December 2024, Roland Hoyt, a Tompkins County native who had been experiencing homelessness for a few years, died due to exposure to the cold.
Currently, the TCDSS provides emergency housing on Code Blue nights, but DeVivo emphasized the inaccessibility and unsustainable nature of accessing these services.
“After 5 p.m., if anyone wants to access Cold Blue, they must call the sheriff's non-emergency line and leave a message. In about 20 minutes to an hour, a DSS worker will call you back,” DeVivo explained. “Every morning, they're kicked out, and they have to start the process over again.”
Rally attendee Daniel Arevalo, who is part of a renegade coalition of upstate NY mutual aid suppliers, noted similar trends of difficulty finding shelter in the winter for unhoused individuals in Cortland.
“There have been times, this past year, where there have been sweeps where [the police have] taken [the homeless people’s] things away on a very late notice and or no notice at all,” Arevalo said. “We don't think there's enough priority for [the homeless], so they need somebody to advocate for them, and that's what we're trying to do.”
Speaking from personal experience of homelessness, Stone stated that the city and the county have a responsibility to provide adequate shelters for their homeless population, and demanded that the city and the county provide a shelter for all homeless people.
“When I lived in a separate county and became homeless, I came back to Ithaca seeking help. A DSS social worker sent me back, stating [that] Ithaca was not responsible for me any longer, since I did not reside in Ithaca at the time,” Stone said. “So this means, Tompkins County and Ithaca, you are responsible for the homeless who reside in your city and county.”
Stone has a list of demands for the city and the county.
“We demand an immediate resolution to the issues addressed today: guaranteed shelter for all homeless people reaching out, without police involvement and without harassment or forcing them to try again the next day,” Stone said. “We demand that homeless people are treated with dignity, respect and the utmost care in all circumstances, but especially when they are seeking preciously needed shelter on freezing nights.”
Another attendee of the rally, Ralph Wang ’22, the young person recruiter for Indivisible Tompkins, a community group working to “defend and promote democracy,” called upon the city to practice more empathy.
“Most of us, when we were young, were told not to judge somebody until you walked a mile in their shoes,” Wang said. “I would tell the city not to sweep anybody until they've slept a night in the encampment.”
Taehee Oh is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a senior writer for the News department and can be reached at toh@cornellsun.com.
