LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – For three years, Gary Tanguay has called the outdoors home.
“We don’t become really part of society anymore,” he says.
He reflected on his experience – and that of his friends – as the city removed another homeless encampment. Several of Tanguay’s friends had called the collection of tents in a local park home.
That displacement and loss of his few belongings, as his friends are experiencing, is one he has lived through many times.
“Those aren’t things,” he says is the perception of the belongings in homeless encampments. “It’s trash. It’s a headache. It’s, uh, a bad aesthetic value.”
The camp has grown over the last four months, neighbors say.
“And seeing other big cities that had that problem,” says Byrne Carson who lives nearby. “Never thought it would happen here.”
Charlene Skinner is another neighbor of the camp.
“A guy about cried because we gave them a couple of boxes of food,” Skinner says. “They were so happy and said he was hungry.”
The people who were living in the camp have been provided hotel accommodations, city officials say. Last week an encampment dug out under an area near a downtown Lansing building was cleared out.