LANSING, Mich. — There’s a lot of debris at the Lansing River Trail near Clippert Street. It’s all a result of encampments set up by people experiencing homelessness.
“Oh it needs to be cleaned up, it's bad,” said Christina Marsh.
Marsh walks the trail a lot and stumbled across the mess last week. She said there is no excuse why such a beautiful site should be filled with abandoned tents, dirty blankets and expired food.
“Homelessness isn’t an excuse for this,” she said. “I mean if I were living in an area like this, my area would not look like this, it's not an excuse.”
City of Lansing officials said, while the encampments are on the Lansing River Trail, they’re technically on Lansing Township grounds.
However, the city of Lansing says they’re going to go out, access it and get it cleaned it up.
“For as much as possible, we have to find a different way of handling these encampments,” said Jody Washington.
Washington is a homeless prevention advocate who works with numerous organizations across Lansing. She said there’s a bigger solution the city should explore than just cleaning up.
“I suggest they start looking at sanctioned encampments, a few locations where people could set up their tent live safely, and we could take services to them,” Washington said.
Going back to Marsh, she said if the city doesn’t follow through with the clean up, she’ll try and plan a neighborhood clean up effort because she says its all about preserving local natural areas.
“It’s not good for the environment. It’s wildlife back there, it’s a beautiful river. It’s just not good,” she said.
