HARRISBURG, Pa. — In Harrisburg’s Tent City homeless camp, a fence divides the main area from an exclusive gated community of tents.
Unofficial Tent City "mayor", 'Big Mark', carefully approves who’s allowed to live in the secluded area, located just below the Second St. exit of Interstate 83. No drugs are allowed, and someone is always at the camp to guard it from thieves.
But 'Big Mark', who takes his name from his 6’3” height, can’t protect his neighbors from this summer’s unusual heat. This week’s heat wave has seen several days with heat indexes near 100 degrees.
“It can be like an oven in your tent during the summertime,” said Robert Murray, a Tent City resident.
“A week or two ago the heat was so bad by the end of the day my head felt like it was warped,” said Ken, who is living at a different camp on S. 10th St. under the Mulberry St. Bridge.
Several community organizations visit the camps weekly to offer supplies and services, including Christian Churches United of the Tri-County Area, Salvation Army, Downtown Daily Bread, Dauphin County Drug and Alcohol Services, Dauphin County Case Management Unit (CMU), Dauphin County Library System, Valley Youth House and a UPMC outreach team.
With permission from the city, they have installed a hose shower on a fire hydrant at the S. 10th St. site, meant to help people clean and cool off, as well as draw them to a central location.
“Just a little bit safer in a well-lit spot, an accessible spot to transportation and services,” said Aisha Mobley, Christian Churches United’s community mobilization and street outreach coordinator.
The pandemic is posing a hazard through its second summer. An additional obstacle, aid workers said, is that a majority of people living in the camps don’t want to get vaccinated.
“A lot of our folks feel that they’re sturdy, like ‘We’re out here, we’re exposed to the elements, we’re making it, I have a tough immune system,’” Mobley said.
Yet there have been no outbreaks and no positive tests for COVID, Mobley said.
Vaccines are even more critical as Harrisburg’s homeless camps have grown exponentially since the start of the pandemic, due to more people being released from inpatient health facilities, prisons and jails, according to aid workers.
Community organizations are now shifting their focus to education in an effort to convince more people to get vaccinated. As autumn approaches, aid workers said they’re concerned low vaccination rates could cause outbreaks in winter shelters.
