“We want to approach this complicated issue with the appropriate compassion, but we cannot ignore health and safety issues brought upon by encampments,” she said.
The number of unsheltered individuals in Montgomery County has increased to the highest level in at least a decade, according to Homeless Solutions, and local officials and service providers say Dayton and Montgomery County have seen an increase in encampments.
Some advocates say they believe Dayton, and other cities, should suspend encampment sweeps or minimize the disruption and harm they cause by following national best practices.
“We believe that removals of encampments could be handled much better,” said Heather Wilson, program services director with Miami Valley Housing Opportunities. “There is a breakdown of communication from the city to service providers and frontline workers. The city often shows up at these encampments exhibiting intimidating behavior.”
Homeless individuals told the Dayton Daily News that encampments offer community, companionship, freedom and other things they cannot get from staying in an emergency shelter. Advocates say many homeless people have mental health symptoms that make them unable to live in a congregate setting.
Advocates, experts and local leaders say encampments will continue to exist until there are more affordable places for people to live and adequate services to help vulnerable community members.
McIntosh encampment
On Aug. 6, employees with multiple city of Dayton departments, including police and public works, cleared a homeless encampment at McIntosh park, which is located at West Riverview and Orth avenues in northwest Dayton, across the river from downtown. People had been living in the park for months.
Overnight sleeping is prohibited in all city parks, and this was a large encampment in a heavily used public space that had issues with trash, human waste and health and safety conditions, said Dickstein.
“We are very cognizant of trying to support our unhoused community, and we know that many don’t want to go into shelter. We know that many don’t have a lot of other options,” Dickstein said. “But we also have the neighborhoods, who also have human rights, and they also want to have their kids safely use parks and gather.”
“It is a very, very difficult situation,” she said.
The Dayton United for Human Rights on the day of the sweep issued a statement that called for the city to end all encampment removals that do not follow national best practices. The group also said the city should not conduct forced displacements without proper advance notice or coordination with community groups that serve this vulnerable population.
‘We’re family out here’
Tina E., who some people call “Mama,” said she was one of about 10 people who lived at the encampment along Orth Avenue on a regular basis. Tina, 54, asked for her last name not to be published because she doesn’t want some people to find out that she’s homeless.
Tina said she’s lived in encampments at about five different Dayton locations this year, and all were eventually cleared or removed. She also lived in an abandoned home during the winter.
Tina said police and city staff are aware of their new encampment site, and they will be removed from that property eventually, because that’s what always happens. Asked where she’ll go after that, she said, “Probably wherever the wind takes us.”
She said she wishes Dayton would allow some kind of permanent or semi-permanent tent encampment, kind of like Skid Row in Los Angeles.
“I just wish they’d give us somewhere to go,” she said.
Tina, who has been homeless on and off since she was 11 years old, said Miami Valley Housing Opportunities put her on a waiting list for housing, but she’s already waited months and she has no idea when her name might get to the top of the list. Multiple people at the McIntosh park encampment told the Dayton Daily News they are on a waiting list for housing.
Tina said she has no interest in living in a homeless shelter because they are overcrowded and the facilities are a bad environment. She said residents in her encampment look out for each other, take shifts to guard their belongings and share food and supplies.
“It’s a tight-knit family,” she said. “We’re family out here.”
‘Everybody wants to have community’
Montgomery County this year had about 111 unsheltered individuals living on the streets, according to the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count that was completed on Jan. 29, 2025. This was the highest tally of unsheltered individuals since at least 2015, possibly longer.
Unsheltered individuals include those sleeping in encampments, abandoned buildings, vehicles, farms and the wilderness.
There were between 43 and 53 unsheltered individuals counted living in Montgomery County each year between 2015 and 2020. The number of unsheltered people surged in 2023, dipped in 2024 and then increased again this year.
Some homeless people who do not like emergency shelters feel a sense of community and human connection by living in encampments, said Sherry Gale, executive director of the House of Bread, which is a nonprofit across the street from McIntosh park that serves meals every day of the year.
Emergency shelters usually offer little privacy and have rules on conduct that some people do not want to follow, Gale said. Shelters also have restrictions on when people can come and go, and they often do not allow guests to bring in all of their personal belongings.
Dayton has separate shelters for men and women and families, and Gale said some people do not want separate from friends and family members of the opposite sex or their pets.
“Everybody wants their own space and everybody wants to have community,” Gale said. “I think that’s pretty universal.”
For some community members, the physical locations of the shelters are inconvenient, since they are miles away from the places they like or need to visit. House of Bread, for instance, is five miles from the Gateway shelter for men on South Gettysburg Avenue.
House of Bread serves a lunchtime meal 365 days of the year, and roughly half of its guests are unsheltered community members.
Some people who lived at the McIntosh encampment told this news outlet that shelters are chaotic and feel unsafe because they are filled with people who have significant emotional and behavioral problems, including severe mental illness.
Encampment sweeps
In May, about eight people spoke during the citizens comments portion of a Dayton City Commission meeting to urge city leaders to end encampment sweeps or significantly change how they are handled.
Speakers, which included homeless outreach specialists and other employees with Miami Valley Housing Opportunities, said encampment sweeps can result in people losing their personal belongings and their place in line for housing. Some people said the city needs to treat homelessness as a crisis and not a crime and put more resources toward creating and expanding affordable housing and support services instead of evicting people from encampments.
Wilson, program services manager for MHVO, recently told this news outlet that she would like to see forced encampment sweeps stopped entirely. But she said she understands that encampments at certain locations might create problems.
She said removing encampments prolongs homelessness and begs the question of where these people are expected or supposed to go.
When encampments are removed, those who are displaced sometimes see their belongings thrown away, including key items like medications, government IDs, Social Security cards, birth certificates and other important documents they need to obtain housing and other services, Wilson said. Sweeps can result in people losing some of the few sentimental personal items they still have left.
Forcing homeless people to suddenly relocate often means their social service providers can’t find them, which interrupts their continuum of care, Wilson said. Encampment sweeps can be traumatizing for people who have nowhere else to go, she said.
Wilson said Dayton needs to have better communication with the service providers who work with this population, and the city should adopt nationally recognized best practices for conducting sweeps. She said people living in encampments should get at least 10 days advance notice before they are displaced.
City ‘actively working’ to address concerns
Kathy Rowell, chair of the Dayton United for Human Rights Coalition’s housing committee, said the community is likely to see more homeless encampments because times are tough and there aren’t enough resources being put toward affordable housing and helping vulnerable people.
Dayton City Manager Dickstein said homelessness is a symptom of complex problems that the city cannot solve alone. She said the city will review proposed best practices that local residents and organizations have shared to consider for adoption and implementation.
“I have called an internal working group across multiple departments to review best practices against our current approach,” Dickstein said. “They have been working diligently and will make recommendations when their work is complete. We are actively working to address the aspects of this issue that are within our control.”
Ultimately, the solution to homelessness is housing, said Patrick Bailey, assistant director of Montgomery County’s Human Services Planning and Development Department.
“Housing, services and supports to help people remove barriers to obtaining and maintaining housing are evidence-based solutions,” he said, adding that community members also need job opportunities that pay living wages. “Fair Market Rent has increased by over 40% in the last five years, but wages have not kept up with the increased cost of housing.”
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