Contractors for the N.C. Department of Transportation removed about 45 tons of trash and debris from alongside an exit ramp from Interstate 40 in Raleigh last month.
The material was associated with a homeless camp that had grown where the exit ramp from eastbound I-40 meets South Saunders Street.
Raleigh police worked for months to coax people living in the camp to leave before NCDOT sent in the clean-up crew in late March. Under the city’s ACORNS program, a team of social workers and police officers work to connect people experiencing homelessness, substance abuse or mental health problems with organizations that can help them.
As many as 20 people were living at the South Saunders Street site in the winter of 2023, according to Raleigh police. Only one person was there when contractors arrived March 20, said NCDOT spokeswoman Kim Deaner.
Cleanup took three days and cost about $26,000, Deaner said.
A growing problem for NCDOT
Encampments of unsheltered people are a growing problem for NCDOT in the Triangle and statewide. As the number of unhoused people grows, many are attracted to highway interchanges and busy intersections where they ask passing drivers for money.
NCDOT has developed an approach for clearing such sites that it first used with a large homeless camp at I-540 and Capital Boulevard in North Raleigh starting in 2022. Before it brings in contractors with trash bins, NCDOT works with police and social service agencies to ensure that people living in the camp have been offered help with housing and other needs and that no one is still living there, a process that can take months.
To try to discourage people from returning, NCDOT clears away brush that can conceal a camp and posts “No Trespassing” signs as a prompt for police and the department to keep people from settling in.
NCDOT posted no trespassing signs Monday at a patch of land where U.S. 70 and U.S. 401 split and converge on the Raleigh-Garner line. The department learned of an encampment there in February and since then staff from ACORNS and nonprofit groups have visited numerous times, offering help to those living there, Deaner said.
Raleigh police have also posted notices telling people to vacate the site.
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