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The man with a pasty white face, scruffy reddish beard and wearing a black ski cap and red hoodie hunched over in his tent for the longest time, folding clothes and packing them into two small bags. 

The men and women with rakes and broom and pinchers designed to pick up trash bore down on him, and the hum of the Bobcats scooping up entire campsites under the Jefferson Street viaduct neared. 

The man stepped outside his tent — the second one over from Preston Street — and slipped on basketball sneakers. Then he pulled a pair of tan overalls over his blue jeans.

Right foot then left. 

Then back to packing his gear, the handful of possessions that either came with him to this spot in a makeshift homeless camp that the city of Louisville was bulldozing, or possessions that he amassed while he lived here. 

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The camp had become a dangerous, dirty eyesore in the nearly one year it's been there, with its spokes now extending south on Preston and north on Jackson. 

Trash lined the gutters. There was the foul odor of human excrement and vomit. Dr. Peter Hasselbacher, president of the Kentucky Health Policy Institute, who came to watch the cleanup, said he saw a syringe in a pile of debris.

The man in the red hoodie stepped back inside the the tent, an orange and white and gray model made by Ozark Trail, and he kept packing, carefully folding a pair of dark pants and stuffing them into the larger of two bags. 

He tossed aside things he didn't want or need, and he waded through what was left. 

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The camp started last year after the city took down another nearby homeless camp after it became too dangerous for people to keep living there. At first, it was a few people sleeping, rolled up in blankets, on Jefferson Street outside the Wayside Christian Mission homeless shelter.

And then a couple of tents popped up.

Then more people. And more tents. 

Suddenly it was an entire squatter's row, essentially cutting off foot traffic on Jefferson between downtown and the blossoming part of the NuLu neighborhood anchored by the Rabbit Hole Distillery. 

These are the people who either can't stay in shelters or won't stay in shelters. They might have drug or alcohol addictions or other mental health ailments that will get them turned away.

Some just have too many possessions to take to a shelter, so they prefer to live on the streets.

As the man in the red hoodie continued to pack, the Bobcats rumbled along, first pushing treasured possessions to the curb and then lifting them into the back of garbage trucks. 

Read this: Dirty and dangerous downtown homeless camp must go, city says.

There were wooden palates and mattresses. There was a cot. Clothing and blankets and pillows. 

Things that the people who lived here had just left behind.

There was a can of liquid fuel used to heat food, empty Campbell's soup cans, candy and fast food wrappers. There was a particularly heartbreaking toddler ride-on pickup truck — one minute a prized possession and the next, it's roof popping off as a skid loader pushed it into the back of a garbage truck. 

Bottles of soap. Tubes of toothpaste. A baseball. 

The man in the red hoodie finished his packing and started to walk away — a bag in each hand. 

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He lingered for a moment and then went back as you or I might before checking out of a hotel room. 

He flipped up a blanket and grabbed something shiny and shoved it in his pocket. He turned over the pad on which he slept and found another bauble that he slipped into a bag. 

Then he tossed the larger of the two carefully packed bags back into the tent and tried to zip its torn door shut, as if he was leaving for a bit but planned to return. He reached in, grabbed a couple of books, looked at them and tossed them back in the tent. 

The last time the city cleaned up a homeless camp like this, it didn't solve the problem. 

The people who lost their tents and their possessions here will make camp elsewhere. They'll find a stand of old trees or a viaduct that hasn't already been claimed, or a vacant lot tucked between an interstate ramp and a business. 

They'll still be here. Somewhere. 

Just more out of sight in the days and weeks before tens of thousands of guests come to town for the Kentucky Derby. 

Guests who don't want to see our problems. 

Guests who we don't want to see our problems.

City officials say that's not why this is happening now but it's hard to believe the timing isn't seen as an added benefit at the very least. 


City authorities and workers started the cleanup of the tent city next to Wayside Christian Mission at Jefferson and Jackson. Louisville Courier Journal

The man in the red hoodie grabbed the smaller of the bags and walked away. 

Why'd he leave the things he had so carefully packed? 

"If they're not new ...," he said, his voice trailing off. 

Where would he go?

"Wherever the road takes me." 

Would he mind talking for a moment? 

"I don't see any need for me to be in the paper."

And then the man with the pasty white face, scruffy reddish beard and wearing a black ski cap and red hoodie, was gone. 

When I turned around, so was his home. 


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