An attorney is challenging the City and Mayor Todd Gloria’s policy of periodically cleaning out homeless encampments, like one in Midway District at Sports Arena Boulevard and Rosecrans that was cleared out Feb. 3.

On that Thursday morning, nearly 200 unsheltered residents in the Midway camp scrambled to clear their belongings out of their tent city before Alpha Project crews swept through cleansing the camp. Trash, bicycles, furniture, and countless other articles were methodically fed into a garbage truck to be crushed.

The camp cleanup was justified by the mayor’s office, which said the intent was to “allow City Environmental Services staff to go through the area and clear it of waste and debris that poses a threat to public health and safety.” The City added the action was aimed at “immediately remediating health hazards in the context of a sustained, long-term effort to persuade unhoused residents to move off the streets into a shelter.”

Characterizing homelessness as perhaps the most complex issue the City has faced, Gloria said, “We’re going to continue our outreach and law enforcement work and will continue to take noticed action to clean out what’s dangerous and unhealthy.”

Gloria added the City was taking pains to safeguard the personal possessions of cleaned-out encampments noting, “We’re making sure people’s valuable and sentimental items found at the time of cleanups are properly stored and held onto in two City-run storage facilities where they can be reclaimed later.”

The City issued a statement at that time saying during the prior three weeks that “only seven people out of an estimated 183 in the Midway encampment had accepted shelter.”

San Diego social justice attorney Coleen M. Cusack has since taken on representation of several people living in the cleared-out Midway encampment, who’ve opted to collectively organize to protest being displaced.

Cusack disputed the City’s claim of only seven people accepting shelter and wrap-around services saying it was misleading.

“There were only seven people on that date who qualified (for shelter),” Cusack said. “The others didn’t reject or fail to accept that shelter. They were never offered it, and if they had been, they would’ve been denied as they did not qualify. It’s cruel to suggest that the others are there by choice because they didn’t qualify and were not eligible. You can’t refuse that which is never offered to you.”

Cusack argued the City’s handling of the homeless in encampments is a Catch-22.

“All of my 30 clients residing on the street requested shelter,” she said. “Several have been arrested. Two were told they would be provided a shelter accommodating their needs. But after they got them off the street, they only had a non-accommodating facility. One patiently waited and left with police to get shelter.”

Added Cusack: “So only one out of my 30 clients have been placed in a shelter. And yet the entire street has been ‘shaken down,’ and property destroyed to force poor people not to own more property than they can physically carry under threat of arrest by police. Those people are threatened with arrest and are arrested if they don’t accept shelters, but then they are denied the shelters they request.”

Cusack was among numerous people who met recently with Gloria to discuss their concerns about enforcement measures taken at the Sports Arena Boulevard Midway homeless camp. Those defending the homeless contend the camp crackdown violated the Constitutional rights of residents there. They also argued that the camp cleanup could interfere with the region’s annual homeless census scheduled to take place on Feb. 24.