More than 30 tents came down along North Edwards Street on Kalamazoo's Northside yesterday, as city officials moved to clear an encampment that had drawn months of complaints from nearby residents and businesses. No one was arrested and no ordinance violations were issued as the unhoused residents packed up and dispersed, but for people like Walter Anderson II, who has lived without stable housing for around a decade, the aftermath left him searching once again for somewhere to go.
“It's hell. I wouldn’t wish this on no one,” Anderson II told MLive, describing the emotional toll of the removal. City officials mandated the encampment's removal on Wednesday, and Anderson II, his friends and family received an evacuation notice just 72 hours ahead of the deadline, according to the outlet's reporting. City code prohibits structures and personal property from obstructing the public right-of-way, and officials said the tents and belongings that had accumulated on North Edwards Street violated that code.
Anderson II, who has lived on Kalamazoo's Northside for decades, spent Thursday helping friends pack their belongings rather than tending to his own. Michael Smith, the city's communications manager, has previously pointed to complaints as a driver of enforcement: Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers had responded to roughly 300 calls for service in the 500 block of North Edwards Street in 2026 alone, according to WKZO, with neighborhood residents raising concerns about public peace and safety during a City Commission meeting the week before the clearance.
No Arrests, But No Clear Next Step
The station's report noted that Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers made no arrests and issued no citations as residents cleared out Thursday, opting for a non-confrontational approach to enforcing the right-of-way rules. City staff were joined by outreach groups including Kalamazoo Gospel Ministries and Ministry with Community, per the same account. Volunteer and nonprofit groups also helped residents pack tents, clothes and bikes throughout the day.
Among those groups was United for the Unsheltered, whose president, Megan Giambrone, had visited the North Edwards Street encampment for six consecutive days leading up to the clearance. She gave Anderson II a tent yesterday and said her organization had distributed more than 120 tents to unhoused residents in the area. “Accessing services has to happen when the unhoused person is ready,” Giambrone said, adding that United for the Unsheltered continues to help people even when they decline additional services.
A Catch-22 for Unhoused Residents
Anderson II described a familiar bind facing many unhoused people in Kalamazoo: programs like ISK and Momentum can help, he said, but they also leave people in a catch-22, since accepting services on someone else's timeline doesn't always match when a person is ready to change course. He said some unhoused people become stuck in a cycle and don't know how to get out, and he pointed to mental health as a major factor complicating that cycle. Nonprofits in the area prioritize connecting unhoused people with services, but as Thursday's clearance showed, that connection doesn't always translate into a roof overhead.
By the end of the day, Anderson II left North Edwards Street for what he called “the next spot, corner, abandoned building or other place,” underscoring how encampment clearances often just shift the problem rather than solve it. That pattern isn't new in Kalamazoo: the city vacated an encampment of roughly 50 residents along Riverview Drive in October 2021 and cleared the Ampersee Park encampment that September, according to The IPIS, with both prior clearings similarly ending without arrests but forcing residents to disperse elsewhere.
A County-Wide Homelessness Surge
The Northside clearance comes as homelessness across Kalamazoo County has reached its highest level in over a decade. The county's Continuum of Care counted 791 unhoused individuals — including 176 children — in its January 2025 Point-In-Time survey, a 19% jump over the prior year, as reported by United Way South Central Michigan. That count included 709 sheltered individuals and 82 unsheltered individuals on the single night surveyed.
Part of that sheltered total was inflated by a temporary “heads-in-beds” hotel initiative that sheltered 146 people during extreme cold weather, which lowered the unsheltered tally recorded that night, according to the Kalamazoo County Continuum of Care. Outreach leads with the county have also noted that warmer weather typically drives more people to camp outdoors in public spaces like North Edwards Street. The same Continuum of Care data shows stark racial disparities in who ends up unhoused locally: Black or African American residents made up about 42% of the county's unhoused population in 2025, despite representing only 11% to 12% of Kalamazoo County's overall population, while white residents comprised 76% of county residents but just 41% of those counted as unhoused.
Regional Pressure and Local Investment
City Commissioner Chris Praedel noted during municipal discussions ahead of the removal that neighboring Michigan cities, including Ann Arbor and Jackson, have recently passed stricter ordinances restricting encampments, raising concerns that tougher rules elsewhere could push unhoused populations across municipal lines into Kalamazoo. Local leaders have said they want to monitor that regional dynamic closely.
Kalamazoo has continued investing in longer-term housing fixes even as short-term clearances continue. The City Commission extended its Emergency Housing Ordinance for five additional years in October 2023, allowing qualified housing providers to establish temporary and pod-style emergency shelters through 2028, according to the City of Kalamazoo. In a $5.2 million deal reported by Hoodline, Kalamazoo County partnered with the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage in October 2024 to convert a former Holiday Inn on East Cork Street into a family shelter with more than 60 units. Mayor David Anderson has said the city has committed nearly $29 million toward affordable housing and housing stability initiatives since 2020.
Those investments haven't stopped the North Edwards Street removal from repeating a familiar story for people like Anderson II, who after helping his friends and neighbors pack up Thursday, headed off alone to find wherever he could next.
