Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor
In addition to “day-spenders” hanging out in City Park that Glens Falls Mayor Bill Collins discussed with the Chronicle last week, he also offered an update on people who have been living in tents at Haviland’s Cove and in Cole’s Woods.
Compared to so-called loitering, Mayor Collins said, “Camping is the easy one. That’s illegal in all jurisdictions.”
The issue came to particular light in August, according to a timeline shared with The Chronicle.
Glens Falls Police and Fire Departments, the Warren County Sheriff’s Department and Queensbury Fire Department were all involved.
Asked at the time by The Chronicle about encampments in Cole’s Woods, Sheriff Jim LaFarr said they could only step in at the property owner’s request.
City Communications Director Paul Ghenoiu said he researched the question in response to a Chronicle query about tenters off a main path in Cole’s Woods, near the Halfway Brook footbridge.
“Part of Cole’s Woods falls within the City, part within the County,” Mr. Ghenoiu said, “and big chunks of it are privately owned.”
He said, “The biggest chunk” abuts Cole’s Woods, behind the Price Chopper Market 32 on Upper Glen Street, and is owned by Price Chopper parent company, the Golub Corporation.
Mr. Ghenoiu said beginning in September, the City worked with Golub.
At that time Golub “reassert(ed) control over their property, evict(ed) overnight stays, clear(ed) unauthorized campsites and post(ed) against trespass,” the city’s timeline says.
“Also they cleaned that area up and removed all the shopping carts and other materials that were out there.”
The same happened with tents at Haviland’s Cove this summer, Mayor Collins said. “I don’t know if it’s on purpose,” he said, but the tenters “found themselves a sliver of land that’s technically owned by the Canal Corporation. That’s not in our park.”
“But the truth is, we don’t really care who owns it,” the Mayor said. “We’re trying to address it. We’re going in and trying to get them, and then they disappear.
“We say, ‘Look, you got to clean this up.’ They purposely, if they they don’t want to, they don’t show up when they know we’re coming. Then they go back and stay in the place. We take the tent, and they put up another one.”
“At the same time, it’s never an easy answer,” Mayor Collins says.
He gives a semi-hypothetical example.
Maybe, he suggests, it’s a couple, one eligible for social services, one not. Maybe they have a pet, so can’t stay in a shelter.
“It’s easy that in that case, you’ve got to remove the tent, but then there’s nowhere for the guy to go, so — the situation — are you making it worse?”
The best hope, he said, is for them to find an apartment.
But “that’s the hold up,” adds Darlene Hafner, Glens Falls Police Department social worker — for reasons of cost and unavailability of low-income housing.
Says Burlington has it worse
Mayor Collins said he visited Burlington, Vt., which has a permanent tent encampment on the Church Street pedestrian way in the central business district.
He said Burlington reports a low crime rate, like Glens Falls, which he notes was named “the safest city in the country” in a national survey last year.
“But in Burlington, there is no doubt that there are homeless, and the people on that cobblestone street are a much greater presence, notable to the point where you’re uncomfortable,” Mayor Collins said. “We don’t want that, and that’s why we need to address this. We don’t need to wait for it to get that bad.”
— With reporting by Ben Westcott
Copyright © 2024 Lone Oak Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved
