LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Have you seen the homeless camp off of I-65 near 1st Street in downtown Louisville? If so, you’re not alone. The city has also taken notice and decided to file a 21 vacate order. The camp will be cleared by the second week of October.
About three dozen people live at the camp. Many don’t know where they will go when the camp is cleared.
"We're in limbo wondering what our options are. What is the next move?” Steve said.
Donovan Graves said, "There is no way to describe hungry and homeless and dirty all the time."
"The city doesn't want to look at us, they don't want to see us, they don't want to acknowledge that this problem exists so if they can just push us into a camp somewhere far away from the public view. That's would they would rather do,” Joan Burkhead said.
Burkhead is disabled and said she's done everything right.
When she lost her home, she found shelter at the Salvation Army, where she stayed for the maximum 45 days. When she ran out of days there, she applied for housing through the Homeless Coalition.
It’s been six months since she applied and she's still waiting.
"I've really not come up with a decent option at this time,” Burkhead said.
She is sober, as are most of the people who live here. Outreach officials say their camp is clean, free of trash and kept tidy.
Many of them suffer from medical conditions and get help at the nearby hospitals.
But when their camp is cleared they don't know where they'll go and neither do city officials. That's the problem.
"The 21-day period is good but if we don't come up with longer-term solutions all we're doing is waiting a longer period to move people from one place to another,” Metro Councilman Bill Hollander said.
Hollander said he and others, who serve on the Mayor’s Homeless Task Force, have asked the group to come up with recommendations and funding solutions- but so far that hasn't happened.
There are about 1,000 homeless people living in Louisville, and 350 shelter beds.
"Those numbers don't add up at all,” Christen “Tiny” Herron said.
Herron does outreach work through her organization Forgotten Louisville. She works on the streets with the men and women facing homelessness every day. Her biggest challenge now is trying to find a new home for the forty people who will be displaced in the coming weeks.
The camps will be cleared on October 8.
►Contact reporter Shay McAlister at smcalister@whas11.com. Follow her on Twitter (@WHAS11Shay) and Facebook.