Pittsburgh to clear Downtown homeless camp due to drug problems

Pittsburgh officials are clearing out a Downtown homeless camp after reports of drug use there, Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said Tuesday.

The camp sits next to the Fort Pitt Commons office building off Grant Street and Fort Pitt Boulevard.

People living at the camp will be offered shelter elsewhere as crews clear the site over the next week, Schmidt said.

Officials decided to close the camp because of “activity we were seeing with drug use and sales” and concerns about cleanliness, Schmidt said. Multiple arrests have been made at the camp.

Schmidt could not estimate how many people were living there.

Ronald Del Duca, a local attorney who represents AGS Associates, which owns Fort Pitt Commons, said he was concerned about the homeless camp and a portable toilet that was placed next to the building’s rear exit about three weeks ago.

Del Duca said he worried the toilet, which is frequented by the people living at the camp, also has been used as a place to use and sell drugs.

Drug issues had cropped up even before the toilet was installed, Schmidt said. He said it likely will be removed after the camp is decommissioned. He said he did not know who placed it there.

Del Duca said he had witnessed a drug deal near the portable bathroom when visiting the building Sunday.

“I’ve got people in the building who are scared,” he said. “They don’t want to walk out that back door.”

Del Duca said people working in the building have been harassed by homeless people living nearby and using the portable bathroom at the back exit.

People have been encouraged to use only the front door, he said.

Del Duca said he understands that homeless people need a place to stay, but he wanted to see the camp cleared out and the portable bathroom removed so that people working in the Downtown building could feel safer.

A nearby homeless camp along Fort Pitt Boulevard near Grant Street was shut down in the spring amid safety concerns.

Public safety officials at the time said there had been reports of sexual assaults and other violence against the homeless people making camp there.