PROVIDENCE — With their tents and their plastic bags filled with personal belongings serving as a backdrop, the leaders of the homeless community known as Hope City held a news conference under a bridge near the Providence River Tuesday to announce that they won’t be able clear the premises as ordered by a judge.

Flanked by the group’s cochairmen, treasurer Barbara Ferrara said the nine-member community has been trying without success to retrieve $500 that one of their former leaders had given to the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless for safekeeping and that without it, the members are unable to rent a truck to carry their tents and belongings to property in Cumberland that was offered to them by Chief Wilfred “Eagle Heart” Greene of the Seaconke Wampanoags.

She said Roland Colpitts, one of the community’s cochairmen, saw a representative at the coalition offices again on Tuesday and was assured that he would come by to drop off the money by 7 p.m., but that he did not show.

“Without that money we can’t move. We do have other benefactors who say they can come in to help us move, but they have their own jobs,” Ferrara said. “The earliest they can come is Saturday.”

She acknowledged that she and others in the group regard the move as unnecessary anyway, given, she said, that all of the camp residents, including three couples, have been assured of housing starting Sept. 1.

“If we go up to Cumberland, we’ll have to rent another truck to bring us back down to Providence a few days later,” Ferrara said. “We could save a lot of time and money if they let us stay where we are until Sept. 1. Then we could move and wouldn’t even have to bring our tents.”

Earlier Tuesday, Noreen Shawcross, chief of the state Office of Housing and Community Development, confirmed that the state will open two apartments for four homeless couples, including at least two from the Hope City community.

“I‘m so excited,” said Shawcross, who credited the Hope City group with raising the issue of housing for homeless couples. “It’s been a gap in our services.”

rdujardi@projo.com