Residents of the tent city off Point Street, below the old Route 195 eastbound exit to Wickenden Street, work in the food area where all the meals are prepared and served.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — About 90 squatters living in tents under the soon-to-be-torn down stretches of Route 195 have been asked to leave their downtown riverfront settlements in August.

Transportation Director Michael Lewis and state police Capt. Kenneth Marandola visited the two tent cities along the Providence River on Tuesday night with assurances that the camps would not be broken up, as rumored, on Friday.

But Lewis told camp dwellers that the department needs them out by August. No final date has been set.

“We don’t want to take a heavy-handed approach to this,” Lewis said. “We are working to try and get our arms around this in a compassionate way. At the same time, this is not something that we want to wait long for” to resolve, he said.

Residents in one of the camps said they are willing to comply. “We never moved here with the intention of living here forever,” said John Freitas, a founder of Tent City, a community of homeless, unemployed and young people that is near the Point Street Bridge.

Tent City’s remarkable growth in the past few months, from just a handful of people in April to nearly 75 as of Wednesday, has been a cause of concern for Fox Point residents and the city police.

But Hope City, the camp on the other side of the Providence River in the city’s Jewelry District, has not said whether it would comply.

“We were prepared from the first day that they were going to tell us to leave,” said Barbara Ferrara, a community leader in Hope City, a camp of about 15 residents.

Lewis said the DOT and homeless outreach organizations such as Crossroads Rhode Island, are working with camp residents on a plan to secure alternative housing. Camp organizers hope the DOT will simply relocate the settlements to another location, though Lewis says that remains to be seen.

“As much as they’d like to shut us down, there is no doubt that this will spring up elsewhere,” Freitas said. “These camps are already all over the city. The city and the state need to recognize this is a problem that is not going away.”

The DOT’s primary concern is getting the camp dwellers away from the interstate, which is slated to be torn down in 2010 as part of the Iway project. “It’s in terrible condition,” Lewis said. “We’re concerned about our liability, not to mention the safety of those people. There’s falling concrete.”

Freitas said that residents have not seen any concrete falling off the highway, though they understand the state’s concerns.

“This is a crumbling bridge and it needs to come down. We are aware of that. We understand the need to do work here and the public safety issues,” he said.

Noreen Shawcross, director of the state Office of Housing and Community Development, is helping to coordinate outreach efforts to the tent cities. She said the state homeless shelters will be able to handle the influx of new residents when the camps close.

“We’ve always been able to find the adequate number of shelter beds, even in the dead of winter, when the demand is the highest. We’re like an accordion, we expand to meet the needs,” she said.

Tent dwellers are doubtful. “The reality is that the shelters are bursting at the seams,” said Freitas.

The state visit to the camps Tuesday was spurred by rumors that the state police might try to break up the camps on Friday. Because they are on state-owned property, the camps are not in the jurisdiction of city police.

Police Chief Dean Esserman said his department has deferred to the state police and DOT on the issue of moving the camps, though he anticipates his department will help with the transition of the camps, when the state sets a date for that.

pmarcelo@projo.com