Richard Jackson and his girlfriend, Rachell Shaw, residents of a tent city off Point Street beneath the now closed Route 195 eastbound exit to Wickenden Street, air out their tent Wednesday.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Daisy Schnepel has known for some months about the homeless people living in tents along the river’s edge, just two blocks from her Fox Point home of 25 years.

As president of the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, she had heard about it from neighbors and local police officers. She read about it in the news. But she hadn’t really taken a close look at it herself. Not until this week.

“It was bigger than I thought it would be. I thought there might be 10 or 12 people, if that,” Schnepel said after driving past the encampment on Tuesday. “I just don’t think people are aware of how big it’s become. I certainly didn’t.”

There are 34 tents in the squatter community off Wickenden Street, underneath now-closed stretches of Route 195 where the thoroughfare becomes Point Street and passes over the Providence River. The police say there are close to 60 people living there on a given night.

Across the river and under another stretch of the old Route 195, 15 more homeless people live in an older encampment in the city’s Jewelry District. Known as Hope City, its growth and survival through the bitter winter months has been well publicized.

The first residents of the newer tent city, John Freitas and Barbara Kalil, settled in April. Now the community comprises chronically homeless, recently unemployed, some drifters and some young nonconformists who have chosen to live outdoors even though they have other places to stay.

“We’re here for all different reasons, but the point is that we are here,” says Edward Therrien, one of five who serve on the community’s de-facto governing board.

It is a surprisingly well organized community. Bright-hued tents are readily visible from the popular bars and clubs near the city’s hurricane barrier. In the middle of the camp, there is a kitchen area with tables and two large padlocked food pantries. A fire pit has been dug out along the riverbank. Residents have encircled their tents with bricks and gravel, in as much of an effort to redirect the ever-present storm water runoff as to demarcate property lines. Others have decorated their slices of land with lawn ornaments or a planted garden.

They have taken to calling themselves Camp Runamuck or simply Tent City. “We had 10 new people come in just last week,” said Therrien. “We’re running out of space for them.”

Over in Hope City, some residents are entering their seventh month under the bridge. Its organizers founded the encampment in part to raise awareness about the plight of the homeless who are banned from living in shelters.

Barbara Ferrara, who serves as the community’s treasurer, says Hope City still takes regular donations and diverts extra supplies to the needy elsewhere in the state.

Its residents have a bank account where they deposit monetary donations and have plans to form a 501(c)3 nonprofit. They have a donated portable toilet and a Dumpster that are regularly serviced.

But while Tent City’s population has exploded, Hope City has diminished slightly from its peak of about 25 residents.

Hope City’s elected leader, Roland Colpitts, says the group has been successful in encouraging dwellers to secure permanent housing. “We’re not encouraging anyone to stay outside. This is not the solution,” said Colpitts.

Residents of each camp are quick to disassociate themselves from the other, rival camp. “This is our community. And that is theirs,” says Freitas, of Tent City.

Hope City dwellers say that theirs is for those with no other recourse than living on the streets. They require that residents work with a social worker. And those with an income can’t take from community supplies.

Tent City dwellers say proudly that they don’t turn anyone away. A resident has three chances to mess up before being kicked out of the community. Like Hope City, no one under 18 is allowed to stay at the camp.

“Some people think we’re just camping. And we have some kids here that are. But the rest of us, we’re not. We’re surviving,” says Therrien, an unemployed handyman.

Jim Ryczek, executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, sees the camps as an outgrowth of the state’s lack of affordable housing. While the coalition does not support the camps as a long-term solution, he applauds the city for not breaking them up.

Ryczek says the camps provide resources that sometimes are not available in shelters, such as cooking areas to prepare foods.

“What you don’t want is to push these people out with no place to go. This is a reflection of what’s going on in our economy and our society,” he said.

Police Lt. John Ryan, commander of the police district that covers Fox Point, said that there have been just two crime-related incidents involving Tent City residents. He said Hope City has been equally low-key, although that camp is outside his district.

But word about the camps is spreading throughout Southern New England, and that promises to bring more people into the encampments, presenting greater risk of a public safety hazard, Ryan said.

Yet there is little the police can do to stop their growth. Since the camps are both on state-owned property maintained by the Department of Transportation, the police are limited to simply responding to complaints and conducting regular patrols, according to the city.

“If we had more direction from the DOT, that would help,” said Ryan.

DOT spokeswomen Heidi Cote said that the department is working on a resolution to the situation in the next two weeks or so, but declined to elaborate. “The real issue is that it is an active construction site, so it is a concern that people are living there. We know that it is a situation that we have to deal with,” she said.

Mayor David N. Cicilline, meanwhile, does not appear to be in any rush to address the squatter camps. Through his spokeswoman, Karen Southern, he declined repeated requests for an interview. “The city is deferring to the state on this issue,” Southern said.

Tent dwellers’ time on the river is surely limited: the state plans to begin razing the old Route 195 within the year and the camps will have to be dealt with before then.

“No one from the state or the city is going to step up and help us, but on the flip side, they’re not going to order us closed down. It’s a Catch-22,” said Freitas, of Tent City.

But the silence from city and state government is beginning to bother Fox Point residents.

Fox Pointers say they are concerned about quality of life in their neighborhood, the welfare of the people living in the encampments, and the cleanliness of the river, which they suspect is being used for washing clothes, bathing, and as a toilet. (Tent City leaders deny this.)

“Someone has to press the screws on the city to do something,” said Christopher Owens, who has lived on Sheldon Street for two years. “This is just not a good place for people to live.”

Schnepel, the head of the neighborhood association, agrees: “I don’t want to turn my back on people who have met bad times in their lives, but, at the same time, we have a society to uphold ... The bigger this gets, the harder it will be to tear down.”

Tent City: 34 tents, approximately 60 residents  Hope City: 25 tents, approximately 15 residents

pmarcelo@projo.com