Concord is prepared to spend $205,000 to clear and clean Healy Park, which for years has been the site of one of Concord’s larger homeless encampments.

“This is a site that needs to be cleaned up, that needs to be cleared and needs to be restored to regular public use,” said Mayor Byron Champlin. “Because it is part of our city park system.”

Healy Park stretches along the western bank of the Merrimack River, near the Manchester Street bridge. It historically hasn’t been a hugely popular recreation destination and, intensifying over the last several years, it’s become a camping site for people in the city experiencing homelessness.

Alarm at the amount of trash and safety of the park is mounting — as City Councilor Jim Schlosser put it, “It really is a disaster. It’s really an abomination.”

The park is a scenic spot, and one the city hopes to keep in better shape once it’s cleared, especially as Terrill Park across the river is slated for upgrades alongside the Merrimack River Greenway Trail.

In addition to alarming conditions, winter and spring floods from the rising river put those living there at risk, and sweep human waste into the waters of the Merrimack. There’s also a safety element: in January, a man living in a tent at the park was critically injured after being shot in the head.

The move to clear the park of people and debris would unfold slowly, with outreach aimed at connecting those living there with more support services and, ideally, housing. However, the proposal, along with the inevitable question of where those living in the park will go, has highlighted a debate over the need for more shelter space, including both temporary and permanent housing in the capital city.

About a dozen people are living in the park currently, though not all at one site, according to Concord Police. While lower than its peak in past seasons, it remains one of the larger known encampments in the city — most are just a few tents. The vast majority of the waste and debris in the park are a result of accumulation over time, not just from those living there now, according to Deputy Chief Barrett Moulton.

“It’s like a bomb went off,” Moulton said.

While the amount of land taken up at the park has grown over time, people cycle in and out, either because they move on to another spot or find housing. It means, Moulton said, that “ninety percent of what’s down there is stuff left from previous encampments.”

The reserve fund that would pay for this cleanup is overwhelmingly made up of money drawn from grants awarded to Concord as part of the state’s Housing Champions program. It would go towards not only cleaning up the park but readying it for its intended use, including by refreshing things like trail signs. Other camps in the area could also be cleared and cleaned as part of the effort. Cleanup is estimated to cost $90,000, while the rest of the money would go toward restoring the park.

Concord police, including its social workers, will work with those living in the park to ensure they are aware it will be cleared and try to connect them with housing opportunities.

But Concord is short on immediate options.

To Schlosser, who serves on the city’s committee to address homelessness, the situation highlights Concord’s dearth of transitional housing — which can take the form of rooming houses, sanctioned encampments, tiny homes and shelters.

While the city has partnered with the Coalition to End Homelessness on the development of apartments for its clients, one form of transitional housing, there are only so many of those.

The worry anytime an encampment is cleared is that its residents simply move and camp elsewhere in the city. It also can make it harder for outreach and support workers to stay in touch with clients.

“I think in order to really enforce — to ensure the safety of our parks and the cleanliness of our parks — it would be helpful to have transitional housing opportunities for some of these folks,” Schlosser said. “Not fancy apartments or anything like that, but just places where we can offer them to keep them out of the elements, to keep them safe, to keep them sanitary.”

In an interview, Mayor Byron Champlin shrugged off the idea of the city looking into those types of transitional housing.

“I think that concept is, ideally, a good one, but it’s fraught with details that are problematic,” Champlin said.

If a nonprofit came forward with a proposal, he added, he’d be open to it, but his focus is on overall housing development in the city.

“My preference would be to try and get people into real housing units… Every time we create a housing unit, it opens up something that potentially is on the lower end of the housing scale, and that makes an apartment available for someone who’s coming out of homelessness.”

Schlosser said the city has to be part of the conversation.

The fear, he said, is a game of “who can touch their nose first?”

“It’s not the city, it’s not the nonprofits, it’s not the business, it’s everybody together,” he said. “It has to be an all-in strategy.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Healy Park.

 Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com.