Chapter 1: The Riverbank

The first thing you notice is how quiet it is.

At 6 a.m. on a Tuesday in early March, the Cedar River encampment looks almost peaceful — a line of tents in muted greens and blues, tarps pulled tight against the overnight frost, a thin column of woodsmoke rising from somewhere near the tree line. A dog is tied to a bicycle. Someone has hung laundry.

It looks, in other words, like people live here. Because they do.

The encampment first appeared in the summer of 2024, when three tents materialized under the Cedar Street bridge. By that winter there were twelve. By last spring, thirty. Today there are twenty-six — not because the crisis has eased, but because the city cleared the western half of the camp in January after a hepatitis A scare.

Those displaced residents didn’t go to shelters. Most of them simply moved further downstream, out of sight of the bridge, out of sight of the road, out of sight of the people driving to work at 7:15 who’d rather not think about it.

“People think it’s a choice. Nobody chooses this. You end up here one bad month at a time.”— David Marsh, 58, resident since October 2025

David Marsh is 58 years old. He was a machinist at the Pratt & Sons plant for twenty-two years. When the plant closed in 2023, he drew unemployment for six months, then worked odd jobs — drywall, landscaping, a stint at a warehouse that lasted until his back gave out. His wife left. His COBRA ran out. A $900-a-month apartment became an $1,100-a-month apartment, and then it became a tent.

Chapter 2: The Shelter That Can’t Keep Up

The Millbrook Community Shelter was built in 2008 to house 40 people during cold weather emergencies. It was never designed to be anyone’s home. But for an increasing number of Millbrook residents, it is exactly that — at least on the nights they can get in.

The shelter expanded to 64 beds in 2022 after converting a storage room and an unused office. On the coldest nights last winter, it turned away an average of 22 people per night.

Director Karen Okafor has run the shelter for nine years. She started with a staff of four. She now has six, serving a population that has tripled.

“We are a Band-Aid on a broken bone. We keep people alive overnight. That’s what we do. But alive overnight is not the same as housed.”— Karen Okafor, Director, Millbrook Community Shelter

Chapter 3: What They Carry

There is a temptation, when writing about homelessness, to reduce people to their circumstances — to describe them in terms of what they lack. No home, no job, no insurance, no address. It’s a framing that makes the problem feel abstract. Solvable by spreadsheet.

But spend an hour in the encampment and you see something different. You see what people keep.

Sandra Voss, 44, keeps a photo album wrapped in a plastic bag. It’s the only thing she took when she left her apartment. “Everything else I can replace eventually,” she said. “Not this.”

Robert Gaines, a 62-year-old Army veteran, keeps his discharge papers in a manila envelope inside a waterproof dry bag. “I served this country,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to prove that every time I ask for help, but I do.”

Marcus Bell, 31, keeps his daughter’s drawings taped to the inside of his tent. She’s seven. She lives with her mother in Eastview. He sees her every other Saturday at the library. “She thinks I have an apartment,” he said. “I’m not ready to tell her.”

Chapter 4: The Policy Gap

Millbrook’s response to homelessness can be measured in two numbers: 14 and $180,000.

Fourteen is the number of city council meetings since 2024 that have included homelessness on the agenda. One hundred eighty thousand is the total dollar amount the city has allocated — across all departments, across two fiscal years — to address it.

For context: the city’s annual budget for decorative landscaping and seasonal flower plantings is $215,000.

What Millbrook does not have: a housing authority, a dedicated homelessness coordinator, a single unit of permanent supportive housing, or a mental health crisis team. What it does have: a shelter that is over capacity, a police department that is increasingly asked to do social work, and a growing tension between residents who want the encampment gone and advocates who ask where, exactly, its residents are supposed to go.

“We spend $215,000 a year on flower beds and $180,000 over two years on homelessness. That tells you everything about our priorities.”— Rev. James Whitaker, Cedar Valley Interfaith Alliance

Chapter 5: The People Who Show Up

Tanya Reeves starts her day at 5:30 in the morning. She fills a backpack with granola bars, socks, hand warmers, Narcan, and a list of phone numbers for services that may or may not have openings. Then she drives to the places most people in Millbrook never see.

Reeves is one of two full-time outreach workers employed by Cedar Valley Community Services, a nonprofit that covers the entire county — 45,000 people across four municipalities. Her caseload is 73 individuals. Best practices say an outreach worker should carry no more than 20.

“I’m bailing water out of a boat that’s sinking faster than I can bail. But if I stop bailing, people drown. So I don’t stop.”— Tanya Reeves, Outreach Worker

Reeves has been doing this for four years. She has successfully housed 31 people in that time — a number she recites from memory, because she remembers every one.