Manchester clears city park: Homeless grapple with survival

Sep. 4—A brown stuffed teddy bear sitting in an oversized Mercedes-Benz toy car stood watch over Taunya Belser and friend Tyrone Aikens.

The pair had woken up from sleeping on bedding on a sidewalk on Central Street adjoining Veterans Memorial Park in Manchester on Wednesday.

"We got kicked out of two parks yesterday," Belser said after police and public works crews moved people camping in the park Wednesday morning in order to mow the grass but left them alone.

Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said park sweeps like the one Wednesday morning aren't uncommon, and were performed even before city aldermen voted in early July to ban camping on city streets and in local parks.

He said his department works with public works staff as part of the city's efforts to clean up parks so that people feel comfortable using them.

Isaiah Rodriguez, a maintenance worker in the city Parks Department, was working on the park grounds.

Moving people's campsites is "good and bad," he said. "They're human beings at the end of the day."

Triana Schapperle and her husband, Charles, called the same Central Street sidewalk their current home, complete with two blue camping chairs, a food cart and a baby carriage holding their clothes.

"I'm tired of cops harassing us — because I'm pregnant," said Triana Schapperle, 35.

The frequent sweeps are "making people frantic," she said. "We should be able to stay in the park."

The couple previously lived in Epping but left over a dispute with their landlord. Now, they are trying to protect what they own from those moving the homeless along.

"They take all their stuff and throw it in the trash," said Charles Schapperle, who said he was a current U.S. Navy SEAL.

Roland Bergeron, who has owned Granite State Barber Shop across from Veterans Memorial Park for 54 years, said a nearby alley smells of urine and is a place to drop used needles.

"They've got to move them to a place where they don't want to be on the sidewalks," Bergeron said.

Born and raised in Manchester, David Black, 57, has been homeless for 12 years. Homeless shelters are full, he said.

"There's not enough," he said. "It's all politics.

"I'm out here because I don't have money."

Black said someone on Tuesday stole a $55 card he planned to use to run his cellphone. Someone took his backpack the day before.

Black also criticized some homeless people who disrespect their neighborhood.

"Pick up after yourselves. They want to be slobs. That's why they are being harassed," Black said.

What about people looking out for each other?

"There's no buddy system," Black said. "It's back to caveman days."

Police spokeswoman Heather Hamel said lawn mowers needed to get into the park Wednesday.

"If you head over there now you will see that many have returned," Hamel said in an email mid-afternoon Wednesday.

People asked to move have the chance to pick up their belongings and officers don't harass them, she said.

"Anything left behind is considered to be abandoned property and can be thrown away," she said.

People who behave inappropriately in the parks are told to leave and sometimes given citations or arrested, she said.

Kristen Alder, 42, receives $1,300 a month in Social Security disability benefits. Police have kicked her off the sidewalk, she said, and she lost her medication during one cleanup.

She says she pays a nearby restaurant $5 every time she uses its restroom.

Alder has seen bodies in the river, she said. She vows she's not going to be a victim, but a singer.

"I'm going to live," she vowed. "I'm going to be famous."

Union Leader reporter Paul Feely contributed to this story.