For Pamela Macapagal and the rest of the gang, home is in the clearing behind the fence, with friends she treats like family and pets she can’t leave behind.

So she doesn’t.

When authorities and city outreach workers offer to take her and the others away from her semi-permanent structure in the woods, Macapagal declines.

Petite and fiery, Macapagal knew this day would come. City crews have already closed down 22 encampments this year. They know of at least 27 in all. This one in Brooklyn, behind the gas station and Food Mart, was scheduled to come next.

Promises to escort the tight-knit bunch to shelter space mean little to those who have learned to trust nothing and no one. And for Macapagal, leaving the site means risking the loss of all she’s known for 9 years.

The cats, Jamara and Heaven, and Xyla, the playful pit bull who stands guard. Clothes and tools and cookware. Handwritten notes from Jamar, her fiancé, dead since June. If she leaves now, what will remain when city crews dispose of it all?

Macapagal is the de facto leader here; Her friend Rico even calls her “Ma.” On Monday, he rushes around the grounds, packing her clothes into suitcases.

The residents treat the grounds here as equal parts sacred and cursed. Here lies the possessions of lost loved ones and memories of those who have come and gone. They’ve kept out intruders, tried their best to keep the place clean. It’s where many of Baltimore’s most forgotten residents have laid their heads when no one else would take them.

There’s Kenny, looking for work after a stint in jail. Dominic, who helps care for Xyla. Rico, who learned the ins and outs of the streets at boyhood. Many others who use drugs and don’t see a way out.

As city encampments break down one by one — with shelter beds and mental health treatment being made available to those who want them — many here feel discarded.

“It’s a free country, but here we have no say-so, which is wrong,” Macapagal said. “We’re people, just like you are, if we have money or not. We still have rights.”

“I don’t understand what their gain is,” Rico, who declined to give his last name, added. “People are very comfortable back here. You’re taking it away from people who are already hurting.”

Megan goes willingly to the shelter, a converted hotel with enough room to take her right away. A former bus driver, she will trade the cold for a warm bed. Of the 22 encampment sites “resolved” this year, city workers say most residents have gone to shelter spaces or found housing. Megan, 39, hopes to be one of them.

The city doesn’t remove encampments until it has enough beds to offer the displaced, Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services director Ernestina Simmons said.

“We want to make sure, when people say yes, we have the resources,” Simmons told City Council members last week at a public hearing in City Hall. “We are guaranteeing shelter. But we still have clients who decline.”

A spokeswoman for Simmons’ office said outreach teams have upped their visits to the Brooklyn encampment lately, in preparation for the “resolution date.” Many on site say they either haven’t been engaged or haven’t met anyone from the city more than once.

Simmons said there are “pros and cons” to the city’s encampments policy. Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration views as health and safety hazards and aims to help community members find long-term housing without involving the justice system. The process of packing them up has not always gone smoothly.

Macapagal said an outreach worker once promised to bring her crates for her belongings but never followed through. They’ve offered, she said, to put the pets in a shelter until she can retrieve them. For what the group can’t take with them to the shelters, the city will provide storage for 30 days.

“A lot of things back here that are memories to people, mean something to people,” she said last Friday, walking around the clearing. “They should give everybody more time.”

By Monday morning, after law enforcement and outreach workers descended, Macapagal learned she could stay. She’s not sure how long the offer will last. She said she’ll keep packing anyway, in case it’s all too good to be true.

Baltimore Banner photojournalist Kaitlin Newman contributed to this article.