Out of sight, out of mind

• Posted by allana on November 13th, 2007 filed in All of Life
• 1 Comment »

In the town where I live there is this little park behind the public library. Years ago it was just a quiet, pretty little park, with a gazebo and benches and lots of shade trees. When it was used at all, it was used for things like weddings, picnics, small family events and the like.  The park is the only one right in the center of the downtown area, surrounded by businesses and shops.  It’s at the heart of the busiest part of town, so not really useful as a children’s playground, but central to pretty much everything.

Over the last five years or so, the homeless population (note I don’t use the phrase “homeless problem”, they are people, not problems) has grown and grown in my town. Over time that quiet, pretty little park became a favorite place for homeless families to find something vaguely resembling safe shelter in an area where they have quick access to schools and grocery stores and jobs.

It hasn’t developed into a high crime area, it’s not filled with junkies sleeping the days away on benches. These are families, mothers, fathers sometimes, children. They spend the nights sleeping under the trees. During the day you can see the parents washing their children in the water faucet, people gathering together to share food, taking turns walking their children to the nearby schools.

The various families come and go and are intermixed with some obviously single people. But it has become a rather odd sort of constantly changing community. These people actually watch out for each other and help each other.

A small homeless shelter, where my son did volunteer building maintenance for a couple of years before he left for college, is right around the corner from this park. It’s not at all uncommon to see a few of the children from the shelter dashing across the side streets to go play in the park with the friends, whom only a few days or weeks earlier they’d been camping out with in that same park.

It’s very, very different about eight blocks away off main street however.

Main street is the second longest street in town, going from one end to the other for miles. It is lined with primarily businesses, stores, outlets, burger places. Running nearly the length of Main street, behind the buildings, is a long alleyway. Parts of the alleyway are closed off and dark and other parts are wide open, opening up into parking lots and side streets.

The homeless population living in this long alleyway are mostly single men, some drug addicts, some obviously mentally ill people. It’s a darker, more hopeless place and the crime rate there, all along the back of that street, has skyrocketed over the last few years. In fact it’s reached the point now that cab companies have made policies against dropping off or picking up passengers along some of the small side streets. They’ll drive through them but they won’t stop back there.

But the really big difference between the two locations is that the homeless along main street are not so obvious. They’re hidden behind buildings, sleeping behind dumpsters. A person can drive all along main street, pass through the side streets and on into the lovely residential areas, and never be aware of the homeless back there, if they don’t bother to stop and really look.

However the homeless in Library park can’t be missed. They’re out in the open, they can’t be ignored. When the city officials talk about the “homeless problem”, it’s these people they mean, these people who can’t easily be shoved into a corner and hidden away. And they’ve been talking about these people a lot lately.

We saw a taste of their (the city council’s) idea of a solution at a food bank where I’ve volunteered on and off for years, about six months ago. Six months ago the food bank received a letter from the city informing us that we needed to “manage the people” better. In the letter they complained about the long lines that were forming outside the food bank in the early morning hours and the people who would stand in these lines for hours every other day (the bank is open three days a week due to the fact that it is run entirely by unpaid volunteers) while we handed out food and clothes to people on a first come first served basis.

Their solution was to insist we put up a sign informing people that they were not permitted to line up or loiter any earlier than 30 minutes before the scheduled opening of the food bank and that they must leave with the food and clothing we give them immediately and not congregate in the neighborhood. The claim was that the city had been receiving complaints from our neighbors.

Now whether that claim is true or not, who knows, but we had to assume it was and we had to be careful. The building we use is not paid for by us, it is donated to us by the Catholic church next door. They allow us to use the building, the parking lot, even their name and the church congregation provides us with both volunteers and donations. If the church decides that the neighborhood doesn’t want us there, getting rid of us wouldn’t be hard.

So we did what the city asked us to do. We put up the signs and we began policing the people, feeding them and sending them on their way with requests to please not stay. What else could we do?

But this was just the first sign of what the city officials have apparently decided to “do” about the homeless. What is the second sign? Oh it’s even more obvious, more blatant, and frankly, it’s downright disgusting.

The city officials have announced their plan to “solve the homeless problem in Library Park”. They are going to build … a water park.

Yes, a water park.

They are paving over Library park (the construction has already begun) and putting in decorative fountains and sprinklers. They have stated that there will be no grass, only a few of the trees will be kept, and all benches and seating areas will be removed. It will be a cement lot with some pretty water fountains decorating it.

What they have decided to do is simple. They will make it impossible for anyone to camp there. It will not be necessary for the police to be the bad guys and kick people out of the park anymore, as they do the other parks in town in the more residential areas. It will no longer be necessary for people to be so aware of the homeless population while they are shopping or driving through. They won’t have to see the problem anymore. It will just go away.

Where will it go? Well into the dark corners and alleyways where these people belong of course, hidden away, where no one has to see them.

Out of sight, out of mind.