Does anyone seriously think people are better off living under Lake Shore Dr.?

I’m not kidding with that question. Because when it comes to the matter of people opposing city officials who want to do repairs to the drive in the Uptown neighborhood because it forced homeless people to relocate, I just don’t get it.

Homeless not just in Uptown, also downtown

The issue came to a head earlier this week when Chicago police had to use force to get people who had developed a “tent city” of sorts near Wilson and Lawrence avenues to leave the area.

CITY OFFICIALS HAD made arrangements for homeless shelters to accommodate those residents, but many of the homeless did not want to go. Which I almost understand – when one has little in life, they tend to cling too tightly to what little they do have.

No matter how cruddy it might be.

But there were activist groups who were fighting the city, trying to get measures approved in court that would interfere with the efforts to do the repair work to the bridges that are some 85 years old and are considered to be structurally deficient, due to age.

To those activists, the right of a person to take shelter under the bridges was more important than the public safety at large.

THERE ALSO ARE some people who think that plans to include bicycle paths are less about making public improvements for the surrounding neighborhood and more about making the area unsuitable for the return of homeless people once the bridge repairs are complete spring of next year.

Now throughout my years as a reporter-type person, I have heard countless arguments about gentrification and community repairs being made that do not take into account the existing residents and are meant more to turn a community into a place suitable for someone of a higher economic bracket.

I actually can sympathize with those arguments on the grounds that you’re trying to chase existing residents from their homes.

But in this case, we’re talking about people without homes. Personally, I find it shameful to think that anyone can find homelessness to be acceptable, and think that those people forced to seek shelter in public places isn’t an embarrassment to our society as a whole.

I’D SAY IT’S wrong that it took a road repair project to get city officials concerned enough to want to find proper shelter for those individuals in our society who, often through no fault of their own, have no other place to stay.

I’d say it’s long overdue that city officials made an effort to find alternate sites for those people who in some cases were pitching tents (and in some cases might not have even had that much shelter) to provide themselves something resembling housing.

And I’d say city officials ought to be concerned about the existence of conditions that cause many of those homeless officials to resist the idea of staying in a homeless shelter.

Seriously, anyone who reads the news reports of recent days about this issue can hear from those homeless who think a tent is a better shelter because of the sanitary conditions or overcrowded conditions of some of the homeless shelters.

IT TRULY IS sad to think our society in Chicago has reached a point where some people think they’re safer and more secure living out in the open of the Uptown neighborhood (which may not be the impoverished turf along the north lakefront that it used to be, but is still far from luxurious) rather than in a place with electricity and running water.

Perhaps those activists who were fighting in court until recently to thwart the road repair projects should have focused their efforts to improve the shelter options for those people whose life circumstances have caused them to resort to such conditions.

And I don’t want to hear from anyone who wants to believe that some people don’t know better and want to live like that. They’re probably the same nitwits who think that some women choose to be in prostitution.

We all have an obligation to try to help those at the bottom rungs of our society, if for the only reason being that our society as a whole is no longer than its lowest members.

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Are we chasing people away from neighborhoods, or eliminating them?

I'm trying to figure which story I stumbled across this weekend is the most tragic.

I think it is the subject material for the Chicago Sun-Times' columnist Mark Brown, who wrote this weekend about 46th Ward Alderman James Cappleman.

HE REPRESENTS THE Uptown neighborhood in the City Council, which historically had developed a reputation as a place where the down-and-out of our society wound up living because they didn't have any other options.

That image bothers Cappleman, who appararently would prefer it if his north lakefront ward had something more along the line of a youthful or hip reputation such as something like Lake View, if not quite Lincoln Park.

To that end, Cappleman has informed the Salvation Army -- which often sends outreach trucks into the neighborhood to help distribute food to the needy -- that they're no longer welcome in Uptown.

Cappleman seems to think homeless people are deliberately making a special trip to Uptown just to take advantage of the trucks; whose purpose is to let people know of the wide range of services they can find if they visit a Salvation Army facility. Although he tries to tone down his rhetoric a bit in response.

AS THE SUN-TIMES reported, Cappleman is giving the Salvation Army one month to find another location to send their trucks. He doesn't seem to care where they send them, so long as they're not within the 46th Ward.

Salvation Army officials say they will comply. They're not looking to pick a fight.

But I'm not sure what will be accomplished by this move, other than some homeless individuals getting even less than they already have. Because I don't see them leaving the area, just because Cappleman thinks they're a blemish on his home neighborhood.

If anything, Cappleman may well be giving us a perfect example of why people are suspicious of efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The "dreaded" (to some people) concept of "gentrification.

ALL TOO OFTEN, it comes across as an effort to chase people out of a neighborhood so that someone else can come in and enjoy its benefits.

And Uptown does have its benefits -- most particularly that eastern boundary also known as the Lake Michigan shoreline. Get the kind of people who pay significant types of money to live in places like Lake View or Rogers Park.

As for the individuals who get chased out, there are too many political people who seem to take the attitude that it just doesn't matter. Where they wind up is somebody else's problem -- as in they will then have to figure out a way to chase those individuals away to someplace even further out-of-sight.

Which is what too many of us think of someone like William Strickland, a 72-year-old resident of the Brainerd neighborhood (that's South Side, to those of you whose knowledge of Chicago doesn't stretch south of Soldier Field) who died early Saturday.

STRICKLAND WAS A man being kept alive by kidney dialysis treatments -- which keep his blood clean of the toxins that the rest of us dispose of through our functioning kidneys.

On Saturday, he was shot to death outside his home. Police told the Chicago Tribune they suspect someone was trying to rob him.

Not only did Strickland's family hear the gunfire, so did the driver of the shuttle bus that was waiting for him to come outside so he could be taken to his dialysis treatment.

This one hits home for me because my mother was kept alive by dialysis treatments, and she used to have a similar transport pick her up early three times a week so she could live a little longer.

SHE USED TO worry about taking a slip on the ice in the early morning hours. Being shot was something that would have gone beyond her imagination.

Yet it happened, most likely because someone thought he could get a couple of bucks from an old man.

There are those of us who get all worked up over criminal acts where the body count extends into the dozens. Yet to me, it is those who single out the most vulnerable who are truly venal.

Perhaps even more so than the current activity taking place in Uptown!

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Alderman wants to stop Chicago from becoming set to a sequel of “The Birds”

What is it about the idea of living creatures other than human beings in urban areas that gets our City Council all worked up?

I always thought the most outrageous fight was the one of many years ago when an alderman seriously tried to push through an ordinance that would have required horses in the city to wear diapers.

HE WAS REFERRING to all those horses that pull those quaint buggies around the Near North Side and Streeterville streets as a tourist attraction (and romantic evening out for couples). Because the horses were dumping their feces in their paths.

Because these are city streets, it means they occasionally get covered in the manure.

And as one who has had accidental moments stepping in the horse poop (from a mounted police officer’s horse, to be specific), I realize how disgusting it can be to deal with.

But the idea of diapers was overkill. It would have looked ridiculous. It definitely reeked of someone who had way too much free time on his hands to even contemplate this measure.

WHICH IS THE same feeling I’m having about 46^th Ward Alderman James Cappleman – who this week said he wants a new ordinance that would make it a municipal violation for people to feed pigeons.

Anybody who does so could get hit with a significant fine, and up to six months in the Cook County Jail if they’re really persistent.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Cappleman said he has residents in his ward (which includes the Uptown neighborhood) who like to bring several pounds of bread with them to feed the fowl.

Cappleman said the end result is that the pigeons now think that Uptown welcomes them, and they’re coming back in greater numbers. And their feces is cluttering up the streets of Uptown even more than the horses dump on North Michigan Avenue.

YES, IT’S DISGUSTING. Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, I think anybody who goes out of their way to encourage pigeons is probably a little bit “off,” to put it politely.

But the idea that police who already struggle to patrol the streets are now going to have to start cracking down on people with nothing better to do than feeding the little birdies (which is probably how they view their actions)?

That’s even more “off.”

This is a measure that can only end in disaster. Here’s hoping the rest of the City Council manages to find a way to make this proposal go away.

THIS WOULD BE one time when the best thing that could happen in the interest of the people is to let this proposed ordinance get stuck in the mechanizations of the political process to the point where it gets lost and becomes forgotten!

By Cappleman’s own admission, he tells the newspaper that he suspects many of the people who are feeding pigeons in his neighborhood are not mentally stable. Just envision the potential for an arrest to blow up into a full-blown confrontation – particularly if police feel threatened enough to use force.

A public relations disaster for the city.

Plus the fact that there are so many other issues of much more significance than the fact that some people are worked up over pigeon poop.

I’D THINK THOSE city officials who have always pushed for stricter gun control measures would want to be focusing on what the city needs to do now that a federal appeals court panel in Chicago has given Illinois state government six months to craft a measure that will allow people to carry pistols in public.

That’s going to be an ugly political brawl, and it’s very likely that the city (for a time, at least) could get a policy it despises imposed upon it.

If that happens, the idea of pigeon poop on the streets up Uptown will seem so petty by comparison.

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