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| 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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