Out of sight, out of mind
For those of you who don’t know, Pennsylvania Avenue is ripe pickin’s for the homeless of DC. Many of the most popular museums and sights line the eight lane street between the Capitol Building and the White House, and so ya’all rubes, rife with guilt over your wealth that allowed you to stay at our over-priced hotels and eat our over-priced resturaunt food (and pay our 10% tourist tax) are easy marks for our hundreds of homeless people panhandling along that one mile stretch.
I’ve lived here nearly ten years now and the folks who are there now are generally the very same people that were there ten years ago. Well, that’s a problem for the Hope and Change Administration, it seems. They’re an unsightly bunch (the homeless) and they might muss up the scenery for Tuesday’s inaguration, according to the Washington Post;
In years past, U.S. cities grappling with sizable homeless populations rounded them up in mass arrests, bought them one-way bus tickets to nearby states or gave them movie passes to keep them out of sight during such events as the Olympics or political conventions, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
ad_iconIt wasn’t until the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, where officials opened shelters and welcomed homeless people with warm food, that a more humane precedent was set, Stoops said.
The District plans to follow that city’s lead and open all of its shelters for 24 hours during the inauguration, offering warm beverages, food and live television feeds of the day’s ceremonies, said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).
“We’ll be open all day. We’ll make it a day of celebration, a fun place to stay away from the crowds,” said David Treadwell, executive director of the Central Union Mission shelter in Logan Circle.
Whoo-hoo. C’mon, pal lets go to the fun shelter! How about dealing with the problem of hobos on the street for the rest of us who have to navigate through the throngs of pan handlers every day? Not to mention the recent spate of hobo murders in DC.
I can’t figure why someone with no home would remain in DC in the winter anyway. I’d be in Miami Beach by October. Sleep on the beach, use the public showers – scarf up food from the plates of diners right on the sidewalk. Sweet.
But this is typical liberalism – hide the problem so everyone feels better about themselves without actually accomplishing anything, other than making all concerned feel better for a day. So what do they do on January 21st? There’s no Bush to blame anymore.
Category: Politics
I’ve been working right by the White House for over two years now, and there are two people who stick out in my head immediately: a woman who has been “pregnant” for the entire time I’ve been working (gestation period of an elephant, seriously) and a man for whom I bought a $1 burger at McD’s (he’s probably about 3 of me put together) and then threw it back at me, saying he wanted money to go buy booze.
I’ve had friends and colleagues of mine who’ve experienced much worse from these two and others who populate the parks. But Jonn, as you know as a DC resident, finding real solutions requires too much effort; the people in local government here can’t even manage to repair fire hydrants in NW… Band-aid solutions of hiding the “less aesthetically pleasing” aspects of the city are all Fenty and co. could come up with.
Jonn said:
I can’t figure why someone with no home would remain in DC in the winter anyway. I’d be in Miami Beach by October. Sleep on the beach, use the public showers – scarf up food from the plates of diners right on the sidewalk. Sweet.
Another location that attracted bums was Las Vegas. When I worked in Vegas for the year after I got out of the service, there was alot of bums that flocked there. The weather is mild for the most part and many of the casinos at that time offered free meal coupons to attract tourists, but they also attracted the bums. The LV Metro Police would try to keep them off The Strip, but there were alot of bums on Freemont St.
But this is typical liberalism – hide the problem so everyone feels better about themselves without actually accomplishing anything, other than making all concerned feel better for a day.
The liberals have been making an issue about the “homeless” for years now and the situation hasn’t gotten any better. Just come to downtown Rachacha and walk the streets and you’ll have encounters with plenty of panhandlers. As you noticed in your 10 years in DC, the bums in downtown Rachacha are usually the same characters. There are some people who choose the derelect life-style and there’s not much you can do for them other than provide soup kitchens and shelters.
This story can’t be right. DC and the liberals are going to use a tactic that was used by those gay bashing Mormon, evil neocons from Utah?
And the author of this piece actually gave them credit. Remind me again who it was that made the Salt Lake City Olympics such a success?
Salt Lake City.
That would be the Mormons we hear so much about, right?
This is no longer an inauguration, this is turning into a mixture of the Queens coronation and a Barney&Bailey circus show.
A very fine example to give in the worst depression since 1929,
spend $ 150 million on a circus.