Stepping On A Balloon, Again

The city tore down the small tent camp across from the shelter, and then to everyone's astonishment also demolished the derelict house and burned building next to it. Both had been on the chopping block for years. 

Tearing down the tent camp is not new in itself. We've seen it several times over the years we've been here. What happens afterwards is the residents then disperse throughout the neighborhood in smaller camps, we get tired of seeing it and dealing with it, and the homeless get pushed back to the field they started from. 

And the cycle repeats. 

This time, my neighbor called me because some homeless were setting up on the basketball court. I went out there to find the chaplain with two shopping carts of stuff and a couple of high looking guys hanging out. 

I explained they couldn't stay, offering them each a piece of Halloween candy to soften matters. 

An hour later another neighbor called on the other end of the block to let me know the chaplain had moved behind the old club across the street. In other words, about fifty feet. Feeling somewhat annoyed, I went and spoke to him in his construction. He said it was about to rain. After the rain, you've got to go, I said. He launched into a speech that lay somewhere between Free Soil and Sovereign Citizen, which he does. 

The next day I discovered he had moved about fifteen feet this time, to the back of a burnt house. His new spot was much more elaborate, with parade barriers, scrap tin and propped boards forming a cave. 

This time I told him he absolutely had to move. He was accompanied by three other guys who were all high out of their minds but not so stoned that they couldn't see the outcome. They started moving. 

A day later I spent an hour cleaning up the piles of clothes he had left behind.