Back in June 2009, Lise Fisher, staff writer for The Gainesville Sun in Florida, told readers about the arrest of a man for stabbing two other men (both admitted to the hospital in critical condition) in the section of town known as Tent City.
For the same publication, less than a week later, Karen Voyles gave the next installment of the story. It was decided that Tent City must go. The inhabitants were forewarned and the squatter village was depopulated and deconstructed. An estimated 200 campers were rousted and, according to the police, “scattered to other places around Gainesville.”
Capt. Lonnie Scott told the reporter,
Some have moved to other parts of the property. Others have moved to other wooded areas as well. Our goal is to have as safe an environment as we can for everyone, and it wasn’t safe in the other location.
Yes, the authorities spun the evacuation and razing of Tent City as a beneficent measure, undertaken for the sake of the inhabitants. According to the official party line, the encampment had to be cleared out for the safety of the people living there — which makes about as much sense as the Vietnam war’s “destroy the village in order to save it” rationale.
Question: After the stabber had been taken into custody, where was the threat? Question: If a knife attack happened in your neighborhood, would the police order you to grab what you could carry and get the hell out, and then tear your house down?
Leaving aside questions of private property and numerous other issues that could be brought up here, the point is the pointlessness. Hold onto that thought, and you will see why. And, meanwhile, keep this number in mind: 1,500. That’s how many people were experiencing homelessness in the Gainesville area at the time.
Voyles tells us,
Commissioners officially declared the clearing of Tent City an emergency, which allows St. Francis House homeless shelter and soup kitchen to house 60 people a night, far more than the regularly permitted 35.
Wow, how exceedingly humane! The city granted people permission to squeeze in and double up at the shelter, while for every one of them, 24 others remained out there somewhere, on the streets or in the woods.
A few days later, another writer, Arupa Freeman, picked up on the story and covered it from her perspective, expressed in the title of the piece, “Gainesville turns a blind eye toward the homeless.” Many of the Tent City people had been told they could move to an adjoining piece of land. But almost immediately that parcel too was posted with “No Trespassing” signs and the people were given one week’s notice to vacate.
Freeman wrote,
Residents will now be dispersed almost entirely, making it incredibly difficult for the Home Van and other community groups to bring people the food, water and other supplies they so desperately need.
Freeman noted that probably half of the Tent City residents should, by right, have been in the hospital, suffering as they were from old age, many kinds of physical handicaps and illnesses, and disabling mental conditions. She went on to say,
I have seen cruelty and horror in my life, but the forced evacuation of Tent City is the worst atrocity I have ever personally witnessed.
The writer went into detail about the criminalizing, bulldozing, neglectful, and abusive ways of the local government, sparing a kind word only for Commissioner Jack Donovon, who had expressed the opinion that the Tent City people should be helped like any other refugees.
Freeman affirmed,
He is right. They are refugees created by a society that does not pay its workers a living wage, which has almost no low-income housing (the waiting list for Section 8 housing is literally years long!), and little access to health care for the poor… When you exclude people, isolate people, and treat people with hatred and indifference, you are creating hell. When you include people, love people, and take care of people, you are creating heaven.
Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and heaven has not been created yet. Two years later, in late June of 2011, Tent City was once again a going concern. Apparently, the property owner had a change of heart somewhere along the line and granted permission for certain people to live on the land. The problem is, other people keep showing up who are not wanted by either the owner or the current residents.
Another staff writer for The Gainesville Sun, Cindy Swirko, quotes police crime prevention specialist Officer Ernest Graham:
For a very long time, folks in Tent City were kind of a quiet group… We’re starting to see an increase in trouble there. If we see more violent crime there, we may have to take a different approach…
Indeed, two weeks before that ominous warning was issued, a Tent City woman was viciously beaten and admitted to the intensive care unit with massive injuries, in need of extensive reconstructive surgery. The attacker, also a Tent City resident, was charged with attempted murder. Will this lead to another clear-out and clean-up of the area? Another episode of disruption, as pointless and futile as the previous clear-outs and clean-ups? Another round of community-busting and the dispersal of people experiencing homelessness to other corners of the inhospitable city? Stay tuned.
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Source: “GPD: Stabbing suspect had prior homicide convictions,” The Gainesville Sun, 06/03/09
Source: “Tent City homeless in limbo,” The Gainesville Sun, 06/09/09
Source: “Arupa Freeman: Gainesville turns a blind eye toward the homeless,” The Gainesville Sun, 06/16/09
Source: “Homeless are back in Tent City, and so is the crime,” The Gainesville Sun, 06/24/11
Source: “Homeless woman beaten in Tent City,” The Gainesville Sun, 06/04/11
Image by ryanlachica (ryan kuonen), used under its Creative Commons license.