The City of Chicago Used a Mumford and Sons Concert To Displace Homeless People

[marmar]

(In These Times) News that torrential downpours this week led Mumford and Sons to postpone its highly anticipated show in Chicago’s far North Side neighborhood of Uptown, the first in a summer-long outdoor concert series, was met with widespread understanding from loyal fans. Yet other community members could not treat rainwater as a simple nuisance. For Uptown's homeless residents, last week's rain flooded the pair of viaducts they call home, washing away tents, clothes and family possessions. And on Tuesday, city agencies, absent from flooding relief in lieu of local charity groups' efforts, arrived at 9 a.m. to pack people and belongings alike into city agency trucks to “secure” the streets for Mumford's performance.

Weekly or bimonthly “deep cleanings” of homeless residents’ living spaces, however, are not reserved for the anticipated arrival of rock royalty. Such routine cleanings require homeless residents to move their property to “temporary nearby locations” while city agencies discard trash and drive a power washer through the viaducts. They comprise a coordinated interaction between the City of Chicago and homeless residents: part outreach, part spectacle, and all control, muddled by inconsistent application of rules agreed to in 1998 in Love v. City of Chicago and legal settlement reached with the City of Chicago in January 2015.

These provisions mandate that city agencies provide posted notice at least 24 hours in advance for regular off-street cleaning of homeless areas and seven days for deep cleanings, designate homeless people’s permissible “portable personal possessions” and outline a rigorous tagging procedure whereby residents must receive seven days before the next cleaning to discard or else relocate their property. Yet each cleaning risks widespread property loss for homeless communities and little access to legal recourse, despite each new amendment to the policies designed to protect them.

Homeless residents, who often have so little to begin with, must start afresh when clothes, shoes and government IDs are swept up by the city (to say nothing of the loss of irreplaceable items like photos of deceased loved ones). These residents must also contend with the hostility of neighbors that disdain their living situation in the viaducts. .................(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18095/mumford_sons_concert_gentrification_homeless