What are the rents like there? Here people are losing their places to live left and right without any means to afford the escalating rents. Investors come in, buy up the housing, evict the tenants, rehab the place and rent it out for three, four times the prior rent. I just got a new puppy so I am back to walking around the park a couple times a day. It's really sad to see some of these people with nowhere to go, everything they own in a bag on their backs. Our city, last year, passed an ordinance that homeless people couldn't have more than they could carry on streets, trying to stop them from plopping down in front of businesses with tons of stuff. Now the police can confiscate their stuff if they have nowhere else to put it. Some just walk around the park talking to themselves. It's been almost a couple years since I had a dog so it's been awhile for a close up look at whose around the park. On one hand, I am like, this is nice how they've cleaned up a lot of the housing, especially the couple of crack houses around the corner, on the other hand, I am shocked at how bad it's gotten to find housing.
The last few years, the closest I've come to seeing it, was a guy who lives out of his van down by the river, and an old lady living in a van with someone I am assuming may be her son. For the last three years they show up down at the river and sit in that van all day. Just before the bathroom closes, she gets out, all slumped forward, like her body has become part of her sitting position permanently, heads in to the bathroom for last call before they leave the park to park outside the park on the street. Our city has a no camping in the parks policy. You aren't suppose to be there after dark either but if it's in the homeless hangout park downtown, they generally leave them alone unless they try and erect tents or cardboard boxes to sleep in.