Rick Baker Takes Down Tent City

The less-than-compassionate views of St. Petersburg homelessness has become a recent topic of discussion here. Mayor Rick Baker ordered tent city torn down.

The city of St. Petersburg's battle against its homeless residents escalated today when police slashed their tents to the ground and threw them away.

Homeless bystanders stood by and watched in shock, many with tears streaming down their faces.

"This is sickening," said Viola resident, whose tent was cut up and thrown out.

The article reports that the city told the homeless that they could stay on the corner of 15th Street and 15th Avenue. Apparently, the city charged their mind within the matter of days. A side issue is the police cutting the tents with box cutters. I'm positive that St. Petersburg would lose in higher courts for destroying a person's property. This is a Fourth Amendment issue. Rick Baker should read James Madison.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

Fresno faced a class action suit for bulldozing a homeless camp. The courts also stopped law enforcement from destroying property.

After hearing the evidence, the court ruled that the city's action violated the rights of the homeless under the Fourth and 14th Amendments. Characterizing the city's policies toward homeless people's property - and its justifications of its actions - as "dishonest and demeaning" to homeless people and based on a "woefully mistaken understanding of the law," the court issued a preliminary injunction to stop the unlawful seizure and destruction of property.

A Feministe readers explains why the homeless population increased. Many Tampa residents will be familiar with Dr. Paul Bearer.

Oh, incidentally, so you’ll know what’s up with the weird police thuggery in St. Petersburg (rolling up in their Police Interceptors and slicing the tops off of tents with knives!), here’s the real deal, the insider’s skinny.. See, there’s this one particular tract of land, about two-thirds of a city block with a total area of about 1.7 acres, which up until two months ago was occupied by a couple dozen run-down old wooden houses, subdivided into weekly rental apartments. They got bought out by developers and last month they knocked all the houses down. (Rats scattered everywhere. One ended up in our department secretary’s office.) There were already a few homeless people hanging out on the street in that neighborhood; with the demolition of that block of cheap rentals the number of homeless people in this vicinity tripled. This block is right on the geographical edge of the latest phase of the ongoing gentrification of downtown St. Petersburg. What used to be a block of lowest-of-the-low cheap rentals will soon be $25-million-plus worth of urban townhouses (65 or so units, starting in the low $400s).

Talk about bad urban planning.