Paris and Chicago. Pushing out the homeless before the circus comes to town.

Driving into Chicago from the south on the Dan Ryan it has been nearly impossible to miss the homeless encampment by Roosevelt Road.
It has been there for years although every now and then the City brings in some bulldozers to clean up the trash.
The clean-up disrupts things for a while, but without the affordable housing that is desperately needed, the tents and the homeless return in no time.
But for the convention the City prefers to feature the gleaming Lakefront.
Tents and the homeless is what visitors and delegates driving in would see except for the fact that Chicago doesn’t want anything so visible and so the City has moved the homeless out of that spot.
I see that Paris is doing the same thing in advance of the Olympics that will be going on later this month.
Thousands of homeless people have been removed from Paris and the surrounding area as part of a “clean-up” operation ahead of the Olympic Games, campaigners say.
Those moved on include asylum seekers, as well as families and children already in a precarious and vulnerable situation, the collective Le Revers de la Médaille, which represents 90 associations, said in a report released on Monday.
Police were also cracking down on sex workers and drug addicts, removing them from their usual networks in which they could receive vital healthcare and support, it added. “The Île-de-France region has been emptied of some of the people that the powers that be consider undesirable,” it concluded.
The collective said expulsions and the dismantling of tent camps in and around the city had intensified since April last year, and 12,545 people had been moved in the last 13 months.
The homeless are so unsightly and present a disturbing image when the circus comes to town.
Mayors come and go but they all do the same thing.
It was true for both Daley and it is true today.
Preparing for the Democrats arrival, the “tent city” at the 1100 block of South Desplaines Street will be cleared out and cordoned off, Brandie Knazze, commissioner of the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
As for the folks who have been living there in a few dozen blue and orange tents?
They have been moved to a city-operated shelter of 60 beds at 100 E. Chestnut St., in the former Tremont Hotel.
It is only a temporary arrangement that will end a week after the Democrats head home.
But what then? Where will Chicago’s homeless go?
Chris, who did not want to be identified by his full name, said he’s lived at the encampment off of Desplaines Street for about two years after losing his job as a truck driver. He said he and others were told in late June they would receive help finding permanent housing. He said he’s waited a long time for help, but he remained skeptical.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.
A 57-year-old fellow resident who also declined to provide his name says it looks like the city is cleaning up ahead of its big party.
“They just want us to get out of here,” said the man, adding that he didn’t think President Joe Biden had done enough to help people like him struggling to find stable housing. (Sun-Times)