Water Polo with the Homeless 1

Back when Ed Koch was mayor of New York and I was working for the railroad, Koch decided that it was okay for the homeless to spend their nights at Penn Station.

For the mayor, it got them out of sight of most of the populace by foisting them on the railroad. (We always wondered why he didn’t invite them to JFK Airport–at least that was city property.)

The three railroads that used that station and their customers and employees didn’t think much of the idea; they did not look kindly to camps being set up in the nooks and crannies of the station (Penn Station is a very large place stretching under several city blocks, with three public levels and many more private ones; it has lots of nooks and crannies). It was not uncommon for employees to come to work to find someone sleeping on the floor in front of their office doors.

I recall one of my co-workers referring to the railroad police’s efforts to deal the situation as “playing water polo with the homeless.”

Now Virginia Beach has taken up water polo with the homeless (there is much more information at the link):

Raymond Strand built a small cabin in a wooded area off Loretta Lane and furnished it with a bed, a stove and a closet. He lived there until a month ago, when Beach officials told him and more than 20 other people to vacate the “tent city” they called home.

Strand since then has moved his belongings just a half-mile, to another wooded lot. It’s a much smaller tent city, but the 62-year-old former Army engineer said he had no other options.

All I can say it that the city’s motto seems to be, “Move ’em up, head ’em out.”

Afterthought:

There’s not enough money to help the homeless, but there always seems to be enough money to “partner” with a developer.