How can people with no fixed domicile be uprooted, you say? How can you even ask! Sometimes a fellow gets used to throwing down his cardboard in a certain spot:
There on the park's brick terrace, Brown and as many as 30 homeless people used to spread out cardboard and sleep undisturbed beneath sprays of palm fronds, cleaning up in a nearby fountain.
Now the Tampa park is closed for a year. For now, in the evenings, the homeless will have to spread out their cardboard somewhere else.
Brown heard them. But leaving isn't easy, not when he's developed a routine that revolves around Franklin and Tyler streets. Come night, he bikes to the Channel District.
Others, he said, aren't as mobile.
A few yards away, a Kmart shopping cart sits next to the boarded-up Albany Hotel. Shorts hang from the cart's child seat. Duffel bags stuff the undercarriage. A blanket is neatly folded.
Someone's cardboard bed is all rolled up. Rolled up and ready to go.
If this doesn't make you cry, nothing will.
Justin George of the St. Pete Times, you've written an astounding article about the heartbreak of people who've been spreading their cardboard at spot A and must now move it to spot B.
Posted by floridacracker at August 11, 2005 12:43 PM