News that tor­ren­tial down­pours this week led Mum­ford and Sons to post­pone its high­ly antic­i­pat­ed show in Chicago’s far North Side neigh­bor­hood of Uptown, the first in a sum­mer-long out­door con­cert series, was met with wide­spread under­stand­ing from loy­al fans. Yet oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers could not treat rain­wa­ter as a sim­ple nui­sance. For Uptown’s home­less res­i­dents, last week’s rain flood­ed the pair of viaducts they call home, wash­ing away tents, clothes and fam­i­ly pos­ses­sions. And on Tues­day, city agen­cies, absent from the flood­ing relief efforts car­ried out by local char­i­ty groups, arrived at 9 a.m. to pack peo­ple and belong­ings alike into city agency trucks to ​“secure” the streets for Mum­ford’s per­for­mance.

The city's recent pushout of Uptown’s homeless community only reaffirms its systemic commitment to recreation for the privileged over housing for the marginalized.

Week­ly or bimonth­ly ​“deep clean­ings” of home­less res­i­dents’ liv­ing spaces, how­ev­er, are not reserved for the antic­i­pat­ed arrival of rock roy­al­ty. Such rou­tine clean­ings require home­less res­i­dents to move their prop­er­ty to ​“tem­po­rary near­by loca­tions” while city agen­cies dis­card trash and dri­ve a pow­er wash­er through the viaducts. They com­prise a coor­di­nat­ed inter­ac­tion between the City of Chica­go and home­less res­i­dents: part out­reach, part spec­ta­cle, and all con­trol, mud­dled by incon­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of rules agreed to in 1998 in Love v. City of Chica­go and legal set­tle­ment reached with the City of Chica­go in Jan­u­ary 2015.

These pro­vi­sions man­date that city agen­cies pro­vide post­ed notice at least 24 hours in advance for reg­u­lar off-street clean­ing of home­less areas and sev­en days for deep clean­ings, des­ig­nate home­less people’s per­mis­si­ble ​“portable per­son­al pos­ses­sions” and out­line a rig­or­ous tag­ging pro­ce­dure where­by res­i­dents must receive sev­en days before the next clean­ing to dis­card or else relo­cate their prop­er­ty. Yet each clean­ing risks wide­spread prop­er­ty loss for home­less com­mu­ni­ties and lit­tle access to legal recourse, despite each new amend­ment to the poli­cies designed to pro­tect them.

Home­less res­i­dents, who often have so lit­tle to begin with, must start afresh when clothes, shoes and gov­ern­ment IDs are swept up by the city (to say noth­ing of the loss of irre­place­able items like pho­tos of deceased loved ones). These res­i­dents must also con­tend with the hos­til­i­ty of neigh­bors that dis­dain their liv­ing sit­u­a­tion in the viaducts.

In a rapid­ly gen­tri­fy­ing com­mu­ni­ty where safe­ty nets for home­less and tran­si­tion­al-liv­ing build­ings like sin­gle room occu­pan­cy build­ings (SROs) are clos­ing and state social ser­vices have been gut­ted, home­less res­i­dents are caught in a dou­ble bind. Enter shel­ters, which are inad­e­quate, crowd­ed and unfund­ed by the city or state, and you risk con­tract­ing bed bugs, suf­fer­ing assault and receiv­ing mis­matched or inad­e­quate ser­vices amid the con­cen­trat­ed trau­ma of diverse home­less pop­u­la­tions packed into close quar­ters. Stay on the streets, and even the aggres­sions of passers­by, crim­i­nal­iza­tion by the city and expo­sure to pil­lage and attack are some­what coun­ter­vailed by the sup­port­ive sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly of oth­er home­less people.

Alder­man James Cap­ple­man of the 46th Ward has large­ly car­ried out the desires of the neighborhood’s fair­ly small but vocal and wealthy pro-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion pop­u­la­tion, who reg­u­lar­ly blame home­less res­i­dents for sup­posed (and dubi­ous) neigh­bor­hood prob­lems like stunt­ed eco­nom­ic growth. Not­ed more for pre­vent­ing a Sal­va­tion Army truck from serv­ing home­less res­i­dents than his ori­gins as a social work­er, Cap­ple­man has helped spear­head the erad­i­ca­tion of low- and mixed-income hous­ing in the neigh­bor­hood, with home­less, poor and work­ing-class res­i­dents seen as a bar­ri­er to his ward’s afflu­ent devel­op­ment.

Using the Illi­nois Home­less Bill of Rights, my fel­low lawyers-in-train­ing and I advo­cate for home­less people’s prop­er­ty rights by mon­i­tor­ing off-street clean­ings and doc­u­ment­ing inci­dences where prop­er­ty was seized and dis­posed of with­out due process. Time and again, we hear sto­ries of city agen­cies’ legal indis­cre­tions, who, apart from prop­er­ty con­fis­ca­tion, refuse to inform res­i­dents about city or oth­er local ser­vices, pho­to­graph their premis­es, com­pile name reg­istries of res­i­dents, casu­al­ly regard tem­porar­i­ly unat­tend­ed items’ as dis­pos­able, all in total igno­rance of legal codes sur­round­ing these processes.

The city’s recent pushout of Uptown’s home­less com­mu­ni­ty only reaf­firms its sys­temic com­mit­ment to recre­ation for the priv­i­leged over hous­ing for the mar­gin­al­ized. The com­fort of 35,000 rel­a­tive­ly wealthy lake­front guests for a Mum­ford and Sons con­cert who don’t want to be remind­ed of the exis­tence of home­less­ness in their city appears to mer­it more pro­tec­tion than the basic dig­ni­ty of home­less residents.