Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Robert Frost, you sarcastic fuck.

Today, DC officials descended on a homeless "camp" in Foggy Bottom. They brought garbage trucks, garbage haulers, and a singular social worker -- to point out what was "property" and what was "garbage." No really, the news coverage shows this large women gingerly stepping over refrigerator boxes, pointing to things.

The news coverage also showed a whole lot of stolen Safeway shopping carts being crushed in the garbage truck compacter, which was stereotypically hilarious. Asked what happens when the "cleanup" is finished, one sanitation worker said, "Oh, they'll be right back in here -- with more stuff."

Right.

The City's solution? Put up fencing.

They've fenced in quite a few underpasses already.

Good work! That'll keep those homeless out of...well... keep them homeless. Yep, still homeless. Maybe more homeless, really.

So the progression is: 1) notify the homeless to vacate their "camp" so it can be cleaned 2) throw away stuff that belongs to these homeless persons 3) put fencing around the place they were calling "home."

Huh.

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence."