What Are the Effects of Tourism on Homelessness?
Many cities enact legislation outlawing activity typical of homeless people, such as panhandling, sleeping in parks and loitering. These prohibitions often focus on tourist areas and retail centers after business persons express concern about loss of revenue. When a city gains a large event bringing in many thousands of visitors at once, authorities sometimes take drastic measures to get homeless people off the streets.
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Significance
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When the National Football League's Super Bowl comes to town, homeless people can find themselves in a strange mix of opportunity and confusion. In Jacksonville, Florida in January 2005, city officials and homeless advocates set up a temporary sanctuary in a large old brick building, open for the 2 weeks leading to the big game. An article published at ezilon.com that year includes comments by some homeless people expressing happiness with being able to sleep inside for awhile and take hot showers. The executive director of the Homeless Coalition of Jacksonville answered skepticism about the altruism of the project by saying the street people need somewhere to go when their home is taken away by 100,000 tourists. Many who didn't go to the shelter moved to nearby St. Augustine. After the game, the shelter was closed.
Size
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In February 2006, as Detroit prepared for the Super Bowl, it also tried to provide shelter for some of its homeless population, estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000. The city and Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries threw a Super Bowl Party to get homeless people off the streets before the tourists arrived. The charity organization grabbed the chance to entice homeless people into the activity center with food, clothing and the opportunity to watch big-screen televisions in an effort to convince them to become longer-term residents and obtain counseling and further assistance.
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Types
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An international report by the Centre On Housing Rights and Evictions noted the criminalization of homelessness that took place in Atlanta before the 1996 Olympic Games, when police issued arrest warrants to approximately 9,000 homeless people. Also, hundreds were transported to the edge of the city and threatened with 6 months' jail time if they returned. The Task Force for the Homeless remarked on previous jailings of large numbers of Atlanta homeless people during big events such as the Super Bowl in 2000 and the Democratic National Convention in 1988.
Identification
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The 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was the impetus for a government coalition working to rid the streets of homeless people before the event. A task force attempted to identify every homeless person in the city and convince them to move into boarding houses or hostels. Anyone unwilling to cooperate was removed by police. These types of shelters were known to be more dangerous than the streets because of violent assaults, theft and outbreaks of food poisoning. Many homeless people were transported out of town, temporarily sheltered in unused buildings and government buildings.
Effects
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In preparation for the Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2010, the city provided an opportunity for homeless advocates to bring people into shelters. In 2008, police began by shutting down a tent city with about 40 people in the downtown area, and all accepted the offer to move to a shelter. The plan was to move another 300 people into housing before the Winter Olympics. This number, however, made only a dent in the number of homeless persons living in the area. In addition, residents remember International Expo '86, when Vancouver single-room occupancy hotels evicted long-term residents--who then wound up living on the streets.
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