Blasting the Homeless

West Palm Beach has been playing non-stop music at the Waterfront Lake Pavilion

Officials in West Palm Beach in Florida, USA have come up with a creative but cruel tactic to drive homeless people away from the Waterfront Lake Pavilion: children's music. 

This city-owned rental venue, which hosted 164 events last year, is expected to bring in about $240,000 this year from events, according to the Palm Beach Post. 

“People are paying a lot of money to use the facility”, Parks and Recreation Director Leah Rockwell told the local newspaper. “Thousands of dollars. We want to make sure people paying this money had a facility that was clean and open and continue to use it in the future”. 

And so, the wildly popular and extremely repetitive children's songs, Baby Shark and Raining Tacos, play on an endless loop through the night.

I’m sure we can agree that this is devilishly callous and insensitively uncaring. It would seem that compassion has gone on a vacation. 

"These are people who are already in desperate straits and this is an effort to make life even more miserable for them", said Maria Foscarinis (right), founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. "Driving them out by blaring music is just inhumane and really shocking". 

Florida is home to approximately 31,030 individuals without a home – less than 6% of the nation's total. 

Foscarinis said the state should not be faulted for the size of its homeless population, but added: "But I would single Florida out for the cruelty".

A homeless man sleeps by the Great Lawn and Lake Pavilion in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida, USA 

West Palm Beach has created hostile soundscapes – and this is just one of the many odious practices cities deploy against their homeless populations. This obnoxious idea is to render public spaces inhospitable to those needing shelter. 

Sloped or segmented bus benches, uncomfortably coarse pavement, sloped window sills and tent prohibition enactments have all been used to keep homeless people from sleeping in public. 

Methinks, the authorities should work to find real solutions to solve the homelessness problem – rather than punish vulnerable people who has nowhere else to go. They didn’t choose to be in that unpalatable predicament – and surely, they deserve help. And a little bit of kindness. 

Leading 3-1 from last week's first leg in Bosnia, Celtic secured a 2-1 win on Wednesday.

The Scottish champions went ahead through Ryan Christie's smart finish in the twenty-sixth minute and, although Benjamin Tatar equalised thirty-seven minutes later, Callum McGregor's fine finish from distance in the seventy-sixth minute restored the three-goal cushion to give them a 5-2 aggregate victory. 

Celtic will face Estonian side Nomme Kalju in the Champions League second qualifying round.