Earlier this year we talked about Hopeville, the homeless camp downtown underneath the Tucker Boulevard tunnel until the city kicked them all out in May because it probably smelled a lot like pee and sadness, which is ok when we go to visit Grandma, but not when we walk down Tucker.
While Hopeville I is gone, as planned, Hopeville II was created so that there could be another really really sad place named something that sounds really really happy. Irony is awesome and St. Louis is full of it. _Well_ston is anything but “well”, _Kings_highway, looks like a dog scrapped his poopy butt through St. Louis rather than a road for kings and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd is nothing but people getting shot all the time…wait, that one makes sense.
The very unofficial conglomeration of homeless at the Mississippi River floodwall near the Riverfront Trail was settled this past spring, after the city closed the Tucker Boulevard tunnel to make way for a street improvement project.
“We haven’t really gotten a lot of complaints about the people staying there, so we haven’t kicked them out,” said Bowlin. “It’s kind of a ‘live and let live’ agreement.”
So it sounds like the city is cool with this one for now and it seems like the people like living there, so good for them. Also, we just want to take this moment to say that we never have any change. Ever. Homeless people should really think about investing in a Square device.
Speaking of Hopeville, here’s a short video we found of an interview with a Hopeville I resident:
via STLToday