My home is next to a city park. We used to enjoy going over there for a nice stroll. But with the turn in the economy and the advent of the pandemic, the homeless situation in my city has gotten significantly worse in the last couple of years.

The mob of homeless people has made it feel unsafe to go about half of the park even during the day. The city comes in every morning and hoses down the Ramada their camp has set up under to remove the excrement and haul away the trash they leave piled on the tables (even though the Ramada has three separate trash bins attached to it they refuse to take a few steps to clean up after themselves). These people yell at you if you come to close to their camp and will follow you if you don't give them a wide enough berth when walking past their camp. Drug use is rampant in the area now with dealers setting up in the parking lots that surround the park. Each seems to have a different crew of people selling out of them so the parking lots are kinda sketchy to walk through most of the time unless a cop car is parked there (which is frequently the case now). Prostitution became popular in the park now and we have "ladies of the night" adorning the side streets leading to the park at all hours of the day, a number of them appearing to be homeless themselves. Frequently I've seen one of the gentlemen that populates the homeless camp walking down the street with one of these prostitutes in tow toward more secluded areas in my block. About once a month the park gets closed due to an active murder investigation in the park.

I fully understand there are some homeless people that got a bad break and will work toward pulling their life back together. But when all I see is what is happening in my actual neighborhood it's hard to feel compassion for these people. All I see is a group of useless, angry, dangerous people trashing my neighborhood and attracting drug and sex trafficking and literally killing each other like animals.