banished
The three-year-old settlement now numbers more than 70 people, including an 83-year-old deaf man, a wheelchair-bound fellow, and one woman. Some have lived there so long that their driver's licenses list their addresses as "Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge." Every now and then, some succumb to desperation. In early July, one man repeatedly slashed himself with a knife in an apparent suicide attempt and had to be subdued with a stun gun, according to police. Many of them freely admit that society has every right to guard against their reoffending. They just don't see how sleeping under a bridge accomplishes that. The ordinances stipulate only that they stay there between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.; come sunrise, they're free to go. "We could be in front of a school all day, but we are under the bridge when all the kids are at home with their moms at night," says Osvaldo Castillo, who has been at the camp for a year. "This doesn't make any sense."