The city of Melbourne, Australia, which has been voted the world's most liveable city for the last six years, is trying really hard to ban homeless people from sleeping in the CBD.
Melbourne's lord mayor Robert Doyle told News Corp on Friday morning that he plans to propose a ban on sleeping rough in the city's streets, just days after saying he wouldn't "just do a cosmetic clean up" of the city.
The issue has been receiving media attention in recent weeks in the lead up to the Australian Open tennis tournament.
The lord mayor's reversal prompted an angry backlash on social media.
Dec 25: "Peace and goodwill to all men!" Jan 20: "Get these fucking homeless out of my way, I'm trying to get to the tennis."
Melbourne: Homeless is ugly. Folks: Yes, it is. Exhausting precariousness and vulnerability is ug- Melbourne: We better cover it up.
Yeah, if you're "pretending" to be homeless so you can beg, it's not because you have a whole lot of choices. https://t.co/nI4lk6qO1G
"I welcome any move by police to bring an end to what has become a blight on our city, and the City of Melbourne continues to work with them to do that," Doyle told The Age.
Social workers and police swept across a Flinders Street train station camp on January 10 and removed "a dozen" homeless people living outside the station, just days before the Australian Open. But the group returned an hour later.
Melbourne council has denied any link between "routine and ongoing clean-up operations" and the desire to clean up the city before the tennis tournament.
The chief commissioner of Victoria police, Graham Ashton, has suggested that many of the people sleeping rough were pretending to be homeless so they could "shake down" tourists who had come to Melbourne for the tennis tournament.
On Thursday night, Ashton said the camp was "disgusting" and a "very ugly sight".
"These people are not homeless, these are people that are choosing to camp... because people are visiting the city at this time of year and there's more people to shake down for money," he said.