Water Street District Welcomes Unhoused

The Water Street District, the upscale, waterfront urban neighborhood located within Downtown Tampa, wants people who find themselves currently unhoused for whatever reason to feel welcomed.

“Any time, day or night, come on over and experience everything our 16 blocks of residential, commercial, and institutional community has to offer,” said the development’s spokesperson Randi Clatterson. “Whether it’s the Arts Club inside The Tampa EDITION Hotel or the port-a-johns temporarily located on Raybon Court, you’ve never been denied access to finer restroom facilities in your lives!”

While that doesn’t sound like a particularly hospitable invitation, Clatterson pointed out the comfy benches along Water Street itself.

“You’ll notice that unlike other public benches, these are padded and don’t have lawyer ads or those dividers that would prohibit someone from lying down comfortably. Quite the opposite! We want you to stretch out and chillax,” she said. “We even have armed, uniformed minders to make sure nobody disturbs your slumber.”

“If anybody ever sees someone sleeping on one of our benches and then looks again and that person is gone, it’s because they’re so well-rested, they got up and skipped off to go apply for jobs,” she added. “And not rounded up to serve as free labor to build more overpriced apartments for young swells somewhere else and then chopped up and fed to those people’s dogs.”

“That’s absurd; their dogs wouldn’t eat that.”