Officials in West Palm Beach, Florida, are trying out a new musical strategy to keep homeless people from sleeping in a city park.
The city has begun playing continuous loops of two children’s songs at night on the patio of the city’s Lake Pavilion, the Palm Beach Post reports. The songs, Baby Shark and It’s Raining Tacos, are short, repetitive, and annoying.
The pavilion overlooks the waterfront and is a venue popular with weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduation parties, and birthdays. The city expects to bring in $240,000 from events like those this fiscal year, and according to Parks and Recreation director Leah Rockwell, guests and staffers shouldn’t have to worry about stepping over sleeping homeless people when they come to set up early in the morning or close down late at night.
“People are paying a lot of money to use the facility,” Rockwell said. “Thousands of dollars. We want to make sure people paying this money had a facility that was clean and open and continue to use it in the future.”
One homeless man in the area said that the decision to begin the nighttime music was “wrong,” but said it wouldn’t dissuade him from sleeping there.
“It don’t bother me,” he said. “I still lay down in there. But it’s on and on, the same songs.”
