Tent city in suburbs is cost of U.S. home crisis

[douglas9]

Source: Reuters News Service

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN1850682120071221

[texanwitch]

1. I am watch The Grapes of Wrath now on tv.

My father was homeless back then, history is repeating itself.

I am glad my house is paid for.

[liberal N proud]

2. It is beginning to look a lot like those days

But there were jobs in California for the people to pursue then. Today those jobs may not be there.

[texanwitch]

3. My father 's family stayed in Texas doing whatever to stay alive.

He joined the CCC's as soon as possible.

I have heard to many stories from my father, I don't want to live them.

[flashl]

4. If you are not prone to bouts with depression ...

Read Fresno Underground

[Le Taz Hot]

11. And for a little balance and reality check:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/11/22/17067361.php

How many other cities are even TRYING to do something like this?

[flashl]

14. Thanks, I saw thoses and other alternative housing ideas used in CA.

[dipsydoodle]

5. .....come back Woody Guthrie

Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow

Steve Earle's lyrics - Christmas in Washington.


Things differ now from the dustbowl days - you can't rip the back off a modern car like you could on a Model A Tudor to get the family and the furniture all in together.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

37. Good tune.

There's foxes in the hen house
Cows out in the corn
The unions have been busted
Their proud red banners torn
To listen to the radio
You'd think that all was well
But you and me and Cisco know
It's going straight to hell

[Selatius]

6. I don't think I've heard of a tent city on US soil in my lifetime until now.

It's a milestone, the kind you don't want to see pass.

[catmandu57]

15. Haven't you ever heard of reaganville?

They were everywhere back in the eighties, hell, I lived in one for a while. * is just carrying on a proud reptilian tradition of culling the herd.

[Robbien]

17. You may not hear of them, but they are there. And have been for a long while

This current wave of foreclosures are just adding to the previously existing tent city population.

A very brief Google of the news this morning brings up stories on tent cities in

Idaho
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005118545
New Orleans
http://www.itemonline.com/opinion/local_story_355003127.html?keyword=topstory
San Bernardino
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_7773845
Tampa
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=70269
San Diego
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20071220-0638-1bo20party.html
St Petersburg
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/20/Northpinellas/He_s_homeless__but_ne.shtml

and too many to list.

Many major US cities have them ever since the gentrification craze started where public housing has been torn down to make way for the monied.

[undergroundpanther]

28. There are also small tent communities

off the "charts"..I know of one under an overpass in Baltimore,where about maybe 30 homeless are, and there are others..there is one in the woods of Eliicott City, There's places in Cockeysville,Towson , Dundalk and Essex,in Bel Air,Edgewood,Harve De Grace ..This is in Maryland these tent cities/box shelters and whatnot.

There are plenty of homeless gatherings scattered everywhere if one chooses to look for these homeless gathering places.By gathering place I mean places where several people live in close proximity.

To stumble on this kind of set up you might see an old couch, a fire pit, the remains of lean to's and boxes on pallets,an old matress,candle stubs,plastic sheeting, or even an actual tent ,if no one is there.These places are not situated out in the open most of the time, because of the cops.

To find them look on the off ramps of highways in the wooded areas ,along the highways,behind shopping centers in the woods there or a spot behind an abandoned or neglected building among storage crates,or in other vacant rather dark,sorta isolated, off the main thoroughfare sorts of places, like wastelands,neglected property,the edges of construction sites,state property where it's not easily visible,or they are set up around industrial areas ,behind industrial places.. Look in the in between places where the fortunate residents who are oblivious that never seem to care to know won't notice that homeless people live there..

[Viva_La_Revolution]

24. We've had Dignity Villiage here in Portland for years...

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- A one-acre tent city established by Portland's homeless has won the right to be called a campground, a designation that finally makes it legal.

The 60 residents of the area, called Dignity Village, have battled for four years to gain legal recognition for their encampment of tents, scavenged planks and cardboard boxes, all of which violate the city's zoning codes if defined as housing.

The campground status, which four of five city officials voted for Thursday, gives them the right to stay in their self-regulated tent city.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/02/27/portland.homeless.ap/index.html

[juajen]

27. Tent City, St. Petersburg, FL

You tube has records of this, as it was obliterated by the police a few months back.

[SpiralHawk]

7. "This news really, um, stirs my, um, conservative compassion. Smirk." - Commander AWOL

"These noisy proles* need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."

- Commander AWOL

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/11/21/bush2_wideweb__470x358,0.jpg

* Proles = formerly known as citizensof the USA

[harmonicon]

12. oh, come on, he doesn't have that large a vocabulary

He doesn't have a shortened derogatory term for a word he doesn't know. To him, 'proletariat' comes out as 'evil doers'.

[fasttense]

8. It's beginning to look a lot like a Depression, Ev'rywhere you go.

There are homeless in the street, trying to get a bite to eat. There are families being evicted while everyone sleeps. There are bankruptcy by the millions cause families can't pay for their meds.

Jobs are very scarce unless you are a bag boy. Food costs are out the window and energy costs are up too.

Soon the breadlines will be longer than the unemployment lines and then the Republicans job will have been completed. Just like the last Great Republican Depression.

The signs are all there just like in the last Great Republican Depression. Though they aren't Hoovervilles, and no one calls them Bushvilles, yet.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. May I suggest "Freedom City?"

It sends a message to the terrorists.

[ixion]

10. The new suburbs, brought to you by 7 years of neocon rule

ain't life grand? :sarcasm:

[TransitJohn]

13. Bushville**

n/t

[Zorra]

16. Yes, like the "Hooverville" shanty towns of the Great Depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville

[TransitJohn]

18. Yep.

It was my first thought on reading the OP.

[Javaman]

22. or...

living in the bush*. nt as in, "I'm living in the bush now"

[nealmhughes]

19. Shades of Houston circa 1985. I recall the signs on the Jags and Mercedes "for sale cheap"

in Old Downtown, and then going out to Jersey Village, apt. complex after another with "No money down!!! One month free rent!" signs, that seemed to be superceded only by the HUD foreclosure signs in the subdivisions.

[lovuian]

20. Its going to get worse when 90% of a country's assets are

owned by a few

You have a Depression

and the massive stealing has to come to an end

Capitalism is taking a last gasp soon its coming soon

[depakid]

21. Get used to it

For this will be a common sight in much of America in the coming decade(s).

[CountAllVotes]

23. sounds like a Hooverville!

More great pictures here:

http://www.beallhigh.com/bulletinboard4/bulletinboard4.htm

:dem: :kick:

[intheflow]

25. K&R

[NuttyFluffers]

26. oh my gawd. can we now say Bush is the worst president ever?

or does he have to throw in a civil war atop every other broken watermark?

from surplus to penury in 7 years, with a litany of problems i think might be unrecoverable.

[villager]

29. Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis

Source: Reuters

Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis

By Dana Ford

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

<snip>

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071221/us_nm/usa_housing_social_dc

---

And so it begins, with the first "Bushvilles" popping up...

[ben_meyers]

30. "no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure"

So what's the point of the article?

[EFerrari]

32. If you directly question most homeless people

they will not tell you they are homeless because there is a helplessness and shame that attaches to that.

My ex, who has mental health issues, went homeless for a year. He is/was a well known comic. Every time he is interviewed on the topic, he denies ever having been homeless -- not to "save" his rep, but because he can't accept that it ever happened.

[Robbien]

31. The headline is a total lie, the story says that tent cities existed before

the foreclosure crises and that none of the people there currently have been victims of foreclosure.

Didn't the headline writer even read the article?

In truth, a couple of decades of tearing down affordable housing replacing them with million dollar housing; "reform" of social safety net systems; and the explosion of globalization are the goblins behind the current rise in tent cities.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

33. A new generation of Hoovervilles is beginning.

Welcome to the 21st Century- surely a time of prosperity and growth for the nation and the human race.

Oh, yeah... :sarcasm:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

36. New Hoovervilles or Bushtowns

[villager]

34. glitch/dupe

[villager]

35. For the Pollyannas in this thread who didn't notice the article also charts the tentville

grew from 20 residents to 200 -- since this past summer:


"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."

Steve, 50, who declined to give his last name, moved to tent city four months ago. He gets social security payments, but cannot work and said rents are too high.

"House prices are going down, but the rentals are sky-high," said Steve. "If it wasn't for here, I wouldn't have a place to go."