Quote from ByLoSellHi:
Friday, September 19, 2008
HOMELESS TENT CITIES RISE AS ECONOMY FALLS
Towns from Reno to Chattanooga see spike in encampments
Evelyn Nieves / Associated Press
RENO, Nev. -- A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.
Then others appeared -- people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.
Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" -- an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.
From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. "It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition.
"The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."
The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.
The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.
In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs.
"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa. He couldn't find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a pup tent barely big enough to cover his body.
The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees.
The city will shut down the tent city as soon as early October because the tents sit on what will be a parking lot for a complex of shelters and services for homeless people.
Quote from gnome:
The rub of course, is that "we the people DID NOT ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS..."
The purveyors of a Federal Reserve Bank sneaked a "back room, dark of night" passage.
President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the bill, admitted apologetically just before his death... something to the effect that he ".... feared he'd unleashed untoward evil on the country..."
So you see, WE PEOPLE didn't "allow" this... the Gummint RAMMED IT UP OUR ASSES... JUST LIKE THEY DO EVERYTHING ELSE!
