Post by dreamer on Dec 25, 2011 21:23:18 GMT -5
salon.com
DECEMBER 21, 2011 12:09PM
Homeless Camps -- Housing of the Future!
I am sad to report on how fast homeless camps are growing across the country.
Just Google "Slab City" or "Sacramento" and "tent city" and you'll see what I mean. Actually just plug in "homeless camp" and you'll get a hodge podge of results. These makeshift camps - some are in the desert, others are a smattering of RVs stationed in key parking lots, more still in woods away from prying eyes - are cropping up all over.
I've seen them for years around NYC and in places like LA, but imagine my surprise to learn that a young woman named Rebecca Olenchock murdered her mother during an argument at a homeless camp located behind a nearby grocery store! My own mother lives down the street, and I would buy groceries for her at that store. And right behind this store, now closed as another victim to the economic crisis, is a homeless camp where people have nowhere else to go.
I have noticed on my own excursions that such homeless camps are popping up with increasing frequency. Families live in these camps, elderly people live in them, people you may have known now live in them, and these people are easily preyed upon, they have nowhere to throw their trash, nowhere sanitary to bathe or go to the bathroom or a safe way to find warmth. For the record I live in Bucks County PA, and in winter it can be brutally cold.
Amazingly, cities around the country keep reporting falling crime rates in the middle of an economic crisis while homeless camps are growing, albeit invisibly . Maybe some other place is falling apart with foreclosures and such, but things are just peachy on Wisteria Lane? Yeah, right. I don't believe that, and neither should you. I believe we have successfully created an underclass of people who report little to nothing of the crime they experience, and these displaced souls are herded into nooks and crannies away from the eyes of John and Jane Q. Public.
I am no longer sad to report these facts, I am angry and you should be, too! I am furious that some people keep pretending that things will get better on their own, they won't, and if we don't do anything we will have a future country full of shanty towns and homeless camps, and our immigrant ancestors will be ashamed of us.
I am especially upset that the media has been so slow to pick up on this national trend. The next time you have a serious conversation, I urge you the reader to mention some of these facts to someone else you know. It's the only way we have to fight such problems.
open.salon.com/blog/deano11/2011/12/21/homeless_camps_--_housing_of_the_future
DECEMBER 21, 2011 12:09PM
Homeless Camps -- Housing of the Future!
I am sad to report on how fast homeless camps are growing across the country.
Just Google "Slab City" or "Sacramento" and "tent city" and you'll see what I mean. Actually just plug in "homeless camp" and you'll get a hodge podge of results. These makeshift camps - some are in the desert, others are a smattering of RVs stationed in key parking lots, more still in woods away from prying eyes - are cropping up all over.
I've seen them for years around NYC and in places like LA, but imagine my surprise to learn that a young woman named Rebecca Olenchock murdered her mother during an argument at a homeless camp located behind a nearby grocery store! My own mother lives down the street, and I would buy groceries for her at that store. And right behind this store, now closed as another victim to the economic crisis, is a homeless camp where people have nowhere else to go.
I have noticed on my own excursions that such homeless camps are popping up with increasing frequency. Families live in these camps, elderly people live in them, people you may have known now live in them, and these people are easily preyed upon, they have nowhere to throw their trash, nowhere sanitary to bathe or go to the bathroom or a safe way to find warmth. For the record I live in Bucks County PA, and in winter it can be brutally cold.
Amazingly, cities around the country keep reporting falling crime rates in the middle of an economic crisis while homeless camps are growing, albeit invisibly . Maybe some other place is falling apart with foreclosures and such, but things are just peachy on Wisteria Lane? Yeah, right. I don't believe that, and neither should you. I believe we have successfully created an underclass of people who report little to nothing of the crime they experience, and these displaced souls are herded into nooks and crannies away from the eyes of John and Jane Q. Public.
I am no longer sad to report these facts, I am angry and you should be, too! I am furious that some people keep pretending that things will get better on their own, they won't, and if we don't do anything we will have a future country full of shanty towns and homeless camps, and our immigrant ancestors will be ashamed of us.
I am especially upset that the media has been so slow to pick up on this national trend. The next time you have a serious conversation, I urge you the reader to mention some of these facts to someone else you know. It's the only way we have to fight such problems.
open.salon.com/blog/deano11/2011/12/21/homeless_camps_--_housing_of_the_future