Tent-City

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SACRAMENTO, CA (KGO) -- It is the sad reality of a California city hit hard by foreclosures and huge job losses. In the shadow of downtown Sacramento, tent cities have sprung up, housing as many as 1,200 people.

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"I just try to keep the peace, organized, make sure everybody eats," Rico Morales said. Morales is the defacto mayor of one of the tent cities.

Many of the homeless here do not fit the stereotype of homelessness. Many had good jobs and stable family lives until the economy spun out of control.

Now the real mayor, former NBA star, Kevin Johnson, is thinking about sanctioning the tent cities, essentially legally zoning them. With a $50 million dollar deficit, the city cannot afford to expand services.

"Our shelters have seen an increase, four-fold, there are not enough shelters, and I believe as a city, we need to look at every option, and tent cities are something we should consider," Johnson said.

For the most part police are looking the other way, which may be one reason the tent cities have grown so quickly.

Neighbors close by would like to see more enforcement of zoning laws.

"I have constituent neighbors that live there that are terrorized by these people day and night," Sacramento city councilman Ray Tretheway said.

Tent city residents say they do not want to live this way, but with nowhere else to go and no jobs to get, they say providing land where police wouldn't harass them would help their already difficult life.

"That's a big thing, we don't like rolling up everything that we put out and having to find another spot, only to get messed with the next day," tent city resident Daniel Thomas said.

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TENTS have mushroomed in the concrete jungle of Sacramento, the state capital of California.

The city, where former movie star turned governor Arnold Schwarzenegger works, has one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the United States.

As many as 50 people a week arrive at the tent city and the authorities estimate it is now home to more than 1,200 people, reported the Telegraph.

The plight of the new homeless was featured in the Oprah Winfrey Show recently and came as a shock to the estimated 40 million Americans who watched it.

One resident of tent city known only as Tammy, 47, told the show that she has been living with her husband in this tent city for a little less than a year. 'My husband's job fell through,' she said.

'He was a tile setter ... (but people) weren't buying houses anymore, and there was no need for tile setting. We lost our car and our home, our apartment. We lost everything we had.'

Though Tammy and her husband are both actively looking for work, they say it feels impossible in this economy.

'That's where we're going this morning,' she said.

'To get cleaned up and go out and try to make our best appearance.'

The hardest part about living in a tent city is losing the everyday amenities most people take for granted, Tammy said. 'Taking a shower when I want, walking into my bathroom, turning the light on. Fixing my hair and doing my make-up,' she says.

Conditions are primitive, with no water supply or proper sanitation.

Many residents have to walk up to 5km to buy bottled water from petrol stations or convenience stores, reported the Daily Mail.

Charity

At other times, charity workers arrive to hand out free food and other supplies.

Ms Joan Burke, who campaigns on behalf of the homeless, said the images of Americans living in tents would shock many.

'It should be an eye-opener for everybody,' she said.

'But we shouldn't just be shocked, we should take action to change things, because it's unacceptable.'

Now residents and relief workers are hoping that being featured on the show may bring some relief to their plight.

'We're very glad that Oprah and her team have chosen to give this crisis a voice, because it is a crisis,' Ms Michele Steeb, executive director of St John's Shelter said.

The shelter is full and had to turn away people, some of whom end up in the tents.

'Our turnaway numbers have risen from 20 women and children being turned away per day in 2007 to 80 in 2008 to our current number of 230 women and children being turned away a day,' she said.

The city and county of Sacramento have already received US$34 million ($53 million) to help fight the effects of the foreclosure crisis but, in the meantime, hundreds of people have moved into the shelters.

Authorities in Sacramento are suffering as the state has a US$42 billion deficit and the tent city looks like becoming a permanent fixture, reported the Telegraph.

'I can't say tent cities are the answer to the homeless population in Sacramento,' Mr Kevin Johnson, Sacramento's mayor said, 'but I think it's one of the many things that should be considered and looked at.'

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Op woensdag 11 maart 2009 20:15 schreef superworm het volgende:

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Jep. December 2008 al 5 miljoen foreclosures, weet niet hoe het nu ermee staat. Die mensen eindigen in Amerika dus gewoon massaal op straat, dan mag je blij wezen met goeie vrienden of familie die je kan opvangen, maar een deel woont dus in tenten. Californië en Florida gingen het eerst, inmiddels hebben bijna alle staten geen budget meer om te helpen en miljoenen inwoners die het allemaal niet meer aan elkaar knopen financieel - plus ook nog eens 250.000 werklozen per week (!) er nu bij. Gaat helemaal naar de klote, en daar hebben ze eigenlijk al dertig jaar uitstel op lopen breien.

Zie ook het FOK!-bericht: 'Tentsteden' doemen massaal op in VS

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Op woensdag 11 maart 2009 20:47 schreef PietjePuk007 het volgende:

[..]

Foreclosure alley mergen?

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America faces new Depression misery as financial crisis worsens


Carol Carlile washes dishes outside her tent in Sacramento, California

A destitute family at the American River camp

A child at a tent city during the depression

Children in the American River camp during the depression.

A miner's daughter from Tennessee who had fled to the American River camp

Mike Harvey in Sacramento

By the wide stretch of the American River in Sacramento, history is repeating itself. Here, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, men and women who had lost everything and despaired of finding work built rough shelters and huddled around fires.

Now the spiral of job losses and house repossessions has left another wave of Americans homeless, and a new tent city is growing rapidly on lumpy, derelict land between the river and the railway tracks here in the capital of California.

There are more than 300 people living in scattered encampments stretching a couple of miles along the river bank. As many as 50 more arrive each week. Unemployment in Sacramento reached 10.4 per cent in January and California is suffering some of the worst repossession rates in the country, with as many as 500 people losing their homes every day last year.

Charity workers in the city can no longer cope with the number of people coming to them for help. The shelters are full, with one home that caters for women and children turning away 200 people a night.
Times Archive, 1933: Mr Roosevelt's promise of action

Joan Burke, director of advocacy for the homeless charity Loaves and Fishes, said: “The folks we deal with typically are the working poor. But right now the economy is in such turmoil that it is affecting a new layer of middle-class earners - construction workers, farm labourers, retail workers, restaurant staff.

“People who have earned good money but have not got any savings are finding out about the reality of being just one or two pay cheques away from becoming homeless.”

Jim Gibson, 50, arrived at the tent city four months ago. A construction worker, he had been employed in the Bay Area around San Francisco for 32 years without ever giving any thought to finding the next job.

Most recently he had a job on a site in Sacramento and found a rented apartment to live in. When he lost the job six months ago he quickly went through the little savings that he had. He moved into a motel room, but with no jobs to be found he was forced to begin selling his possessions - including his tools.

In the end he spent his last $30 on a one-man tent and headed for the burgeoning tent city. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up here,” he said.

Inside his tent is a neatly folded set of spare clothes, a sleeping bag and blankets. He has nothing else: all his family photos, the possessions of a lifetime, have gone. “I sold them or gave them away. Where could I keep them?”

A widower, Jim has five adult children living locally - but he will not tell them where he is. “They don't know, and I am not going to burden them. In part it is my pride, but they are also just one pay cheque from joining me here.”

Yesterday Jim joined his new friends, Genaddiy Tomashov, 57, and Anthony, 32 in a makeshift communal tent. They sat on plastic chairs around a fire, with a cooking pot suspended above it. In a corner of the structure, which lost its roof in high winds and torrential rain last week, were piles of tin cans and bottles of water donated by the local food bank. They keep each other company and, when they have money for a bus pass, they go off in search of work. From time to time a local business pays $35 for a five-hour stint holding a sign on the street.

They see four or five new tents springing up each day. Yesterday Ronn Harrison, 46, turned up with a sleeping bag, and $8 in his pocket. A carpenter who had come out of a state alcohol rehabilitation programme last year, he had moved in with his father in Fresno, but could not stay there. He has worked two days since last August. “I have had to downsize my way, all the way out here. There was nothing left for me to do,” he said.

There is no sanitation and no running water in the tent city and, while Jim's area is as neat as possible, elsewhere among the blue Tarpaulins there are growing piles of rubbish and rotting food. Although Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate, days of heavy rain recently turned much of the site into a quagmire.

On the other side of the railway tracks, towards the city centre, Loaves and Fishes provides showers and a midday meal for 650 homeless people a day. The charity is campaigning for the city to provide a “safe haven” for the homeless, with proper facilities and garbage disposal.

Sister Libby Fernandez, executive director of Loaves & Fishes, has seen the tent city grow from a few individuals a year ago into a big problem for city officials. The dome of the State Capitol, where the California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger conducts his daily business, is visible from the levee by the river where she parks her golf cart whenever she visits.

Sister Libby estimates that out of a population of 500,000 in Sacramento, there are 2,000 homeless in shelters across the city and another 2,000 living on the streets or in tent cities, either hidden or out in the open. “Camping outside is illegal but the authorities cannot move on so many people. In any case, they have nowhere else to go.”

Jim said that, while he was confident he would get out of the tent city, he was not sure when. “California has been living in the fast lane all these years. I took my job for granted and all of the sudden the recession hit. I never thought building would stop, but it has. People weren't ready for it.

“This is the bottom of the barrel.”

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Op vrijdag 13 maart 2009 21:46 schreef Maanvis het volgende:
Ik vind die foto van Opa met kleinkind, dochter en hond veel beter, Die laat zien dat een tentenkamp nog niet eens zo slecht is, en dat geld niet het belangrijkste is, maar je familie en de liefde die je voor elkander hebt .

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re More than 700,000 people are currently homeless in the U.S. and the number has grown 20 percent from 2007 to 2010.

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“We’ll all split up, but we’ll meet again,” said Martinson, knowing the men had gone 10 years mostly unnoticed and confident they could do so again.

Perhaps elsewhere, perhaps not.