Homeless encampments springing up due to soaring home repossessions.
Photo: Mack Martinez from Iowa smoking in front of his tent in a tent city in Reno.
Posted on 09/20/2008 4:11:36 PM PDT by vrwc54
Homeless encampments dubbed "tent cities" are springing up across the US, partly in response to soaring numbers of home repossessions, the credit crunch and rising unemployment, according to a report..."What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the '80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group of homeless groups in west coast cities.
Homeless encampments springing up due to soaring home repossessions.
Photo: Mack Martinez from Iowa smoking in front of his tent in a tent city in Reno.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Not me. I wouldn’t live in one of those. I would buy the two room ones!
This is utter bull.
Maybe some of these dorks should go and see Osaka Castle park and Ueno Park in Japan. They are filled with literally thousands of blue tarp houses, some complete with generators, televisions, and refrigerators. The homeless of Japan are far worse off than most industrialized countries.
People need to realize that work is out there for the taking, you just have to go and GET IT! That’s why all these FEMA trailers are still there 3 years after Katrina, and I went through it, so I know!
Let’s ax Barry’s brother how to live inexpensively in a “hut, sweet hut”.
This is utter bull.
Maybe some of these dorks should go and see Osaka Castle park and Ueno Park in Japan. They are filled with literally thousands of blue tarp houses, some complete with generators, televisions, and refrigerators. The homeless of Japan are far worse off than most industrialized countries.
People need to realize that work is out there for the taking, you just have to go and GET IT! That’s why all these FEMA trailers are still there 3 years after Katrina, and I went through it, so I know!
It’s Hoover’s fault.
My B.S. meter just blew up..........
My thoughts when I saw the photo I posted was how can he afford cigarettes, and what’s the chance that he is an illegal alien?
You said it bruddah! Same for the pedestrian under-crossing in Shinjuku in the old days, before they redid it. At least 500-600 homeless guys with exotic encampments, sometimes with shoes next to the tarp, and reading materials....guy after guy, and sometimes even women.
This in Japan, “where we know no such thing as homeless”....
He can afford cigarettes (unless he stole them).
Good,
Deport the damned illegals and put tent folks to work.
Simple deal.
Ya want a home and to eat? Work.
Are ya an illegal?
Go back to from where ya came from.
Hey federal govt. employees, dammit, do your job.
http://www.realtytrac.com is an eye opener.
“Wealthy Democrats don’t pay their Fair Share of Tax” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1539821/posts
Between the credit crisis, bankruptcies, billion dollar buyouts and billion dollar buyouts, the economy has emerged as issue No. 1 in the presidential race. Which candidate do you think will do the best job reviving the U.S. economy?
Poll Results:
John McCain (R) - 67.4%
Barack Obama (D) - 20.8%
Bob Barr (L) - 1.0%
None of the Above - 10.8%
Total Responses -
725
My guess as to who lives in these tent “cities”: Illegal aliens or Leftist activists or Illegal aliens paid by Leftist activists. The press won’t did any deeper than that.
“...and what’s the chance that he is an illegal alien?”
I’d say pretty good.
Bull sh!t.
Looks like fun, getting to go camping, back to nature and all. How green!
They never left...
Paul Boden is the “anti-leader,” co-founder and director of one of San Francisco’s longest-lived and most outspoken homeless advocacy organizations. (21 years)
From the beginning, the Coalition has functioned as an agent of social change, committed to transforming a dysfunctional socioeconomic structure, making “systemic change.” Boden says, “The influence of capitalism on the parts of our government that were supposed to be serving the public good has been evil and manipulative to the point that Lockheed-Martin is running welfare programs. The federal government is an evil, manipulative, lying f*ck.”
“When there is a bunch of us, then we actually have an impact. The multiheaded monster is harder to slay. I just want to make sure it’s not, ‘Oh, yeah! And ain’t we f*cking IT!’ ‘Cause we ain’t IT. We are a part of a big IT.”
Paul Boden: It started going down in 1978, ‘80, ‘81. 1981 is when we opened our shelters across the country. ‘83 is when it bottomed out. This gap between the $140 billion they used to spend, and the $12 or $18 billion they spend now, is homelessness.
Oh, by the way, Boden said this in 2002!
PAUL BODEN: I was homeless. So I ended up homeless as a kid, like around 16, and had done some bouncing around from friend’s couches, and hiding in people’s basements so their parents wouldn’t know I was there, and that kind of shit, and got lucky and ended up over in Europe for a little bit because I met this woman and saw the squats that was going on in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and saw what young kids there were doing when their government wasn’t providing them with housing opportunities was they were taking what was there and I thought it was an amazing empowering experience that we don’t have to play victim and ask our government to do the right thing we can actually demand our government to do the right thing and came back here and didn’t really see that same kind of universally anyway I saw people doing different little kind of things but there wasn’t really a squatter’s movement per say and started seeing all these kids and young kids and their parents and seeing these old people that were getting royally screwed that were sleeping in the streets in the Tenderloin and started working at Hospitality house trying to at least help these folks out then after about seven years of doing the direct service helping individuals and still doing some organizing with my homeless friends but really just decided that the way I wanted to go personally was full time organizing to kick the shit out of the system because too many people were asking and not enough of us were demanding and I thought the way to go was to really show that if we all get together and demand our government change the way they’re doing shit that in fact we can change the way our government is doing shit but until we demand it power don’t give you nothing you got to earn it and you got to take it and that’s the journey I’m on is trying to earn and then take the power to force our government to see the needs of human beings as a higher priority then the prophets of corporations.
Paul Boden
February 1, 2005
Washington, DC - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi gave the following remarks on the House floor in honor of Paul Boden, Executive Director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness:
‘Mr. Speaker, as Paul Boden prepares to step down as Executive Director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, I would like to thank him for his service to San Francisco’s homeless and mentally ill. Paul has been a tireless and thoughtful advocate, ensuring that city, State and national policies on homelessness reflect the diverse needs of our population.
‘In 1987, Paul founded the Coalition on Homelessness as an organization run by and for the homeless. By hiring homeless and formerly homeless people, the Coalition both ensured homeless people had a voice in setting policies and empowered them with skills they could use to help others.
‘The Coalition’s accomplishments include the creation of the Community Housing Partnership, the Treatment on Demand Program, the Shelter Grievance Project, and the Continuum of Care Plan. In addition, the Coalition created The Street Sheet, a community newspaper highlighting the work of homeless and formerly homeless people through writing, artwork, and poetry.
‘In addition to his work at the Coalition, Paul helped strengthen many community organizations by serving as a board member at the Community Housing Partnership, the Central City Hospitality House, and the National Coalition on Homelessness. With the National Coalition on Homelessness, he helped draft the Bringing America Home Act, which was introduced in the 108th Congress and aims to end homelessness in the United States.
‘As he departs the Coalition on Homelessness, Paul is expanding his focus to the national policy debate on homelessness. We will miss his leadership greatly at the Coalition, but it is heartening to know that the network of homeless people, service providers, and advocates he built will continue to act as a voice of conscience for the City of San Francisco. And I am certain that he will continue to make enormous contributions to lifting the lives of the homeless.’
Paul Boden:
McKinney homeless assistance funding is a miniscule allocation of approximately $1.4 billion this year; compare that to the $52 billion a year (in 2004 dollars) reduction in funding for affordable housing programs since 1979, and the word “miniscule” makes sense.
Before the re-emergence in 1983 of massive contemporary homelessness in the US, poor people in local communities faced many of the same obstacles homeless people face today, but they did have one thing they don’t have today: housing. Not always the best housing, certainly — often not very nice housing — but they had housing nonetheless.
When the federal government’s role in supporting housing opportunities was changed in Reagan’s reinvention of government, large numbers of people who were living in the not-very-nice housing found themselves with no housing at all. They became “the homeless,” and 25 years later the Bush administration has chosen to focus on a subsection of “the homeless” that they call “chronic.” From poor to homeless to chronically homeless, who will they want us to write plans on next? The left-handed blue-eyed homeless?
In 1978 (pre-homelessness), HUD’s budget was $83 billion. By 1983 (when shelters opened nationwide), HUD’s budget had been reduced to $18 billion. In 2006 HUD’s budget was $29 billion.
The list goes on and on, and goes back to 1979. Emergency shelters opened throughout the country in 1982 and 1983, and by the time the Stewart B. McKinney Act passed in 1987, they were a pretty well-established part of local communities, as they are still today. Before Congressman McKinney passed away — and a reluctant President Reagan signed his bill — the McKinney Act was originally called the “Urgent Relief for the Homeless Act.” Urgent relief from policy decisions created under the premises that the market would “take care of itself,”
Homelessness is the result of dysfunctional social policy and funding priorities. When the federal government was investing in housing through HUD and USDA housing and community development programs, we didn’t need the urgent relief of McKinney homeless assistance funding. We had housing.
Maybe some of these dorks should go and see Osaka Castle park and Ueno Park in Japan. They are filled with literally thousands of blue tarp houses, some complete with generators, televisions, and refrigerators. The homeless of Japan are far worse off than most industrialized countriesDon't you mean better off? BTW Japan has ~16000 homeless out of a population of 130 million or so. The US has a homeless population of 400-800 *thousand* out of a population of 300 or so million.
You do have a point about work though, Japanese homeless do work and do their best to work(most of the Japanese homeless are older folks involved in the construction industry who lost out as they got older). The American homeless population is much more miserable and despairing.
Tent Cities On the Rise: Great Depression Flashback?
Published: September 19, 2008, 9:53 pm
The tents springing up outside of Reno aren’t evidence of a bargain vacation craze or the spreading influence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but the saddest face of the economic problems plaguing the United States. Across the nation, homeless organizations are seeing the largest numbers in a generation, as people without jobs and homes seek shelter in cars or temporary encampments like those outside of Reno and in the cities of Portland, Fresno, Seattle, Chattanooga and Columbus. Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, noted that, “What you’re seeing is encampments that I haven’t seen since the ’80s.” Is that what we now call progress?
You nailed it. I can almost hear the wheels turning over at DNC HQ: Hey, get us a bunch of tents! Our campaign workers can camp in them and, when the media notices a “Hooverville”, they can give a sob story and blame it on Bush! And the media will eat it up.”
Just damn. Perfect. Save money on hotels AND attack your opponent, all for the price of a stinkin’ tent.
They didn't pay a mortgage for up to 22 months ( Florida takes 22 months to evict) and now under no heavy burden of a mortgage payment, find they cannot afford a $500 a month apartment.
What of the one dollar homes for sale I read about on the MSM?
Even with free housing the couldn't save money.
Remember always, the media will destroy anyone that isn't out to destroy America.
they wear pink in Joe’s prison.........
I ain’t got no cigarettes.....
Ok I cant argue with that.
“Even with free housing the couldn’t save money.”
Because they’re lazy bums and just want the money for drugs, in some cases.
I say that when we step in to help the people, we find out who’s actually TRYING to do better (applying for jobs, saving money where they can, etc.), and help them first. If you just give it out cart-blanc to anyone, you end up with the druggies taking advantage of it. I do understand, however, that there are people that do actually have trouble getting a job because of whatever. At least they’re trying.
There’s a reason if I come across someone who says he’s hungry, I’ll take him to get food, not just had him cash.
Sad that it has to be that way, though.
“partly in response to soaring numbers of home repossessions,”
What a load. Partly could mean there are 3 people among all of them who are homeless because of repos. If you paid a mortgage and utilities even for a while, you can easily afford an apartment. Does getting repo’d suddenly mean you have no income?
Ironic
google tent cities
This is another Obama fraud
Trying to make out that its the depression with fake tent cities!
“Mack Martinez from Iowa smoking”
Why is it that the poor and homeless can always seem to afford to smoke? Did they choose a carton of cigarettes over paying the mortgage? An average smoker spends at least $120.00 a month. Only one or two house payments a year. The difference between keeping a home and defaulting?
No sympathy on this side.
“There’s a reason if I come across someone who says he’s hungry, I’ll take him to get food, not just had him cash.”
If you give them cash you did your part,what they do with it is their part. If they get what they said it was for that’s cool,if not, it’s their problem ,not yours.
I only give to what I perceive to be "good ground".....
I'm not gonna give to an obvious drunk, druggie, scam artist.
Here in Denver the Mayor Hickandlooper(d)said “There are no homeless people.”
Ketsu said>>
Don’t you mean better off? BTW Japan has ~16000 homeless out of a population of 130 million or so. The US has a homeless population of 400-800 *thousand* out of a population of 300 or so million.
You do have a point about work though, Japanese homeless do work and do their best to work(most of the Japanese homeless are older folks involved in the construction industry who lost out as they got older). The American homeless population is much more miserable and despairing.
Actually the fact is that the majority of American homeless are either drug addicts or insane. Japanese homeless want to return to work, but are not able to because they will either work a Baito with no pay or not work at all. American homeless are by and large not willing to leave homelessness because it kills their ‘freedom’ (and believe me, I have heard this from many a homeless fellow in Santa Monica - why get a job when you can play a bongo or hold a veteran sign and get drunk and stoned every night for free?)
The differences in cultures are important, and the fact that many American homeless do not WANT TO WORK should be noted.
Paul Boden should be disemboweled for presenting all of that as one run-on sentence.
Oh BTW, I’d say that south Osaka has about 50,000 homeless. I’ve been there and I know. There is probably 10,000 at Ebisucho in Osaka ALONE. Maybe about 10,000 at Osaka-jo koen and who knows how many at Tennouji park. With at least 100,000 in the total Osaka area alone, who knows how many are in Tokyo and all the other huge cities in Japan.
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