[blukatzen]

Tent City in Suburbs is Cost of Home Crisis We've already passed "and so it begins", we are already in "and so it continues". Happy Holidays All!
Blu

[satjeet]

as I rode the train yesterday into Philly I noticed a Tent City. I used to hike in this area 20 years ago and would ocassionally find evidence of someone sleeping in a makeshift lean-to. But this had tents, laundry hanging out, a dump, the whole works.

I just retired and have new boots! I'm going to go and take a look!

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ationally, foreclosures are at an all-time high. Filings are up nearly 100 percent from a year ago, according to the data firm RealtyTrac. Officials say that as many as half a million people could lose their homes as adjustable mortgage rates rise over the next two years.

California ranks second in the nation for foreclosure filings -- one per 88 households last quarter. Within California, San Bernardino county in the Inland Empire is worse -- one filing for every 43 households, according to RealtyTrac.

Maryanne Hernandez bought her dream house in San Bernardino in 2003 and now risks losing it after falling four months behind on mortgage payments. "It's not just us. It's all over," said Hernandez, who lives in a neighborhood where most families are struggling to meet payments and many have lost their homes.

She has noticed an increase in crime since the foreclosures started. Her house was robbed, her kids' bikes were stolen and she worries about what type of message empty houses send. The pattern is cropping up in communities across the country, like Cleveland, Ohio, where Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, said there are entire blocks of homes in Cleveland where 60 or 70 percent of houses are boarded up.

"I don't think there are enough police to go after criminals holed up in those houses, squatting or doing drug deals or whatever," Wiseman said. "And it's not just a problem of a neighborhood filled with people squatting in the vacant houses, it's the people left behind, who have to worry about people taking siding off your home or breaking into your house while you're sleeping."

[Loki]

No sign of this happening here in Portland (yet). But I do feel like I've been raped every time I write my rent check.

[RedStateGreen]

Wow. I'm from the Inland Empire (moved here 2 years ago) and this is just incredible. I hope the people we sold our home to are doing okay....

[pedalling_faster]

i'm surprised they're not being rousted and told to move on, which is the policy in Las Vegas. i've seen this in one major city. every block, a few people in their cars, thousands of people quietly residing in an area of about a square mile.

when i was looking for an apartment, the friend i was staying with yelled at me 3 times one morning for various infractions (drinking bottled water, printing 3 pages off the laser printer; i forget the third.)

i said "forget this" and spent 5 weeks in my car while i found a decent apartment. in the back of my truck, down by the ocean. it was very relaxing. i think it would have harder if it was interminable.

[SILENTTODD]

This started at least 2 years ago in San Bernardino county California. The town of Mentone to be exact. A lady I have been seeing for a long time who teaches 2nd and 3rd grades had kids whose families were living in tents in public campsites near by.

Lets see, there have been “Hoovervilles" and "Reagan Ranches", what do we call these new developments? "Bush Burbs", or perhaps more properly, "Greenspan Acres"?

[mos6507]

As far as the foreclosure victims go, my sympathies are muted because these people were dumb enough to sign on the dotted line. It's far too easy to just blame the administration. People should take some personal responsibility for their stupidity. It's really nothing but a bunch of lemmings going off a cliff.

I sat on the sidelines as housing crossed the threshold of insanity as everyone else around me jumped on board in a fever and told me I was stupid for not doing the same. Now we have the logical outcome and I'm thrilled because prices need to reflect fundamentals again.

[blukatzen]

This gets even weirder.

"Sex Offenders Sent To Live At Homeless Camp"
http://tinyurl.com/2kxgh6

Blu

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'N')o sign of this happening here in Portland (yet). But I do feel like I've been raped every time I write my rent check.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'N')o sign of this happening here in Portland (yet). But I do feel like I've been raped every time I write my rent check.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'N')o sign of this happening here in Portland (yet). But I do feel like I've been raped every time I write my rent check.

[blukatzen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'However if you want your own space all to yourself in an apartment unit unfortunately there's a severe shortage thanks to city governments totally rigging zoning laws in favor of single family home construction. Being a single man I feel like I just got the shaft. You pay a ridiculous premium being single--> double /maybe triple cost per square footage.')

Hi Cube,

Couldn't one buy a home and rent out space in the "single family home"? One doesn't necessarily need to be married/family man to deal with a home. You can rent out extra rooms for others just like yourself, no?

Lots of help with the housework, etc. Set it up like a co-op too!

If one has a job, you don't have to live alone. You don't have to end up in Tent city either.

Blu

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('blukatzen', '.')..
Hi Cube,

Couldn't one buy a home and rent out space in the "single family home"? One doesn't necessarily need to be married/family man to deal with a home. You can rent out extra rooms for others just like yourself, no?

[RonMN]

Quote:

The homeless make us uncomfortable, and that is why they live in tent cities.

I apologize to the men and women and children who have, over the years, lived in tent city. I apologize for not having taken my hat off, knocked on your door and asked to know you better. From what I have heard and seen in glimpses, your community was a human one: fraught with problems, blessed with grace, bound by the human journey.

You have much to teach us. It is important that this sentence is said, right here, right now, in our town. In my community on Signal Mountain, there is alcoholism, drug addiction and domestic violence. These problems are not exclusive to the homeless community; they live among the wealthy as well. The difference is superficial; it is on the surface. We can hide our soul-problems behind our televisions, cars, swimming pools and sixty-hour jobs; you carry them in your clothes that are not ironed, your homes that are tents, your hands that are not washed.

So, allow me to thank you, for it is in the life you often lead that I find meaning on the human condition. When I meditate on my own soul, I find it too is homeless, it too is broken, it too is often violent or addicted or steeped in sorrow. You embody this condition; you are like Christ.

Over the next seven days, you are moving, relocating (how do you relocate a shanty?), and there is great help coming from many people in Chattanooga. One minister has offered a vacant lot near his church; others have brought by clothes and supplies and hope.

Full Story

[Revi]

Tent city sounds like a classic hobo jungle. We are right back in the depression I guess. The railroad is bulldozing the camp. Just like the 30's. There are places like this all over the country. The poorest of people live there, but they are now growing in number. Get psyched.

We all live in tent city. We just don't know it yet...

[I_Like_Plants]

I've been reading what I can find that's no-nonsense about being homeless, having come so close to it myself, and not really out of the woods yet.

One thing that happens, is when you're homeless you lose privacy. Taking a shower or cleaning up somehow goes from being private to being semi-public, such as in a restoom in a store, or public, such as showering up at the showers at a beach or lake. Or you may have a gym membership and shower there, but most homeless probably do not.

Another thing I've read is, since there's no privacy on the street, and you're constantly being looked at, asked directions, odd comments made at you, etc., you have to get good at kind of withdrawing into a shell, behind a stony facial expression.

I've also noticed when giving to homeless people myself, that you just don't end up trusting food that's been opened, or could be tampered with. I offered to buy one fellow a plate of food, on a drizzly night, and he said he could not accept it because if he started to eat it, it'd start raining. Having been in a fairly serious sport myself, I know how these superstitions can develop! It turned out packaged stuff would be OK though, so I went in and got a bunch of that for the guy.

It's just very hard to imagine how a person who's middle-class could become homeless, but it happens fairly often and it's often very sudden. I suspect the Depression we have coming will being about more awareness of this, and there will be a modern crop of movies analogous to the ones made in the 1930s about people who are down and out.

I've heard of some high schools doing projects where students live as homeless folks for a few days. Christian missionaries in training sometimes do this also.

It will be harder to ignore these people when they could be us.

[Opies]

We have a tent city in edmonton. With the recent boom, housing prices have skyrocketed. a lot of people ended up on the streets when they couldn't pay their rent. Cops chased the homeless away a few times and busted up their little homeless cities, but there is really nothing they can do anymore. There are just too many

[eXpat]

Tent city is there to stay:link

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The number of people hungry and homeless in US cities rose dramatically again in 2007, according to the annual report on hunger and homelessness from the US Conference of Mayors. The 23-city Hunger and Homelessness Survey was released in late December
...
Thousands of beds to house the homeless were added in the surveyed cities, yet half the cities reported they turn people away some or all of the time. In Phoenix, 7,000 to 10,000 are homeless on any given night and 3,000 cannot be sheltered due to lack of beds.
...
Individual city profiles come from the broad range of US cities that participate in the report. They have widely different average per capita incomes and are located in various parts of the country. For example, Santa Monica, California, a city of 83,000 with a per capita income of $58,000, reports 728 singles and 142 households with children were sheltered homeless in 2007. In contrast, Philadelphia, with a population of 1.4 million and a poverty rate of 23 percent, reports 8,103 individuals and 5,300 households with children in this category.

These profiles show only those individuals that find shelter. Miami, a city of 360,000, reported only 735 families and 365 individuals were in sheltered housing for some duration during the past year. Des Moines, a city half the size of Miami but in a much colder climate, reported 3,632 families and 2,436 individuals were sheltered homeless in 2007.

[tecumseh]

I noticed a big spike in homeless people living under bridges that span the interstates running through the city of Detroit from the summer of 2006 to this past summer. Under one bridge in 2006, I noticed only one or two homeless living there at a time. This past summer, it was practically a small village living under the same bridge.

There is great irony in that luxurious Vegas-like casino hotels have recently opened only a few blocks away from the growing homeless masses in Detroit. I don't know how long these casinos can milk the retirees of the automotive industry before they will need new customers? Who will these new customers be?

The interstate infrastructure in the area are also being upgraded in a big way as if happy motoring will only increase in the future. No mass transit. No jobs. An incredible waste of resources. What a clusterfuck!