Tag: Poverty

On cooperatives and housing.

I’ll get back to my electoral series eventually, I swear. But I had this weird idea today and I wanted to spell it out. It’s not an argument; more just thinking out loud. (Well, so to speak. “Speak”.)We don’t have enough housing going to the people who…

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redjenny: The media have finally discovered homelessness. Not surprisingly, they get the story wrong


One of the fundamental human requirements is shelter. How do homeless people survive? Where do they sleep? On friends and family’s couches and floors (if they are lucky), at shelters, in churches, in parks, on sidewalk grates, in abandoned buildings, in doorways, under bridges, in cars, or wherever else they can.

And of course, they sleep in tents. The burgeoning tent cities in the U.S. have finally made the national awareness. Interestingly, it seems as though the media is only interested in the newly homeless, those middle class folks who lost their homes because of the economic collapse. In other words, those who they believe are homeless because of circumstances, not because of some kind of individual moral failing. Unlike, you know, the other kind of poor.

Over the past few months, reporters from around the world have flocked to the now-famous tent city in Sacramento, Calif. When they find out that 55-year-old John Kraintz has been living in a tent for almost seven years, they turn around and walk away.

“They don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “They’re searching for people who just lost their homes. It’s kinda tough to lose a home when you’ve never owned one. Sorry, but most of the people here have been homeless for a long time.”

Homelessness is seen as an anomaly, a sign of the economic crisis, not as a structural problem with capitalism. But there are homeless during the boom times, too, lots of them.

“The other day, I heard a German reporter ask if this is happening because of the recent economic collapse,” says Kraintz. “This has been happening for 30 years, but the powers that be have been able to pretend it doesn’t exist. Why aren’t reporters asking about flat wages, jobs being shipped overseas and the lack of affordable housing?”

Burke agrees, saying one of the many issues ignored in most articles about tent city and homelessness is the fact that poor people cannot afford housing, especially in an expensive state like California.

“People who are poor end up homeless through no fault of their own, but because people higher up on the food chain have made affordable housing a very scarce commodity,” she says. “If we had sound housing policies and programs that helped people when they have a run of bad luck, we would not have a tent city.”

Kraintz says he knew the system would finally blow up. It was just a matter of time. The question, according to him, is this: Do the powers that be have the political will to create a fairer, more just economic system? Alternet>

Photo Credit: A tent city in Fresno, from a 2004 article by Mike Rhodes on Indybay

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redjenny: ‘Tent cities’ of homeless on the rise across the US

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.

Homelessness, car camps and tent cities are certainly not new, but they are growing rapidly.

In Reno, Nevada, the state with the nation’s highest repossessions rate, a tent city recently sprung up on the city’s outskirts and quickly filled up with about 150 people. Many, such as Sylvia Flynn, 51, who came from northern California, ended up homeless after losing their jobs and home.

Officials say they do not know how many homeless the city has. “But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember,” Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city’s redevelopment agency director, said.

In California, the upmarket city of Santa Barbara is housing homeless people who live in their cars in city car parks while Fresno, has several tent cities. Others have sprung up in Portland in Oregon, and Seattle, where homeless activists have set up mock tent cities at city hall to draw attention to the problem.

Meanwhile, new encampments have appeared, or existing ones grown, in San Diego, Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio.Story>

Some quick internet searching uncovered many others, in Dallas, Olympia, L.A., Athens, Georgia, Columbus. Others, like Tenessee and St. Petersburg have been shut down.

MSNBC has a photo essay on a large tent city in Sacramento, juxtaposing it with the Sacramento tent city of the Great Depression.

There are homes sitting empty, while people have no place to live. Excess supply coexisting with excess demand. The invisible hand has failed these people.

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