Tent City, USA

[hibsdaft]

this is pretty shocking, if you google Tent City USA you will get dozens of stories and video clips of new neighbourhoods in the USA where people who have been made homeless due to the economic crash are living in tent cities. the people living in these places are not those you might expect, its not junkies or people you would normally recognise as homeless.

i had heard that this happened in the 30s (Hoovervilles they called them after the President that lead the US into the Wall St crash) but i find it amazing that it could happen today especially in a country which is meant to be so advanced.

heres one from Sacramento, population only 450,000 yet apparently there are 1500 people living in the tent city there:
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=tent+city+usa&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=Q17ESZ3_EJfhtgequLzMCg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

this one is really sick- police turn up and cut up the tents that they are living in. unbelievable really :confused:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrPdZmPB36U

one of the amazing things to me is how these people just seem to accept this as fate or something, I can't get my head around that. there has to be a political solution to this and you'd expect these people to be raising hell about their fate. for example in many cases these are people who have been evicted from their homes for failing to keep up with mortgage payments... and yet their homes are still lying empty, so its certainly not a housing shortage issue. its perverse imo

[Flynn]

That video is absolutely shocking. :agree:

I can't imagine how the police officers involved in cutting up the tents can sleep at night after doing that. Fascists.

[Arch Stanton]

i had heard that this happened in the 30s (Hoovervilles they called them after the President that lead the US into the Wall St crash) but i find it amazing that it could happen today especially in a country which is meant to be so advanced.


Exactly - it all seems so unnecessary. While being unemployed in this country has to be the pits, that is all down another level.

[Betty Boop]

According to the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Coalition, 3.5 million people in a given year will experience homelessness with 1.5 million of them children. The current national jobless figure stands at over 8 percent and is rising while there are 37 million Americans on food stamps.While the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world's population, it uses 50 percent of the world's illicit drugs. This tragic fact fuels the drug wars raging in major U.S. cities. The U.S.A. has the highest rates of teenage pregnancies, birth and abortion of any industrialized country. The greatest country in the World? :confused:

[hibsdaft]

According to the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Coalition, 3.5 million people in a given year will experience homelessness with 1.5 million of them children. The current national jobless figure stands at over 8 percent and is rising while there are 37 million Americans on food stamps.While the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world's population, it uses 50 percent of the world's illicit drugs. This tragic fact fuels the drug wars raging in major U.S. cities. The U.S.A. has the highest rates of teenage pregnancies, birth and abortion of any industrialized country. The greatest country in the World? :confused:

the Market knows best.