The Other Side: Truth VS Media?

Tent Cities: An American Tradition

The Huffington Post

'What those reports didn't say is that Sacramento's tent city has been a part of the landscape for years -- at least five, according to a spokesman with the Sacramento mayor's office. Those people weren't all washed onto the banks of the American by a recent wave of foreclosures."

"Readers responded with tips on over a dozen improvised communities across the country, from Olympia, Washington, to Camden, New Jersey. Our follow-up reporting showed, however, that the camps tend to predate the current foreclosure crisis."

"There's nothing new about tent cities in the United States. There's nothing new about poverty in America. Some folks will be living in improvised shelters in public space whether we're in a recession or not. "

"Moreover, a widespread consumer item that wasn't available to our great-grandparents' generation -- the RV -- assures that we'll see waves of people living out of their massive vehiclesbefore communities of middle-class families start sleeping in Wal-Mart tents."

""We have several tent cities here," says Keanna Ralph, a spokeswoman for the Camden, New Jersey mayor's office. Ralph says there a few families living in the "main" tent city, which she says has existed for longer than two years. The city doesn't interact much with the tent dwellers because they're on state property, not city property."

"On the west coast, tent cities are a movement, and the local government is forced to cooperate.

In Olympia, Washington, and some of its surrounding jurisdictions, a tent city called Camp Quixote rotates from church to church every 90 days with the approval of local residents and government."

""Camp Quixote is an alternative model for communities of poor people to live together in a safe, nurturing environment," says Selena Kilmoyer, a member of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the first church to host Camp Quixote. She says the tent city model harks back to the shantytowns of the '30s, "safe environments where poor people could be together and not be afraid."

"There's a very similar setup in Seattle. Since 2002 the city has worked with local nonprofits to maintain a rotating 100-person tent city sanctioned by the actual city, according to a spokesman with the Seattle Department of Human Services."

"Even though the population there "quadrupled in last year," Maviglio says, it's not the economy's fault. Maviglio estimates that 75 percent of the tent dwellers are chronically homeless, unlike the recently middle-class folks featured on Oprah. Maviglio says foreclosure victims "are not the usual suspects.""

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/19/tent-cities-an-american-t_n_175665.html