Tent cities preceded the rescission
The new homeless highlight the crisis
but do not live in the tent cities
Tales of Tent City by Ben Ehrenreich
We have heard a lot recently in New Jersey about tent cities that have appeared in a most of our communities and may soon be found in all of our counties. We have commented on several occasions about the tent cities in New Jersey.
The Nation published an analysis of this phenomenon on Tales of Tent City by Ben Ehrenreich on June 3, 2009, which focuses on the Tent City in Sacramento “a Third World shantytown in the capital of the richest state in the richest country!”
The article caught our attention for its insightful history of tent cities and what it says about the foundations of the current crisis and what must be done to insure that we can find the will and the way to end homelessness once and for all not only in New Jersey but also in America. To read the full article click here.
Mr. Ehrenreich describes “Tent City is less a single location than a nomadic but constant phenomenon, a shifting blue-tarped shadow to the glass and steel American metropolis. In good times and bad, Tent City comes and goes, forms and scatters and takes shape again.”
The following two paragraphs from the article provide insights to the crisis.
While recent media accounts portrayed Tent City’s incarnations as creatures of the recession–reborn Hoovervilles for the laid off and the foreclosed–shantytowns have been a periodic but permanent feature of American urban life for at least the past two decades. They are what connects us to Sao Paulo, Lagos and Mumbai, physical manifestations of our growing inequality and societal neglect.
The rise of Tent City, though, says John Foley, director of the nonprofit Sacramento Self-Help Housing, had “almost nothing to do with the recession.” But the recession has made poverty visible again, and Tent City tells the grueling backstory to the current recession–nearly thirty years of cuts in social services to the poor and mentally ill, the decimation of the industrial economy and the cruel underside of the housing boom. Kraintz, despite his soil-caked clothes and matted hair, summarized that narrative with more precision than most white-shirted economists can manage: “We’ve seen falling wages and rising rents. The two finally collided.”
The final paragraph summarizes the situation.
“In April I asked Brenda Hill, who had been there from the start, if she knew where she’d go if Sacramento closed Tent City. She shook her head sadly. “Nope,” she said. “Nowhere.”
Nowhere is not a solution. Our tent cities are a disgrace for a state as wealthy as New Jersey in the richest county in the world.
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