Rick Raw: Tent Cities Springing Up Nationwide–An Ominous Sign of Impending Depression

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net www.rickatnight.com

Years ago, my parents, who suffered through The Great Depression, told me stories about tent cities in Southern Florida and California. They used the fact that people were living in tents as a indicator of just how bad things had become. To them, living in a tent meant that the people had hit rock bottom–homeless and hopeless. To me it was like they had returned to pioneer times, living off the land.

Many people who escaped the dust bowl in the Midwest, drove east and camped out beside the roads, killing game for food. My parents had relatives and friends who were forced to camp out in crude Army tents. My dad would talk about them and then say, "and they lived in a tent," like it was a badge of honor to survive The Great Depression.

After the WWII, these people bought houses and became middle class like my folks. But they never forgot their lives in the tent cities, and lived frugally in case another depression came along. They became pack rats and saved their money. Credit cards didn’t exist. But if people wanted an expensive appliance, they laid it away and picked it up when it was paid for.

Today, tent cities are again springing up nationwide, mostly in California and Southern Florida. It’s an ominous sign that we’re in a serious recession that could escalate into a full blown depression. Unless Obama’s stimulus package works, we could be looking at another Great Depression in a couple of years.

Millions of people have been laid-off. The typical story is: A husband and wife with two kids were living well on both their salaries. Then the husband and wife were laid-off. They rapidly burned through their savings, could not make it on unemployment pay. Consequently, they lost their car and finally lost their house.

The husband dilligently looked for work, but no one was hiring in his field. His wife also hit the bricks looking for work in her field. Then they looked for any work, and found out all the service jobs had been taken. Incredibly, this nice middle class family was suddenly homeless "with no direction home." In one town, a school had one opening for a janitor and 2,000 people showed up.

From sea to shining sea, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting a sharp spike in homeless encampments–tent cities. "It’s clear that poverty and homelessness have greatly increased" said Michael Stoops in a Fox News report, He is acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. He went on to say, "The economy is in chaos, we’re in a recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."
The appearance of encampments happened literally overnight in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, catching advocacy groups off guard. They are struggling to provide services to these temporary towns in state parks and large abandoned parking lots.

The police are being counseled to be sympathetic to the occupants of these encampments and not hassle them. They’ve been through enough. Some organizations like the Red Cross are providing portable toilets and water tank trucks to accommodate the burgeoning camp sites.

With innovative ideas and thinking we can help these people who were forced to live in a permanent camp sites. There are countless abandoned mini-malls throughout Florida that could be turned into cheap housing for the homeless.

There are unsold tracks of land that could be developed into modular housing projects in weeks. The homes are built in factories, shipped to the site on trucks in modules, and assembled at the site. It takes about a week to assemble one of these modular homes.

The vast subdivisions of foreclosed houses sitting empty and decaying or being vandalized could house the homeless under certain conditions. The occupants would be like caretakers, living rent free until they found jobs. They would agree to keep up the maintenance and yard, and protect the property from damage. They would keep the house ready to show prospective buyers.

The utilities would be paid by the foreclosure companies and any supplies and furniture the occupants needed would be supplied by the FEMA. This is a no-brainer since everyone knows that occupied houses that have been kept up by the owners are easier to sell. Rename these subdivisions Madoff Villas.

Yes, it’s time to get creative and solve our problems. Everyone should pitch-in to overcome these hard times.