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Overnight, THIS showed up.

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2009/01/o...showed-up.html <= click for photos

Poor people by the thousands, setting camps and shacks, these are poor, the majority unemployed that pick trash for a living.
Do you guys understand that sometimes, even thought I write in English we do not speak the same language?

For the average American, even for someone with an opened mind and who is into survival, a poor person is someone that has a house, some stuff, maybe even buys a big screen TV, the Al Bundy from married with children version of poor. The Simpsons claim to be poor. I know it’s TV, it’s a cartoon, but a poor person for our current 3rd worldly standards is what you see pictured. It’s a person living among trash in a shack my 6 year old could build in a few hours, and maybe an entire family lives there.

They come from all over the city, poor people looking for a place to build a shack or set up a tent. A vacant lot, a politician that magnanimously allows them to take over someone else’s privately owned land in exchange for favors, such as their presence during political demonstrations by our beloved “presidenta”.

Maybe I’m getting old and soft, ( not 30 yet but who knows) but this postcard, watching this thing, this refugee camp in my country, how it came out of nowhere overnight, (I swear, this happened OVERNIGHT), shacks as far as the eye can see, all the way into the horizon. Terrible.
This already happened last year in this same place on the other side of this same road.

The pics where taken a month after they took over the land, so some wood shacks and corrugated metal construction can be seen now.

What happens is that they take over portions of space anyway they can. Most just set an improvised tent using sticks and plastic sheath, other set up a primitive wooden shack, like the ones’ seen.
The ones using tarps try to “upgrade” the structure the following days , adding some wood, plastic, or even cardboard to make walls, if they have any, they use some corrugated metal for a roof.

The place looks just like a refugee camp like the ones seen on CNN in Bosnia or some other war zone. Only dirtier.

At night they set up fires, mostly for light but also to cook, though now most of these shacks have illegal power connections they do themselves at their own risk.

For those that may be visiting BS AS and want to check it out, this is at the end of Gral. Paz highway, once you leave the capital district and go into the southern suburbs, and it turns into “Camino Negro” , the dreaded “dark road” I talk about sometimes. If you go check it yourself please be careful, go with someone that knows the place.

If you feel extra brave you might want to visit, “La Salada” open air market which happens to be near by, which is as close to a post apocalyptic open air market as it gets.
And to think that Spielberg would pay millions for such a scenography…

My parents are visiting because of the holydays, and they took these pictures, something I meant to do myself to show it to you guys but never got around to do it.

FerFAL

[Humble Janitor]

I can see this happening in America and I'm sure it already is in some areas.

[Dantheman62]

Forty miles east of Los Angeles, on a patch of waste ground, is the place they call Tent City. Sandwiched between the local airport and the railway line, this really is the wrong side of the tracks.

We are on the outskirts of Ontario, California a functionally pleasant commuter-city in southern California. Last summer, local officials established this camp as a temporary base for the citys homeless population, then around two dozen.

But word spread and now some 300 people live here. It has an air of scruffy permanence, and indeed, city officials say there are no current plans to close it down.

Most residents live in tents, some in mobile homes in various states of disrepair, their possessions crammed in with them or spread out on the ground.

[Dantheman62]

What started as a protest against the lack of affordable places to live in Vancouver, has now spread to several city parks where tent cities have sprung up.
Groups of homeless people are taking over parks throughout the city. "They are causing a lot of citizens to really feel like the parks are being taken over. Where will it stop. In many ways it's reflecting negatively on the homeless," said city councillor Jim Green.

At any given time there are at least four tent cities in different parts of downtown Vancouver. Hundreds - some say thousands of people - live in them.

Seattle...

[Dantheman62]

One of those options is to follow the example of Seattle, just south of Vancouver, where the city has sanctioned permanent tent cities.

In Seattle, the tents can only stay for 60 days before moving on to the next location. No more than 100 people can live in the same area. And the land must be donated by private owners, or churches.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/10...ity031013.html

Her name was Florence Owens Thompson. She died in 1983.
In December 2008 Katherine McIntosh said in an interview for CNN that the photo's fame left the family feeling both ashamed, and determined never to be as poor again

[giovonni]

This is not new, it is just getting closer too us> all now. I have worked in the medical and social work field for many years. Those of us, who have tried to bring this to the forefront, were told, either there was no government funds> nor any political interest? It should be also noted, the early rippling> of this now imminent tidel wave, began back in the early 1990's> slowly growing through the first Clinton Administration> surging-forth during the two> GW Bush terms. This is our new reality, welcome too the third world> America.

[Humble Janitor]

Originally Posted by Dantheman62

What started as a protest against the lack of affordable places to live in Vancouver, has now spread to several city parks where tent cities have sprung up.
Groups of homeless people are taking over parks throughout the city. "They are causing a lot of citizens to really feel like the parks are being taken over. Where will it stop. In many ways it's reflecting negatively on the homeless," said city councillor Jim Green.

At any given time there are at least four tent cities in different parts of downtown Vancouver. Hundreds - some say thousands of people - live in them.

I say, let them take over the parks. People gotta have a place to stay and I've always believed it to be cruel to shun homeless people because they ruin the "clean cut" image of the suburbs.

We wouldn't have so many homeless people if the PTB weren't such bastards.

I have thought about giving a homeless person some cash but have not gotten around to it. Either cash or clothes because I hate seeing people pushed out into the wilderness and I worry that someday, I could be among them.

"Here are some videos of a tent city / shanty town that has popped up in the suburbs of Southern California. I've never seen anything like this in America since the great depression. At first it seems as though many of the residents had lost their houses due to the mortgage crisis, and I am sure some had, but it seems rather that most here have just fell on hard times due to the economy in Southern California in general. The tent city has been removed by the city and no longer exists to my knowledge. We only went there a few times, as our major work is in Los Angeles with the homeless on Skid Row "
Patricke123

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmeHiFZUWtE

[peaceandlove]

Update on Shanty Town in Sacramento

American Tent Cities

March 9, 2009

Tent cities in Seattle, Reno and Nashville.

Video (3:01): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cJNEeI-lFM

[alyscat]

It has been projected that by the end of the year (or before) so many stores (read strip malls) will be out of business that people will be moving into the stores and squatting there. At least they will have a roof over their heads.
alys

[peaceandlove]

Some Feel Burned as Media Spotlight Falls on Capital’s Homeless Camp

An Australian television news crew interviews Renee Hadley, 38, left, Tuesday at the tent city for homeless people near the American River in Sacramento.

March 14, 2009

Sacramento’s humble “tent city” has gone international.

Across the country and around the world, newspaper readers and television viewers are being introduced to the sprawling campground where 100 to 200 homeless men and women sleep each night.

The tent city is on YouTube. Television crews from Germany, London and Switzerland have visited. The New York Times published a story about it. “Inside Edition” spent an entire day at the camp of tattered dome tents in the shadow of the Blue Diamond almond processing plant.

But not all publicity is good publicity, government leaders are finding out.

The huge wave of media attention that followed a recent Oprah Winfrey program featuring the tent city has spurred donations, ideas and volunteers. But it also has complicated things for officials who suddenly have found themselves in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Article continues: http://medianewsnow.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/231/

[waitinginthewings]

How are these people surviving the cold, & winter conditions. Its truly heartbreaking to see a once prosperous super power have its citizens reduced to this.

I feel incredibly sad about their plight.