Homless Numbers Increasing,Tent Cities Abound

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless there are 1.35 million children homeless during the year, and about 200 thousand homeless children on any given day. The NCH also puts the number of homeless vets at about 200 thousand and states that over 400 thousand vets will experience homelessness throughout the year. As a result of the increase in homelessness tent cities are spring up, some overnight, in cities across the country.

"While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.

In Seattle, homeless residents in the city’s 100-person encampment call it Nickelsville, an unflattering reference to the mayor, Greg Nickels. A tent city in Sacramento prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce a plan Wednesday to shift the entire 125-person encampment to a nearby fairground. That came after a recent visit by “The Oprah Winfrey Show” set off such a news media stampede that some fed-up homeless people complained of overexposure and said they just wanted to be left alone."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html

This blog has presented, and will continue to present, "homeless" people who choose to be so as conscious alternative lifestyle decision. The majority, of course, do not fall into this category. They have been thrown into the situation "by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Most forecasters predict that we are not yet at the bottom of the falling economy and it is likely to get much worse before it gets better.



Many cities try to address the problem by criminalizing homelessness. Mainly through the use of park curfew laws, loitering laws, public sleeping laws. etc. This adds increased stress on people, many who have always been law abiding citizens, and helps move them further into desperation.
Some of the causes of homelessness, according to the NCH, are the ever increasing percentage of the population that are at or below poverty levels, lowering wages, increasing unemployment, and shortage of affordable housing among others.
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/why.html



The video below shows a small slice of the problem and how many municipalities try to deal with the problem.






Additional Homeless Information:


http://www.nationalhomeless.org/

http://www.endhomelessness.org/

http://stonesoupstation.blogspot.com/

http://www.abouthomelessness.blogspot.com/




What can be done to help? Volunteer at a shelter. Volunteer at a "soup kitchen". When voting and electing officials make sure you know where they stand on homelessness issues. Educate yourself and help educate others on the increasing numbers, issues, and plight of the homeless. Go to the link below and check out more in depth ways to help.

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/you.html




We will return to this topic from time to time on this blog to not only look at the problem in more detail, but look at some of the more innovative and successful solutions that have been employed.