Some of Sacramento's homeless have set up this encampment. Last week the city announced that it could clear out the tent city in 14 days, but backed off after the mayor called an emergency summit meeting among city officials and homeless advocates. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
But we got TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS fer.... oh, never mind.
"Many of Sacramento's homeless set up lives in tents" by Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times | March 21, 2009
SACRAMENTO - The capital's tent city, sprawling messily on a grassed-over landfill, is home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go.
It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has been transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to many Americans.
Related: AmeriKan MSM Discovers U.S.A.'s Tent Cities
The Depression had Hoovervilles. The energy crisis had snaking gas lines. The state's droughts have empty reservoirs and brown lawns. But today's deep recession is about disappearing wealth - painful, yes, but difficult to see.
Especially if you are reading a newspaper on a regular basis.
Then this tattered encampment along the American River showed up on Oprah Winfrey's show, Al-Jazeera, and other news outlets around the world. On Thursday, city officials announced they would shut down the tent city within a month.
Oh, THAT is why it is in the paper!
"We're finding other places to go," said Steven Maviglio, a spokesman for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The camp is "not safe. It's not humane. But we're not going in with a bulldozer."
Like Israel would?
On a recent chilly morning in the tent city, traffic whined along the adjacent freeway. Cats criss-crossed the encampment. As the sky slowly brightened, shadowy figures emerged and headed for the bushes along the riverbank. There were no portable toilets. The dumpster was a new arrival.
Jim Gibson walked to a neighboring tent, where two of his friends - an unemployed car salesman married to a onetime truck driver - were brewing coffee on a propane stove.
Gibson looked like anybody's suburban dad, all jeans, polar fleece and sleepy eyes, his neatly trimmed hair covered by a ball cap. Seven months ago, Gibson, 50, a contractor, had a job and an apartment in Sacramento. Today, he struggles to stay clean and fed. A former owner of the American dream, Gibson is living the American nightmare.
"The only work I've found is holding an advertising sign on a street corner," he said.
Survival is the biggest time-filler here. Tents must be shored up against wind and rain. The schedule for meals, clothing giveaways, and shower times at local agencies must be strictly followed.
CeCe Walker, 48, back from coffee, breakfast, and a shower at Maryhouse, a daytime shelter for women, lugged a bag of ice for a half-mile. "I've never camped in my life," she said, sorting through supplies damp from yesterday's melted ice.
The tent city sprawls along the river in small clusters of "neighborhoods." Walker and her neighbor, Charly Hine, 38, pitched their tents at the distant edge to stay away from noise and trouble.
One neighbor displays an American flag and a goose with the word "welcome" written on its breast. It is a favorite subject, its owner said, of news photographers. Another has a mailbox and a gate. The largest and most raucous neighborhood has some 70 tents pitched closest to the street. Near noon, Tammie and Keith Day were drinking beer around a cold fire pit, worrying about how she would get her diabetes medication and fretting about whether officials would shutter the tent city.
Yeah, attach the drinking to the crowd as if they are all there by their own hand. I'll tell you, if I found myself in one of these tent cities, you bet I'd throw a couple back -- and I DON'T EVEN DRINK!!!!!!
Hey, DRUNK MISERY is better than STRAIGHT MISERY!
"We're homeless and being evicted?" Tammie fumed. "Now I've heard everything."
Keith has rheumatoid arthritis. Tammie said they both battle mental illness and alcoholism.
Of course, they are drinking and therefore undeserving of help.
One downside to the media attention, Tammie said, was that her family no longer pays for her prescription. They saw the news about the tent city. Her brother was "disgusted." And her mother "doesn't even talk to me now."
Why? Because they were drinking a beer? WTF is wrong with these family members (or do they just not want the homeless showing up at their house)?
Last week, the city of Sacramento announced that it could clear out the tent city in 14 days, but backed off after the mayor called an emergency summit meeting among city officials, homeless advocates, and leaders in the homeless population.
--more--"
Related: AmeriKa's War on the Homeless
