Tent City [Sacramento, California]

San Francisco Chronicle / sfgate.com ^ | Friday, March 6, 2009 | SF Chronicle Staff

[thecodont]

Tent City

A homeless tent city is seeing an increase in population as the economy worsens ...

[thecodont]

Includes 21 photographs.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

What percentage are mentally ill? I mean, this is CA after all...

[George Smiley]

This is a significant indicator.

Historically, these stories begin to show up at the beginning of a Republican presidential term.

And apparently journalistic "ethics" causes such stories to disappear during Democratic ones.

[George Smiley]

What percentage are mentally ill? I mean, this is CA after all...

All of them, of course.

[Lizavetta]

Ask any medical personnel in Sac who treats these people when they come in. They are offered shelters but they are receiving SSI and DO NOT want to go to a shelter where they'd have to NOT drink and dope up. All their friends are in the homeless camps and they have the freedom to be as degenerate as they want. The shelters have rules and regulations on behavior, which is such a bummer, man.

I'm sure Doprah's show mentioned this when she did her pity show on the Sacramento homeless. NOT.

[research99]

There’s a history of successful tent cities in the US.

As a temporary measure, it’s more efficient than expensive “subsidized housing” programs (like SRO hotels, FEMA trailers and Section 8, which have respectively required building permits and maintenance of multi-person occupancy infrastructures, or purchases of slapdash RV’s contaminated with formaldehyde, or handouts with insufficient bureaucratic oversight).

Tent cities have worked in the Civil War, they worked in 1906 (after the SF earthquake), and they work for Arizona’s Sheriff Joe now, too.

[reg45]

Obamaville

[JoeA]

Do you mean in California, or at the tent cit. In California I’d say roughly, oh, I don’t know, somewhere near one hundred per cent. At least all of my neighbors are.

[ODC-GIRL]

The Yahoo ads for tents and campgrounds under the pictures add just the right touch of irony.

[John123]

Obamaville

OK. That made me laugh... it was kinda mean but it's the truth...

[John123]

I don’t see anywhere about HOW MANY of the tents are up... If there were 5 tents and someone put up the 6th... well, that isn’t signification...

[AmericanSphinx71]

What B.S. There were tenat cities in SF, Sacramento, LA, and San Diego when unempoyment was 4.7%.

I’ve lived in California my whole life and it has always had a signifigant homeless population in good times and bad.

[wolfcreek]

Hey, we're going to do that next weekend. We have to PAY for the privilege.

[OrangeHoof]

Any sane person has already left Cali. And the libs who still work in the private sector are in hot pursuit.

[Alice in Wonderland]

The tent city in Rockaway was much more organized.

[Ben Hecks]

The Yahoo ads for tents and campgrounds under the pictures add just the right touch of irony.

You're right - the ads are funny. A large number of bums used to "winter" in Sacramento along the railroad tracks near the Loaves and Fishes charity that provides food to vagrants. The situation got to the point that the local business owners (without permit) took chainsaws to the brush and stretched concertina wire along the property line. There was some ranting and threats made but I don't remember anyone getting charged. The tent city in the photos appears to be across the river in West Sacramento.

[Oatka]

Everything old is new again. A "Hooverville" from the last Depression:

Dare we call these new ones "Obamavilles"?

One has to wonder at the sanitation problem. How soon before cholera breaks out?