Free Republic

Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic 'shantytown' that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city's slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues. Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland. The footage showed trash strewn around scores of houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials. Particularly shocking was just how large the 'shantytown' is, with a lengthy stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered with the makeshift dwellings. Oxford could be heard...

Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic 'shantytown' that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city's slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues. Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland. The footage showed trash strewn around scores of houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials.

The remaining homeless people living along Echo Park Lake were given 24 hours to leave their encampment after protesters clashed with police Wednesday night. A heavy police presence was still in place on Glendale Boulevard and Park Avenue Thursday morning as a fence was put up to close off the park. Roughly 30 to 40 tents could still be seen scattered behind the fencing but the people living in those tents were told they would have to leave. LAPD later declared two unlawful assemblies and gave an order to disperse from Santa Ynez Street and Glendale Boulevard. Police said officers...

A dashcam video of downtown Los Angeles on Christmas day reveals a stunning sight. Hundreds of tents and lean-to's on the sidewalks that serve as shelter for the homeless. The scene is reminiscent of a third world country. ***SNIP***Cities are rapidly becoming the domain of the very rich and the very poor. Even those people working at decent jobs can't afford to live in the city they are employed. Rent control, stupid zoning policies, corruption, and fierce opposition to building any kind of housing has driven the working and middle classes out of urban areas. Along with them has gone...

Disgusting situation in San Diego (illegal alien brothels, etc). Government tells citizens to basically ESAD. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5Fwmowc8k

CARACAS, Venezuela - Three major Caracas golf courses, long favored by the city's wealthy, are being expropriated to build housing for thousands of poor and middle class Venezuelans, officials said Tuesday. The city expropriations, which will likely generate new friction between supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez, are part of an ambitious government effort to provide more homes amid an acute housing shortage that has driven up real estate prices. Mayor Juan Barreto's office has ordered the "forced acquisition" of two golf courses and will soon issue another decree expropriating a third course in the ritzy hills of southern...

Rio de Janeiro, Apr 7 (EFE).- Brazilian authorities on Friday confiscated from a Rio de Janeiro shantytown an anti-tank rocket that members of a drug gang allegedly planned to use against police, officials said. The abandoned weapon was found on the roof of a home in Cidade de Deus, a western Rio shantytown that gained notoriety in a film by the same name about warring gangs of drug traffickers in the city's slums. The rocket was discovered by anti-drug police thanks to an anonymous tip. According to the tipster, the members of the drug-trafficking gang that controls Cidade de Deus...