I have to wonder if those projections aren't a bit tardy. Across the nation, homeless people are taking advantage of the numerous empty houses idled by foreclosure, claiming squatter's rights to justify their unpaid occupancy. If they can't locate a vacant house, they pitch a tent in some open space and wait for economic recovery. The camping life isn't easy, but it is simple. Advises one expert in the San Francisco Chronicle, there are only two problems tenters have to solve: "learning how to sleep right when you camp" and to "know all the spots so you never get stuck for a night."
Sacramento, California is the site of one such encampment, but officials of the Golden State's capital city have been embarrassed by international attention revealing that St Ronnie's "Shining City on the Hill" is a tad tarnished. Their response is to drive these folks away into the cold night before Der Governator gets upset.
There are more pragmatic approaches to this growing problem in less-than-wealthy towns like Corvallis Oregon, which is considering organizing a tent city in their parks for those "good people" who are "down and out", and Fresno, California. Reno, Nevada, which had a huge tent city last year, is attempting to get ahead of this year's influx of the indigent.
But as hard as the urban campboy life is, they still have it better than too many of our nation's warriors. Active duty suicides are up alarmingly, and should a soldier survive enlistment, is as likely to end up on the streets homeless as not. A Girl Scout from Jackson, New Jersey reminds us that "according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, 200,000 United States veterans are homeless on any given night, and almost 400,000 experience homelessness throughout the course of one year." I strongly recommend that if you have an opportunity to see The Invisible Ones: Homeless Combat Veterans, you should do so. No one can tell the tale of America's neglected warriors better than these veterans themselves.
But Wait! That's Not All!
As if being traumatized to the point of despair and suicide isn't enough, caring for those that have fallen in battle hasn't gotten much better under Obama than it was under Bush. The VA is clearly aware that they aren't doing the job we Americans expect them to do for our citizen defenders, or else they wouldn't have interfered with the media gathering information on their poor performance for our veterans.
Article comments
1 - roger nowosielski
A very touching article, Realist. These are the hidden, rarely talked about casualties of the present crisis, and their numbers are certainly growing. There used to be a saying that only one or two paychecks stand in the way of the person from becoming homeless; by today's standards that would be considered a luxury. And part of the problem here is, the homeless have become invisible in our society, like an outcast, a minor inconvenience or a nuisance only only looks past - nor real human beings. And it's so easy to explain it away by referring to their drug-problem, which is to say, they brought in on themselves.
I've lived in the Bay Area for the past thirty years, the first ten years in San Francisco until the Loma Prieta. Then I forced to move to Oakland. A few times I was down and out and was forced to live in residential hotels, month to month; and they make you move out before thirty days expire less you gain residential status. And a few of those times I stayed in the SF residential hotels. I wouldn't live there any longer even if I had the money - so depressing it had become. The homeless live from day to day, blank expression on their face, like walking zombies. And we've all learn to accept it.
Gavin Newsom has been doing some things, like turning these residential hotels to the city's administration; and if you're on a general assistance or some kind of disability, you stand a chance to get in. But it's a slow and arduous process to accommodate the growing armies of the homeless. And SF is an exception.
You may have just given my an incentive to write a piece of this very topic. Take care, buddy.
2 - roger nowosielski
Your last link is an eye-opener, BTW:
"Sarah Palin's pick for Alaska's Attorney General: 'If a guy can’t rape his wife…who’s he gonna rape?'"
This should convince almost anyone about the integrity of Ms Palin. She indeed is and ought to remain a fair game.