# The USA now has homeless (tented) communities outside 55 cities? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701 "2012-02-13T12:48:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/81 "2012-02-20T18:22:32Z")
Back to the OP matter (the encampments) there are also some community-self-inflicted/law-of-unintended-consequences scenarios, such as the camp under a Miami bridge that arose because it was one of the few parts of the town that was not within an exclusion zone for people on the sex-convict list. But really, though from a moral standard it\*\*\* is\*\*\* a shame, the reality is that a few thousand people living in encampments quasi-permanently (as opposed to the large transitory at-one-given-time homeless population) in a polity as large in extension and population as the USA is a very small fraction, just not visible enough, does not yet touch close to enough families in Main Street, to create the kind of social effervescence the OP seems to expect. As mentioned upthread, the number of homeless in various shelter programs or simply roughing it on the street quite exceeds the encampments and has been a problem we’ve tried to deal with for _decades_ now. Thing is, in the past, a lot of street homeless probably would have been rounded up and institutionalized against their will. About the families, again we deal with the unintended consequences, a lot of slum-clearing and neighborhood renewal in the major cities over the last half century resulted in the problem of, now where do you put the people who used to live in the slum (specially now that the unskilled jobs have migrated out of state)? We built low-income housing but nowhere close to matching the demand (plus, the public housing projects often devolved into slum conditions themselves anyway, so policymakers began asking what’s the point). Again, yes it is a shame and an injustice. But most civilis/zations as I’ve known them have contained shame and injustice. The idea is to come up with ways to address it. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/82 "2012-02-20T19:05:15Z")
Why is it such a shame? Having worked extensively with the homeless, I can tell you for about 1/3 it is a lifestyle choice. They prefer living that lifestyle. What’s wrong with that? For about another 1/3 it’s drugs or mental illness that has more or less forced them into being homeless. Even if you gave them free apartments, within months those apt would be ruined. It’s only the last 1/3 we should feel any shame about. Those are the one who were one paycheck away from being out on the street, then they lost that paycheck. Often single moms. But not a lot of them are living in the homeless encampments, they very often couch surf or live in their car. They are the ones we really need to help getting back into a home. ---
**Author:** ![Whambulance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Whambulance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whambulance)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/83 "2012-02-20T21:05:56Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > Everything you write screams comfortable midde class entitlement; parents paid for your healthcare, and your education, you grew up in a nice house, great neighbourhood. Pretty good employer as well. Great memories. Lifes been good. > > Never been close to outside that bubble, except in your head. I don’t know how our difference in opinion escalated to your personal rendition of my life, but I’ll bite. Maybe it will help to demonstrate my reasoning. I grew up in the middle of the swamp in a small farmhouse in Louisiana (basically no neighborhood there). My parents and I could never afford health insurance and paid out-of-pocket for any care we needed. I began working at the age of 12 and by the time I was 15 I was driving 10 ton hay trucks (without a license - this was the 80s) to another state to pay for school clothes and other necessities. I’ve worked pretty much full time ever since and only dropped to part time during college (which I paid for in full by selling everything I owned including my vehicle). I lost everything in Katrina including the majority of my clients and at this point I am still self employed and recovering at or near the poverty line. So basically everything you said was spot-on except for the part where you used words. I think I feel the way I do because I’ve seen a hell of a lot of people give up on themselves and fall into a cycle of dependence far before they should have … but that’s just my opinion. I’d prefer to drop this whole thing about me and just get back to what your views and the views of others are on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/84 "2012-02-20T21:17:30Z")
Right. And then you met Robert Johnson at a crossroads. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/85 "2012-02-20T21:33:49Z")
> [@Whambulance](#): > > I don’t know how our difference in opinion escalated to your personal rendition of my life, but I’ll bite. Maybe it will help to demonstrate my reasoning. > > I grew up in the middle of the swamp in a small farmhouse in Louisiana (basically no neighborhood there). My parents and I could never afford health insurance and paid out-of-pocket for any care we needed. > > I began working at the age of 12 and by the time I was 15 I was driving 10 ton hay trucks (without a license - this was the 80s) to another state to pay for school clothes and other necessities. > > I’ve worked pretty much full time ever since and only dropped to part time during college (which I paid for in full by selling everything I owned including my vehicle). > > I lost everything in Katrina including the majority of my clients and at this point I am still self employed and recovering at or near the poverty line. > > So basically everything you said was spot-on except for the part where you used words. > > I think I feel the way I do because I’ve seen a hell of a lot of people give up on themselves and fall into a cycle of dependence far before they should have … but that’s just my opinion. > > I’d prefer to drop this whole thing about me and just get back to what your views and the views of others are on the subject. I so saw this coming. Every time you get one of these extreme libertarian types, they always have a by-his-bootstraps story about their lives showing themselves to be John Galt to everyone else’s, well, everyone else. Not commenting on if they are true or not, just saying they’re there. And I agree, not reelevant to the argument at hand. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/86 "2012-02-22T00:44:54Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > If you can watch past 2mins 40 secs you’re stronger than me: > > [BBC News - Panorama - America's homeless resort to tent cities](http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9694094.stm) > > I don’t understand how a population can become so cowered as to not revolt against the obscenity of poverty and inequality in society. > > Based on the above, it’s not even civilisation I, as a European, can recognise. No, you see, we allow those tent-cities to lure them into gathering in concentrated populations. Next step, in with the artillery, machine-gun the survivors, and then release the vultures. American problem-solving ingenuity at its finest! 🆒 And that is civilisation you, as a European, can recognize. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/87 "2012-02-22T00:48:23Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > Children don’t work. Oh, you can get them to, just make it a game, where the prize is eating food and avoiding pain. Heck, history proves they don’t even have to be **your** children for that to work! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701/88 "2012-02-24T15:07:23Z")
This whole thread is quite in tents. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-usa-now-has-homeless-tented-communities-outside-55-cities/612701.md?page=4)