Stonesoupstation

The face of homelessness has changed dramatically in the past year, thanks to the policies of the last ten years. Btw, I take offense at the term "slums." It has an ugly connotation and in many "tent cities" I've been in, slums don't come to mind at all, especially when compared with some of the places I've seen in impoverished countries.....









Tent Slums Spring Up in America
Concentrations of homeless people are nothing new in America, but recent BBC and Los Angeles Times reports depict a rising trend of shanty slums, such as a "city" of newly homeless people living in tents near the Ontario airport in Los Angeles.

If you recall your Steinbeck, the residents of the 20c Hoovervilles were largely tenant farmers thrown off their farms by the owners, who in turn tried mechanized farming to bring down costs and break even. These displaced farmers migrated West where they became agricultural day laborers and settled into shanty camps.
The California tent slum depicted in the BBC report is quite different, because they are not migrant workers, so much as locals who have lost their homes. It is hard to tell if the newly dispossessed are all the victims of the subprime market. More likely, the tent slum population is a mix of new and old homelessness -- perhaps with a few migrant workers in the mix.


I do not know if there is a technical point at which a tent city becomes a slum -- a boundary of some sort that gets crossed in terms of population density or length of time in existence or total acreage. But the Los Angeles Times reports that the police are handing out wrist bands to make sure that only locals take up residence in the tent camp by the airport. Non locals have to get out. Passing out armbands to make sure only locals get into the camp has to be crossing a boundary of some kind. And it is not a good one to cross.

Whatever the actual demographics, the images and the stories are heartbreaking. If ever there was a reason to let go

Have you wondered where the hell these people are going once they lose their homes? I can tell you where at least several have gone; they've gone to stay with family and friends, and the ones who've contacted me are at the end of their "free ride" (although its been anything but "free.") with their loved ones. "Sherry" is a prime example. She lost her home through foreclosure back in October and had moved in with her sick sister. On the day Sherry called me, her sister was going to a nursing home and because Sherry's name wasn't on the lease, she had to vacate the apartment. She couldn't take over the lease because, you guessed it, her credit was bad due to the foreclosure. You can almost hear the apartment owner's thought process: "Hell, if she can't make her house payment, what makes the me think she's going to be able to make her rent payment?" Sigh. I did all I could for Sherry but she was transitioning from a fairly good middle class existence to one of poverty. She'd lost her job due to a layoff and her husband had lost his several months prior for the same reason. He "wigged out from the pressure," according to Sherry, and ran off one day; she hasn't seen him since. We were discussing potential rental locations and initially she refused to even consider some of the areas I was suggesting that would provide cost levels she could afford, as they were in "bad" sections of town, according to her.I kept telling her that she was at some point probably going to have to lower her standards a bit, since her income was going to force her to make a choice between spending her time in the local W omen's mission, on the street, or in one of these "affordable" housing units. It was a hard and very bitter pill for her to swallow and frankly, I'm not sure she's yet fully taken the medicine. The last time I spoke with her she was speeding down I40 somewhere in Nashville, threatening suicide because she couldn't take the stress any...

Nashville's Mobile Health van has provided excellent services to folks on the street for about a year now and as the homeless population increases due to the economy, the van will undoubtedly play a larger role in the community.We're damned lucky to have it and I want to let Metro Public Health Department's Scotty Orman know that a whole lotta people are extremely grateful for his effort in getting this service established......

On the road to health.(TRENDS in Health Care).

Melissa Knopper.

Clinician Reviews 18.11 (Nov 2008): p12(1).
A few months ago, a homeless woman stepped onto the mobile health clinic parked near a beach on Cape Cod. As she climbed aboard, the woman was holding her back, in pain.

An NP ushered the woman into an exam room, and the patient began to tell her story. She had tried to seek treatment for her back pain several times before, only to be turned away. The NP ordered some tests and found the woman had a legitimate problem with her back. She was sent to a homeless shelter with a prescription in hand, and the patient finally got relief from years of pain.

"The clinician did a really good job of listening to this patient," says Elyse DeGroot, MSW, spokesperson for the mobile clinic and its sponsor, the Duffy Health Center in Hyannis, Massachusetts. "She didn't see this woman as just another emergency room drug-seeking patient. You give people good care when you don't presume to know what the problem is."

Growing Need as the Economy Stalls
While many people have an image of Cape Cod as an affluent summer retreat, not everyone who lives there is wealthy. "There are a lot of homeless people here, but they are hidden from view," DeGroot explains. Since the homeless population is growing due to the bad economy; and the public transportation system on Cape Cod is limited, the Dully Health Center decided to take a clinic out to where the most needy patients are living. "We have patients who have not seen a doctor in 20 years,"

A recent comment left on this blog had this link attached to it, along with a suggestion that we stop focusing on the losses and start looking for some solutions. Agreed, although I would argue that it's a difficult task to stop thinking about how bad things are when most of the folks I know are at ground zero in the poor-parade. For many, the chance of even finding a job is remote and fading further on a daily basis.....



Worst month for jobs in 34 years
(01:46) Report


Feb. 6 - US employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January marking the biggest decline in more than three decades.


The job losses cut across all sectors with manufacturing hardest hit, losing 207,000 jobs; construction, 111,000; and professional and business services losing 121,000 jobs. Diane King reports from New York. Speaker: Anthony Chan, Chief Economist, JPMorgan Private Wealth Management

U.S. job losses accelerateFri Feb 6, 2009 6:08pm ESTBy Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January, the biggest monthly loss in 34 years, and the jobless rate soared to a 16-year peak, putting pressure on lawmakers to act quickly to counter a deepening recession.

"The economy is just falling into oblivion and it will get worse," said Greg Salvaggio, vice president for trading at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

The latest bad economic news, contained in a report from the Labor Department on Friday, came as the Senate was aiming for a night-time vote on a package of measures to spur the economy that could cost $780 billion or more.

President Barack Obama said it was "inexcusable and irresponsible for any of us to get bogged down in distraction and delay or politics as usual while millions of Americans are being put out of work." But Republican leaders sought to trim back the package for fear of driving up U.S. budget deficits.

Last month's job cuts were the most severe since December 1974, while the unemployment rate hit 7.6 percent, it