Tarp Nation: Squatter villages arise from the ashes of the West's booms and busts

[marmar]

from New America Media:



Tarp Nation
Squatter villages arise from the ashes of the West's booms and busts

Posted: Mar 29, 2009


Editor's Note: Everywhere, Fresno, Calif., to the struggling casino district of Reno, Nev., and the upscale suburbs of Washington state, tent cities and shantytowns with names like Taco Flat have sprung up to house the poor and dispossessed. These roving, ramshackle neighborhoods were part of the American cityscape long before the stock market nosedived, and they are unlikely to disappear when prosperity returns.


FRESNO, Calif. -- Marie and Francisco Caro needed a home after they married, but like many people in California's Central Valley, they didn't have enough money to sign a lease or take out a mortgage.

They were tired of sleeping on separate beds in crowded homeless shelters, so they found a slice of land alongside the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in downtown Fresno. The soil was sandy and dry, prone to rising up into clouds when the autumn winds came. All around, farm equipment factories and warehouses loomed out of the dust, their walls coarse and sun-bleached like desert mountainsides.

Even a strong person could wither in a place like this, but if they wanted to build a home, nobody was likely to stop them. So Marie and Francisco gathered scrap wood and took their chances. They raised their tarp roof high like a steeple, then walled off the world with office cubicle dividers. Thieves stayed outside and so did the wind, and the sound of the passing freight trains softened.

When I visited the Caros in January, a fire burned in an overturned oil barrel, warming the cool air, and fresh-cut Christmas tree boughs hung on the walls for decoration.

While Francisco chopped wood, Marie, 43, confided that she wants to live somewhere else. All she needs is a modest place with a sink and a gas stove, she said, maybe even a little television for watching church services on Sundays. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b136a9bca86e71ec214e4d926c430017

[Vogon_Glory]

1. And The Shantytowns Are Back...

I don't know how many younger DU'ers realize that shanty towns were once a common feature of many US cities, villages, and towns up to World War II and after (Howbeit a taboo topic). I don't know who actually had legal title to the structures or land they sat on, but I doubt it was the occupants.

Many of the old shanty towns disappeared in the Post World War II boom as their residents either got enough capital to move out or as government-subsidized housing made moving into better accommodations affordable. As a result, most Americans of my generation (I'm in my fifties) and younger grew up thinking that shanty towns were something you found in Third World countries, not in the USA.

Of course, what's happening now is the end result of over twenty-five years of right-wing campaigning against the so-called 'welfare state.' Housing subsidies and subsidized apartments have largely vanished. Employee health plans have shrunken and even vanished. Blue collar jobs haven't just moved to Mexico but have moved completely off the North American continent. Low-cost student loans have greatly diminished, and young families have a lot less capital than they did earlier. Add the loss of jobs and the ability to mortgages or deposit and rent for even a lousy apartment, and shanty towns are the inevitable result.

[KharmaTrain]

2. Homeless Comes Back With A Vengence This Summer

My wife volunteers at various homeless shelters in a fairly affluent suburbian area of Chicago. We've seen a steady rise in those needing these shelters and the calibre of people. Almost all these facilities "maxed out" last year and there aren't enough shelters to handle the rising number of people who've run out of benefits, fallen out with family or have just lost hope. Many of these people are families...middle aged parents with school-age children. In many cases the parents are working part time jobs, but are stuck in large debt that prevents them from renting. The trauma on the kids are shown on their faces as they face another night in a strange place and not sure what will happen tomorrow.

In southern cities, Shantytowns have been around for many years. Cities swept the homeless and the skid rows underground, but they are there and on the rise. Every day more people are losing jobs and falling off the economic radar. No one speaks for them since they are social outcasts to many...failures that are paying a terrible toll on their mental and physical health and that of their children. More and better shelters will help in the short term (no one should have to sleep outside or in a car) and then a revision of the obscene '05 bankruptcy bill with caps on interest rates will help these people and the economy turn around.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "My republicon economic plan is working. Smirk." - Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R)

[tibbiit]

3. the squatter villages need to be branded and named

for BUSH.
Bushvilles.
tib

[Vogon_Glory]

5. I Like Bush Ranchettes Myself.

I like 'Bush Ranchettes' myself. Ranchettes were small, multi-acre rural parcels that real estate agents would sell to wealthy or well-off retirees or second-home owners. Often these ranchettes had been part of larger, working farms.

A DU'er who I jousted with about my term earlier pointed out that there isn't any ranching, but often a lot of desperation in real shanty towns. That's why I came up with the name--it's more original, pins responsibility on a leading rascal who let this mess happen, and the irony is almost too thick to cut with a knife.