This week in the International Tent City Community

Hey all,

I've been archiving news articles about tent cities across North America for my blog and for the Temporary Autonomous Shelter Committee here in Coast Salish territory.

Here is a sampling of articles from the past week. From Kamloops, Nashville, St. Petersburg Florida, Seattle and the UK.
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Tent City 4 Running Out of Bus Ticket Funds
By DEBORAH FELDMAN / KING 5 News
January 22, 2009

SEATTLE – People living in numerous shelters and the homeless encampments called tent cities are facing a new challenge.

They are about to lose access to free bus tickets.

Deborah Exum and her husband Jack moved to Seattle in September with telemarketing jobs already lined up. But when they got here, they learned their jobs were delayed for month. It was catastrophic news for a couple living paycheck-to-paycheck.
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“It financially broke us,” said Deborah.

The Exums found Tent City 4. Their jobs finally began in mid-October.

They’re trying to save up enough money to get an apartment. They say the free bus tickets provided by Sharewheel allow them to keep their jobs.

“If I don’t have bus tickets, and I cannot go to my job. I have no money,” said Deborah.

Other shelter and Tent City residents need transportation for work interviews, day labor jobs and doctor appointments.

The bus tickets are a very closely monitored commodity. Everyone who needs them actually has to sign out for them every day. And folks are given a maximum of two per day — one to leave tent city, the other to return.

Sharewheel operates two tent cities as well as 14 shelters in Seattle, but funds are running short. Sharewheel says it will run out of free bus tickets by the end of the month.

“Bus passes to a homeless person are fundamental to existence. Without transportation, people wither and die. If you’re homeless and you’re unable to get around, you will die,” said tent city resident Bruce Thomas.

Tent city residents say they plant to protest if they don’t receive $50,000 in emergency funding from Seattle or King County.

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Tent city is a good idea, but where?
-St.Petersburg Times
January 22, 2009

Hey, guess what! Catholic Charities wants to open a temporary home for the homeless in Hills­borough, a sort of way station to get folks back on their feet like the innovative Pinellas Hope tent city across the bay.

(You mean a safe place for some of Hillsborough’s nearly 10,000 homeless to stay while they hopefully get hooked up to social services, substance abuse programs and jobs and generally reconnect with the world? Sounds like a great idea!)

Yep.

And they want to build it across the street from your neighborhood.

(Sound of screeching brakes, clanging alarm bells, wailing police cars and air raid sirens.)

(No way! Not in my back yard!)

And that’s the heart of the trouble brewing over Hillsborough’s own “Hope.”

Catholic Charities’ bid to rezone a 12-acre chunk of church land east of Tampa to house hundreds of homeless in tents or simple structures called “casitas” comes on the heels of its Pinellas project. Pinellas Hope sprung up after the national PR black eye we got for police slashing tents in a homeless camp. Two years later, the facility in an industrial area on the edge of Pinellas Park is getting a thumbs-up for working toward solutions as a temporary place to stay on the way to independence.

But preliminary efforts in Hillsborough hit a bump with some residents of the 325-home East Lake Park neighborhood across Hillsborough Avenue. Worries range from security to sewer service. Neighbors with already shrinking property values don’t want homeless people drawn to their area and wandering their streets. They have a Web site called www. ­stoptentcity.com.

But before anyone points a finger and calls them uncaring, it should be noted there’s a big difference between giving a guy with a “hungry” sign a buck at a stoplight and driving away and embracing the idea of a homeless camp near your neighborhood. Ask yourself if, in your heart of hearts, you would automatically welcome this where you live.

But it sure sounds like a good idea.

Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities for five counties including Hillsborough and Pinellas, hopes to make it work. Camp residents would be stringently screened, the place gated, the worries of the neighbors aired and discussed. They are talking about more permanent casitas instead of tents and limiting the length of stay.

Murphy speaks with some passion about helping those willing to help themselves get off drugs or alcohol, get work and lay out a plan. Key is getting others to “understand a little better who the homeless really are, people who got disconnected from their families, who lost their jobs, who are struggling to make it on low-paying wages, single moms.”

And, no, they have no other properties suitable for such a project, he says. The issue comes up for rezoning Feb. 17. Expect a crowd.

Is it possible to make the neighbors comfortable enough to make a go of what looks like a good thing? Can those who want to help the homeless and those just hoping to protect what they have come to a meeting of the minds?

“We’re at the very beginning of a long road,” Murphy says. And given all that’s at stake on both sides of the road, he can say that again.

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Travellers can move to “tent city”

(In the UK, the term Travellers refers to a cultural group, similar to ‘gypsys’)
by Jon Austin
January 20, 2009

COUNCIL chiefs admit if travellers are evicted they could be able to move a few hundred metres to a “tent city” - and stay for a month.

A year ago the Echo exclusively revealed hundreds of travellers faced with eviction from Dale Farm in Crays Hill planned to set up the makeshift “refugee” camp on green belt land they own between the site and the A127.

On Thursday the Court of Appeal will rule if the evictions at Dale Farm and Hovefields, Wickford, can go ahead.

However, the council today admitted even if it does move hundreds of people from Dale Farm, they could legally move into tents on the strip of land for up to 28 days.

The community has stockpiled six tents, two marquees, l5 wooden sheds and ten portable toilets.

Campaigner Grattan Puxon said: “We made an approach to Clive Simpson, head of planning, who assured that a period of 28 days would be allowed before planning consent was required.”

Neil Costen, council enforcement manager, said: “Restrictions do not preclude the land from being used from a variety of temporary uses for a period of not more than 28 days in any calendar year.”

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Nashville Mayor Wants Tent City Gone by June 6
By Harriet Vaughan • THE TENNESSEAN
June 1 deadline to close Tent City has been recommended in a Homelessness Commission report submitted to Mayor Karl Dean on Wednesday.
January 15, 2009

Chairman Erik Cole says the commission is working to find housing for those who live in the camp on the banks of the Cumberland River downtown. Some 42 people call Tent City home. Nine have found housing so far.

For months, the Commission along with Park Center, Metro Social Services, Metro Development and Housing Agency and other agencies have been helping the residents obtain IDs, birth certificates, Social Security numbers and Section 8 housing vouchers.

Cole says 14 housing units will be available in the next few months through Urban Housing Solutions, a nonprofit agency that manages housing for the chronically homeless.

“We were trying to move with haste, but in such a way that we could have success. But, we had to put a date on closure or else it would prolong things,” said Cole.

Dean will begin reviewing the commission’s recommendations today, said mayoral spokeswoman Janel Lacey. If he approves, the closing date will be set and other plans can move forward.
Rental support possible

If they get the green light from Dean, the commission will launch a rental support program open to Tent City residents.

“The goal of the rental support program is to keep individuals without sufficient income in housing. However, the money will be tied to enrollment and participation in support services and treatment,” said Clifton Harris, homelessness coordinator.

Caseworkers will meet with Harris weekly to gauge progress on finding housing. The Commission will also continue monitoring safety, sanitation and other issues at the camp.

In October, Dean asked the Homelessness Commission to take the lead on Tent City and make recommendations on the most humane way to help the residents and close the camp.

Since then, Cole says they have held four meetings with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, which owns the property where Tent City is located; police, who want the camp closed down; and Tent City residents.

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Kamloops Legalizes Night-hours Tent Camping

By Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week
January 15, 2009

New temporary regulations allowing the homeless to camp out in unmaintained city parks in the evening has left the chairman of the city’s social planning council with more questions than answers.

Ray Jolicoeur, the chairman of the committee, said he understands from a legal standpoint the city needed to put some type of policy in place, but wonders what will happen every morning when the campers are asked to leave.

City council approved a new policy this week to manage temporary shelter use in public spaces.

The new policy will allow homeless people, unable to obtain shelter through local social programs, the ability to erect basic and temporary shelter each day during the designated time of 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., as long as it’s not on maintained or landscaped public land within the city.

Under the policy, spaces like Riverside Park and McArthur Island Park are off-limits.

Outside of the permitted hours, all forms of temporary shelters will be required to be removed daily.

But Jolicoeur questioned whether authorities who come by any person camping after 7 a.m. will be gathering any information on the individual or simply asking them to leave.

“This is the perfect opportunity to continue to build a profile for that individual and share that information with [social] agencies,” he said.

While the city didn’t ask for input from its social planning council on the new regulation, Jolicoer noted it’s more of a legal than social-planning issue.

The city said the policy is an attempt to stop tent cities from springing up in Kamloops.

The policy is a direct result of a recent B.C. Supreme Court decision that defined the rights of homeless persons to erect temporary shelter in public spaces under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In October, the court shot down the City of Victoria’s bylaw prohibiting camping in city parks.

Tents were quickly set up following the judgment’s release.

But Victoria police just as quickly scuttled them, sending tenters back to the streets.

That ruling is now being challenged by the City of Victoria.

Joliceour said he thought the city could have waited until the issue was settled by the courts.

Mayor Peter Milobar defended the new regulatios, suggesting without the new policy in place, there is no ability to police any problems if they occur.

He noted as an exmaple a particular spot on Shubert Drive near the river bank, where the policy will allow the city to work with social agencies to offer help to homeless camping there.

“This is strictly a tool that we can use if there are problems in the community,” Milobar said.

“It doesn’t mean we have the manpower or expectation that, daily, we’ll be runinng around with a crew of people making sure every structure is removed and gone,” he said.

“That’s just not realistic.”