Link: After Losing Homes, Families Move Into Tents
Tennessean.com
July 12, 2009
Excerpt:
Home these days is a cluster of tents covered by a blue tarp in a back corner of the Timberline Campground in Lebanon. Surrounding them are the tents, campers and recreational vehicles of other families in similar straits, living full time in campgrounds because they can no longer afford to live anywhere else.More . . .No one knows how many people are living in campgrounds in Middle Tennessee. But visit any area campground and it's easy to pick out the permanent residents among the vacationers.
Look for the decks built on to campers with scrap lumber, and gardens planted next to campfire pits. Look for the air-conditioning units hooked up to tents. Look for the children boarding school buses at the front gates, and parents closing up the camper before they head off to work.
The space between a comfortable life, a nice home and a good job and living out of a campground is closer than most people could imagine. Lose a job, fall suddenly ill or end a marriage, and quickly the bills and mortgage payments start piling up high enough to bury an entire family.
4 comments:
An eye opening article. A professor in college told our social work class two years ago that most Americans were 6 months away from losing everything. Wonder what she would say today! This is why everyone should be prepping and becoming more self-sufficient.
Shelly
it really is a sobering and eye-opening article.
and i couldn't agree more with Shelly! Thanks for sharing TN!
Yes, while this is a sobering situation across our country, there's a Yahoo group called "vandwellers", where many of its members have learned to love their new simplified and less complicated lifestyles without the burden of a brick and mortar dewelling.
During the depression they had Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps in the US and in Canada Federal Relief Camps. It's not official yet but we may be going back to that.
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