Talk about sensationalized reporting. Check out Reuters version of "Grapes of Wrath":
Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.
The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck’s novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.
The story started to tug at my heartstrings. While I have a "You win some, you lose some," attitude towards those who lose money on their investments, I hate the thought of children losing their homes to foreclosure and being forced to live in tents. Then the article continues:
While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it’s just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.