Camden County New Jersey has announced plans to shut down a tent city encampment that has stood in Camden for over the past year. Fifty people currently live there, supporting themselves through ties with community members who offer aid and support, and looking out for one another.
Camden officials state they will use federal stimulus funds to provide social service support to those living in the tent city. The amount of aid being offered, and how the relocations will impact residents remains unclear.
In January of 2010, the Poverty Initiatve, a group based in New York that aims to reignite Dr. Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign, visited Philadelphia for an immersion tour. The tour highlighted the history of the struggles of poor people in this city. Willie Baptist and Liz Theoharis, of the Poverty Initiative, shared stories about the struggle of the homeless in 1995 and 1996.
On Monday people across the city remembered the eighty-seven souls that died in this last year either living on the streets or in shelters. Eighty-seven people! This is a dramatic rise from the previous year and it is shameful.
Across Philadelphia over 8,000 are people living with HIV/AIDS and without adequate housing. Living homeless through the winter while struggling with a sickness that weakens the immune system, these individuals face a crisis of healthcare, housing, and poverty.
As job losses and foreclosures continue to skyrocket, tent cities are cropping up across the country. The below article spotlights one in Sacramento, CA.
Last month in London a community of folks got together to demand decent housing for the poor and working class communities of the city. Many of the problems we are facing in Philadelphia are not just urban or national issues but rather global issues. Check out this video of the London Coalition Against Poverty, and the struggle around Alexandra Court.
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