Fresno Famous

Also featured on the NBC Nightly News today

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#29921772

hoovervilles?

when i saw the national news outlets saw pictures of the tent city in sacramento, i was wondering why it was news because fresno has had one for years. im not really sure if the current recession has made it bigger tho...

Here we go again with the drug camp citys

You forgot they want the right to have everything handed to them so they don't have to work and they can be drunk and high all day.
How many of these people are "homeless" by choice? Why won't they stay in approved shelters. It's because they can't have drugs or alcohol.

The article was very good.

The article was very good. In the past week or so someone wrote a very good letter to the editor of the Bee about the problem as well.

The writer mentioned "How do you help the homeless people that refuse to help themselves?"

This man and his family own a building downtown and discovered they had a homeless person living on their property. They wanted to allow the homeless man to stay, so they offered the man a deal. Sweep and pull weeds around the area and you can stay. The writer said that the man did so for a few days, then came to the man and told him, "This isn't working for me,I live on the streets because I don't want responsibilty and don't want to work" The man moved his tent off the people's property.

How do you help some of these people if they won't help themselves? A very sad situation indeed.

Fresno's Shanty Town

the homeless camps have been here in Fresno for many years now but have gotten a lot bigger in the recent years.

I went to Edison High School in the late 1980s from 1986-1989 during the lunch break I would regularly drive with friends to Jensen and 99 for a fast food lunch after lunch we would take golden state boulevard back to Ventura ave to get back to Edison. Many times did we pass that area near that underpass seen in the photo above but there were never any tents just some people sleeping near the poverello house area south of Chinatown. In the 1990s I never went to Chinatown but at the end of 1999 I revisited the area and became a regular at a friends business in Chinatown till 2004 but I did notice the tent city getting bigger and bigger this decade. It was not 18 months ago it more like 5 years ago or more (looking at a 2001 satellite map of that area you don't see the tent city that is there now but the 2007 google street view shows it... what gives it away is the are near G st & California Ave.) When the off ramp bridge (Monterey Street Bridge) from Golden state blvd. was closed was about the time the tent city started to boom I noticed. But if you ask people at Electric Motor Shop and Supply they have been right near that location (H st & monterey st) in the photo and I'm sure some one who works there has seen the Tent City grow and might know when people started putting up tents there.

looking back on some fresnobee storys the camps were there in 2004.

Food, Clothing, and Shelter is what you need

back in 1992 when Jerry Brown ran for president he had what was called "The Family Bill of Rights"
Every American has the right to:
1. A living wage
2. Health Care
3. Decent shelter and freedom from hunger
4. an education
5. security in old age