Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Filing Cabinet

I heard a story on the radio the other day about a town in the Inland Empire where the homeless live in an area designated for their use. But now the local government is kicking out people who can't show proof of their "connection" to the town--like a driver's license or a utility bill. The city can't handle everyone. They don't have the resources.

I know I paint Pasadena as perfect. I do that because I love it here. But like any town in SoCal, we have homeless citizens to care for. I knew about Pasadena's Union Station Foundation, an agency serving the poor and homeless. It's about a quarter mile from where I took this photo. With a bit of research I found Pasadena Social Services, which led me to this site about Pasadena's ten-year strategy to end homelessness.

To me that seems a better approach than getting rid of people by asking them into producing orderly paperwork from chaotic lives. A homeless person with a utility bill!

4 comments:

freefalling said...

Wow - I didn't realize tent cities existed in the US.
Of course, I have heard about them in other countries, but they are usually poor countries.
Do you think there are any countries in the world that have no homeless people? I wonder...

And, I like this photo very much - it matches the feel of your post, really well.

Petrea Burchard said...

The US tent cities are the vast, sprawling ones like the refugee camps you hear of in emerging nations. But we have a homelessness problem here, especially in the largest cities.

I'm glad you like the photo. It was a bit of an experiment!

John Sandel said...

"I'm Bernie K., and I approved this photo."

… cause it's COOL.

Petrea Burchard said...

Bernie, I humbly thank you.