Updated: In March of 2009, I joined independent journalist Toan Lam on a
visit to Sacramento's Tent City.
A group of high school students also crossed the tracks to donate sleeping
bags and other provisions from the Loaves & Fishes chapter in Sacramento.
In conversation with several tent city residents, I learned that the encampment had been there for years but that its population had doubled in recent months.
Many of the residents I spoke with struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues . Their troubles had been compounded by the current recession but it wasn't clear that the market downturn was entirely to blame. As a CNN camera man put it, the story was "being billed as something it wasn't."
Over 200 people inhabited Sacramento's Tent City before it was cleared out.
There are over 1200 homeless in Sacramento today.
The above tent city resident told me that he had been there since he was 21.
