Community Funded Reporting
Thea Chroman  |  17 Oct 2008

The Return of the Hooverville: Car and Tent Cities on the Rise in San Francisco



2008-01-11-hooverville_medium

Homeless advocates have begun to note a striking rise in car and tent cities throughout the Bay Area, as low-income families are pushed out of the housing market.

How will it help?

The consequences of the economic crisis will continue to shake out over the coming months, but many of us have already been forced to tighten our belts.  For those at the very bottom of the income scale, there's not a lot of belt left to tighten.  Many families have been pushed out of the housing market completely, due to home foreclosures, rising rents and an increasing dearth of economic opportunity.  Homeless advocates have begun to note a striking rise in car and tent cities throughout the Bay Area.

In this story I will speak with advocates about the trends that they are seeing, tour a tent city, and interview residents about what it's like trying to hang on while living on the very edge.  I will also ask city officials about what San Francisco, which already has the highest per capita homeless rate in the nation*, is attempting to do to stem the growing problem.

* SF Bay Area counties point-in-time counts.




I am a professional radio reporter and producer with years of experience producing depth stories for broadcast.
A 5-7 minute audio feature.
Photo_45_thumb Author
Thea Chroman
Peer review: KALW
This story has been published:

The Return of the Hooverville: Car and Tent Cities on the Rise in San Francisco

by Thea Chroman | 20 Nov 2008 | sfbay
Radio journalist Thea Chroman has produced a two part series on the return of the Hooverville. It was one of the first pieces to be funded on Spot.Us and was done in collaboration with KALW and Roxbury News which provided editorial and photographic support. San Francisco’s per capita homeless rate has long been the highest in the country. But in the past year, it shot up 40 percent, by some measures. The increase came as foreclosures put pressure on the…
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