A reader sent me this report about a homeless area in NJ:
I’m just trying to spread Good Cheer Jim.
Yesterda, I met with Minister Brigham yesterday at his Homeless Tent City in a wooded area of Lakewood, New Jersey. (See attached pictures)
My initial, impression was one of shock and dread. Shock at seeing something I never thought I would see in America; Dread at the feeling in my gut that I was glimpsing my (an my loved ones) Future. This is the realization of my nightmares of America’s unfolding 4th Great Depression-Event.
However, after meeting Minister Brigham and walking through the community, I feel oddly comfortable and guardedly optimistic. Minister Steve Brigham has been helping the homeless for 11 years and operating this camp for 4. It has grown significantly over the last 2 years.Listening to Steve was like reading “The Long Emergency;” he gets re-scaling, localizing and living within rational environmental limits. He’s on the front-line of the collapse of Cheap-Energy American Society.
The camp is set back 200 feet into a wooded area. It consists of about 30 structures: a few school buses, lean-tos, tents and more elaborate structures (designed with great ingenuity), a common/community building. One circular home had a solar array to power LED lights. They have a generator for the “office”, bath/laundry facilities and common area. The bath/laundry building has a 45ft deep well, propane hotwater heater, sink & shower, and a washer and dryer.
There are about 45 residents. Most were working poor cast off in the Great Recession; but the newer residents come from the lower end of the middle-class. People who had homes, jobs and “secure” lives and now have nothing.
This is not a place I would choose to live, but, if necessary it is a place I could live. These people have faced a crisis most Americans have yet to experience and have come together, with the guidance and help of a kind smart man, and designed and established an effective way to Survive and Adapt to a sick dying economy. They are nice quiet people who, in spite of their old lives being destroyed, have retained their dignity and humanity.
It was an Oddly Uplifting Day.
