Summary Of Camping For Their Lives By Scott Bransford

746 Words2 Pages

When thought of camping is referenced the idea of families going hiking through the woods having a blast telling stories by the fire comes to mind. Camping is viewed to the public as recreational event families and friends take part in to get away from society for a short period of time. Scott Bransford author of “Camping for Their Lives” sees camping in a completely different manner. Homeless are colonizing in areas around or outside cities; the government refers to these areas as “tent cities” rather than the slums, in which they resemble. Scott Bransford stresses the addictions, living situations, job market, and the role government assist has little to no help towards rehabilitating and getting the homeless off the streets. His article …show more content…

Scott Bransford continues to discuss throughout the essay the struggles the homeless face daily. When the government intervened, they raided a tent city to sweep out the homeless. After the brute force was over the homeless filed a class-action suit against the city and received $2.3 million in damages. Ontario officials started a campaign to punish squatters for making makeshift homes on land the clearly did not posses. Officials soon built a chain-link fence around the camp and established rules that the homeless must follow. It was ultimately compared to a prison for the homeless and after a few months less than half remained inside the fence. When Scott Bransford interviewed a person who had escaped Mexico to start a new life he said it was better in Mexico and he was trying to head …show more content…

He emphasizes their struggles when he refers back to the married couple and how they are forced to cook on top of the oil barrel to survive. This placed a visual image in the reader's mind seeing a struggling couple barely able to survive a day because homeless shelters are overcrowded and society has given up on them. Even though the homeless are in a challenging situation Scott Bransford makes a hasty generalization; when he discusses the involvement of government assistance and their little help he profoundly states “if they are neglected, they will be lost to crime, addiction, and illness”(p.396). This statement indicates that without the government getting involved in a positive faction a tent city will fall to corruption. The corruption of these tent cities are evident because Scott Bransford points out that in a proven static approximately 41 percent of the homeless have been incarcerated. He later closes his article with a quote from a homeless man abruptly saying “sometimes hunger can make a person do crazy things” (p.397). This is a subtle hint towards the crime involved with living in these tent

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