Will Success Spoil Tent City?

Offers of aid flood the Texas site, but some campers spurn them

Just 35 miles east of downtown Houston, between Interstate 90 and the San Jacinto River, a hand-lettered sign at the entrance to a state campground reads WELCOME TO TENT CITY, U.S.A. Inside, 100 people have set up housekeeping in tents, cars, campers and trucks. Some have been there for as long as eight months, some stay only a few days. Some are from out of state, but most are former blue-collar workers from the Houston area. Says Jana Williams, 27, who has lived there six months with her husband and ten-month-old baby: "Vigilante groups called us trash and ran us out of another camp. We're not. We're just Americans who are out of work. Here we are safe."

Now they are also on the map. Three weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal described the scene in a front-page article on the migration of the Northern unemployed to the Sunbelt. Ever since, Tent City's residents, both entertained and irritated, have seen a steady procession of reporters and cameramen pursuing footage and recession-style quotes. The three national TV networks carried stories. "We've had so many reporters out here," says J.D. Dunn, an unemployed construction superintendent from Livingston, Texas, who says he has just landed a job servicing local sewaging plants, "we just can't keep track of them any more."

For both the national and local press, residents accommodatingly repeated stories of good times past and a dismal present of losing jobs, families and homes. The initial round of news coverage, portraying Tent City as a virtual human metaphor for the effects of the recession, prompted a mammoth, warmhearted response from the Houston community. Everything from fresh fruit to live poultry began arriving. Says Howard Sandoz, a railroad inspector who brought over 12 lbs. of steak: "I saw the tent people on TV and thought about all the food I had. I'm just doing my part." Houston-area companies contributed tents, rolls of plastic, Coleman stoves, water tanks and portable toilets. Stacks of donated firewood, piles of used clothing (so much that donors had to be warned that some of it will be sold at local flea markets) and job offers came pouring in.

When some residents, unable to use the overabundance, began to spurn further donations, Houstonians began to look at Tent City in a much different light. "I'm not going to walk away from the truly needy," said Carmen Deshayes, a local resident who has been helping campers by driving them to job interviews. "But the public has been making it too easy on these people. There's no reason for them to go out and get a job." Complains Mollie Cruter, a Houstonian who has visited the camp on occasion to help out: "They say they won't work for a minimum wage. What do they want? This is the recession." In reply, some residents argue that a minimum-wage job paying less than $7,000 a year is not much better than what they have at Tent City. Says Richard Aldridge, a former $250-a-day diesel mechanic: "I can't support a wife and kids on $3.35 an hour."

Still, without such jobs, the camp's residents will have to lean heavily on the charity of Houston's private citizens, since the state of Texas is unlikely to provide much help. The Houston Department of Human Resources has printed a pamphlet called Dead Broke in Texas to publicize the stinginess of the state welfare system, one of the least generous in the nation. "Most of those types of people are on their own," says Charles Ternes, department spokesman. "That's why they're living in Tent City--there's no place else for them to go."

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