Another Ramble

I'm going to change the subject here a little bit. I will be posting more about my life as a homeless person in future posts but today I am going to ramble a bit.
Lately there has been a population explosion amongst the campers in my area. In my area or the patch of woods where I camp the population grew from 2 camps to 6 camps last July or August and just recently 4 more camps have shown up. I've been noticing a similar increase in the numbers of camps in several areas of the city that I normally travel through.
Whether this increase in the number of camps and the number of people who are camping is a result of the city closing down some camps elsewhere as they do from time to time for completely valid reasons or if this is a simple increase in the number of people who are becoming homeless and for whatever reason have decided to camp out is uncertain to me although I do intend to find out. I'll report on this increase later as more information is discovered.

On a related topic, with this increase in people who wish to set up a camp comes an increased need by the agencies and organizations who help the unsheltered homeless for the supplies they distribute around to the various camps. Truthfully I know that these organizations are extremely busy and have their hands full right now so donations are always in short supply. So I ask that you contact one of these organizations such as Hands of Hope or the Catholic Charities SOS team to see if you can help out with supplies or just your time. Another possibility that may be of interest is talk to your church to see if they would like to adopt a homeless camp or camps. As individuals you can even adopt a homeless person or persons yourself with the appropriate safeguards.

 I also don't see any true relief in sight for the homeless community in general either. With federal funding cuts looming on the horizon, substantial amounts of assistance will disappear. It's even possible that some people who are living in subsidized housing or on food assistance will return to the streets because of these possible funding cuts.

I say all this because I am not seeing any decrease in the numbers of homeless people and while the numbers of people who stay in the established shelters does remain constant, because of size constraints, the numbers of unsheltered homeless does seem to be rising and doing so dramatically.