Scenes from the economic downturn

Like the “Hooverville” shanty towns of the Great Depression, the homeless encampment along the American River in Sacramento, California, is becoming a national symbol of the financial meltdown and the recession, and the consequences for ordinary people. There are no multibillion-dollar bailout packages for these unfortunate folks.

The Lede blog of The New York Times last week covered the transient village, with its hundreds of residents, and National Public Radio chimed in with a feature this morning.

What makes this tent city stand out is its presence in the capital of California, where home foreclosures are rampant around the state.

As NPR noted, the chronically homeless are represented in this encampment, which has no running water or sanitation, aside from the nearby river, and that may be a public health crisis in the making. There’s also a large proportion of the newly homeless — people who lost their houses to foreclosures after they lost their jobs. As one resident told the NPR correspondent: You can’t get a job if you don’t have a home address. And you can’t get a home if you don’t have a job.

I’ve spent many summer days whitewater rafting on the upper reaches of the American River and its tributaries. It’s a singularly beautiful river, and all too ironically named for these downtrodden times.