Tent City, Ontario, California, USA

You head towards the Ontario International Airport. You turn on down on your luck Holt Blvd. and then south on Grove. You turn right, along the border of the airport, onto State Street. And then you see a few tents. Short, squat, igloo style tents. Perhaps three or four. One of them has an American flag flying above the center of the tent. Not an extremely large flag, but one that could be construed that the inhabitants who live below the flag and within the tent still have faith in their country.

You drive another dozen feet or so along the dusty street and then the enormity of Tent City hits you. There are tents erected around a field that is being smoothed over the city in its commitment to keep Tent City open. Most of the tents are similar to the first ones that came into one's vision. They are various colors. Some are clustered with another dozen or so, some are in small groups of perhaps four to six.

The field stretches to some warehouse style buildings that form a southern boundary. Just off State Street and just north of the tents is an area for trailers. You know the type - campers, beat up vans, even an old school bus or two. And as you sit and look out at this encampment you begin to see the inhabitants.

More than one tent has a flag. That flag is important because the people who live in Tent City are a composite of America. If you ever wanted to see a fully integrated place, than this is the one. There are African-American men strolling around; a group of Latinos sits under one of the few trees in the area. Men, women, people from their twenties to senior ages, parolees, drug addicts, victims of foreclosure, refugees of an uncaring medical system, the list goes on and on.

And this was Tent City before more than half of the 400 or so who had lived there, had been evicted for not having ties to the host city of Ontario, who is footing the bill to build a fence enclosure, dampen down the dusty areas, put in barbecue cooking pits, running water, and provide security.

There are many issues that one must confront when faced with the reality of a Tent City. These can be addressed another day. For now, the shock and awe of seeing so many dispossessed living in squalor brings a tear to the eye and brings to mind the eternal question - why?