It aint your home buster. You were illegally squatting on public land.
Contradiction of my claims without addressing any of the arguments I've made.
And you were putting peoples lives in danger and professing to help them all the while.
More childish unsubstantiated contradiction...
Community is a great thing and i hope you create it in a safe indoors environment
Unfunded mandate.
Housing 100+ homeless people in brick-and-mortar building(s), with as much personal liberty as in Tent City, would cost several million dollars just for start-up costs. If you have that kind of money to spend, you can mail the check to "PO Box 326; Lakewood, NJ 08701" (or a different organization of your choice). But by guaranteeing every homeless person free rent, you are taking away people's incentives to work and improve their lives.
Well-organized Tent Cities (which are not sabotaged by government like ours was) are a much more fiscally realistic and effective solution to homelessness. Some states,
like Texas, are already starting to do the right thing - one of many reasons their economy is so strong.
And..... HOW WERE YOU BEING INDEPENDENT BY RELYING ON CONTRIBUTIONS AND DONATIONS OF BASIC LIVING NECESSITIES!!!!!!!
I don't "rely", I trade. I manage Tent City's online presence (not to be confused with my personal expression, like on this thread), help with correspondence, etc. In exchange, I get to consume some donations. Everyone agrees that Tent City had a very good deal by having me on board.
Where are all the unfortunate people of tent city now?
The population of Tent City has always had significant turnover. Hundreds have been through here, and hundreds more will need it in the future. Some very visible people have been here for years, but most move on after a few months. Many would-be newcomers who needed a place to stay over the past year were kicked out by the police. There are plans to kick more people out shortly...
The 122 who were on the May 2013 census are just a part of the picture. At any time there are 12,000 to 20,000 homeless people in NJ (more accurate counts are closer to the higher number). If everything was homogeneous, Lakewood's share would be 120-200, but there are many economic reasons for homelessness in Lakewood to be above state average.
Where are they? In some cases - sleeping on pavement, in alleyways, under bridges, trespassing on Private Property, sleeping at the library, etc. All because of people like you, who wanted to bulldoze Tent City, without even at least giving us land somewhere else. The government is making most of them homeless again. And, thanks to anti-homeless laws and other Police State prohibitionism, more and more will end up in prison, mainly for victimless "crimes"...
A lucky few get free motel rooms at ridiculous cost to the tax-payers. TC residents who were there at the right time and jumped through all the hoops were offered "one year free housing" in crony motel rooms, or a one-time $3500 payout to GTFO. They are now less accessible to rehabilitation services and volunteers than they were at Tent City, and will most likely soon again be on the streets...
There is NOTHING in Atlas Shrugged even remotely similar to tent city other than the bands of former workers roaming around robbing people.
I was not pointing at Atlas Shrugged as having a literal prototype of Tent City, only broader philosophical ideas, although more direct parallels could indeed be drawn. Fiction must scale down the size of everything to just a few characters. In the real world, there couldn't be a single centralized one-size-fits-all utopian gulch. Seasteading is the real-world Galt's Gulch for millionaires; Tent City is the real-world Galt's Gulch for bums. You don't have to be Atlas to "shrug" off statist tyranny, even if all you have on your shoulders is the artificially-multiplied cost of rent!
We are not "robbing" anyone, just the opposite - we are providing an alternative to robbing the taxpayers to pay for "public housing". Ayn Rand detested "public" ownership and the "welfare" state, we provide the only viable alternative. She also detested the "war on drugs", which has exacerbated the problems of many at Tent City.
She didn't hate poor people - a pivotal character in Atlas Shrugged is a hobo bumming a free train ride. Howard Roark designed a low-cost housing complex for free (with agreement of creative control), just because the problem of economization fascinated him. Ayn Rand had no problem with private voluntary charity and cheap living for the poor, which is what Tent City represents.
In The Virtues of Selfishness there are some slightly relevant essays where she is against zoning laws and calls for taxes to eventually be voluntary with her incentives for them to be paid.
Her later non-fiction work is mainly an explanation what most readers failed to understand and deduct in her fiction, for which she preferred to be remembered. In all of her books you will find confirmations of my ideas. Another notable example is her essay on
The Property Status of Airwaves.
Her non-fiction is generally better than her fiction, but her fiction is what makes her more unique, accessible, and recognizable among similar libertarian philosophers.
This has nothing to do with receiving services based on the taxes paid by others.
Tent City replaces taxpayer-funded "public housing", which currently wastes millions putting some bums in motels for $1500 a month, while most continue living on the streets (or in prisons, mainly for victimless crimes, and at times for "crimes of desperation", which Tent City also helps to prevent).
Tent City gets no government funding or support (as much as that is possible in today's world). We have off-the-grid electricity, heat, and water. A particularly heroic supporter who owns a business at the Lakewood Industrial Park pays for the portajohn services. For a long time we (via
donations) even paid for our own garbage pickup, until the government was finally shamed into picking up our trash - and they've tried to use that as leverage against us many times since... Roads are of course a government monopoly, and we get free EMS services. Police services have largely been more harm than good...
All narcissistic monologues end with the words - "I am armed only with the pursuit of Truth". (Or something to that effect).
Name-calling.
I've stated that I am unarmed, and explained why they are afraid to arrest me - it will attract more attention to my writings.
no use wasting time engaging with him anymore, he's history!
Ten city is history! Homelessness is on the decline! yaaay!
Tent Cities are an idea that makes most economic sense, and will continue to grow. One particular location is getting pogromed. There will be others.
If you think bulldozing shelters and making people homeless makes homelessness decline, then I hope you live a very long life by sticking your head in an oven.
Now they will build more houses and hopefully alleviate the rental crisis
The free market would have done that decades ago, if the government hadn't stood in its way. Now, as punishment for government failure, this land has been homesteaded by us. The sooner they recognize our Rights, the sooner we can sell it for development and use the money to buy land and build better homeless camps somewhere else.
They continue to claim this is "environmentally protected" land that will remain forested, but
we all know that's BS. A crony deal has been in the works for some time... Some useful things will get built here, too little too late, but the underlying problems of government failure will not be addressed. My way is better.
Poll