Welcome to Tent City, USA!

Home, sweet home!Remember when you were a kid and you would camp out in the backyard? I sure do. I look back fondly on the days when I would set up my huge tent and invite all the neighborhood kids over and we'd tell ghost stories, make sh'mores, and experiment with our homosexuality.

At random intervals my dad would circle around our tent with a chainsaw and scare the shit out of us and when we woke up there would be snails stuck to our shoes and we'd shake them off and kill them for no reason other than to watch them die. Ah, to be young again.

My paranoid Mom eventually put an end to our camping when she saw a news report that a serial rapist stalking young boys was on the loose. Of course when the guy was caught she still forbid me to set up my tent in the backyard because "all gay rapists come out at night". Thanks Mom. Camping in the living room is just as fun.

Well, thanks to the U.S. mortgage crisis you can now experience the thrill of camping out in the backyard every single night! But this time instead of your backyard it'll be in a vacant lot. And instead of thrill the only thing you'll experience is despair and your inevitable suicide. According to BBC News, better than American news in every single way, Ontario, CA is now home to a modern day Hooverville.

The meltdown in the US mortgage market has led to record foreclosures and forced thousands from their homes. In few places is it worse than southern California...

Forty miles east of Los Angeles, on a patch of waste ground, is the place they call Tent City.

Last summer, local officials established this camp as a temporary base for the city's homeless population...

FINALLY, WE RENTERS ARE VINDICATED! TAKE THAT, FORMER HOMEOWNERS!

Back when the real estate boom was at its peak a day didn't go by that I didn't get into some stupid argument about renting vs. owning a home. Suddenly everybody was an expert on real estate. I would constantly hear, "You're stupid to rent! Once you make that rent payment you have nothing. You're just making some landlord rich. Heh, ever heard of equity? Methinks not. When I sell my house I'm going to be a millionaire!"

WHO HAS NOTHING NOW, RICK?! WHO HAS NOTHING NOW?!