Shantytown Names

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

I’ve been intrigued to read the names of some of the homeless encampments in the United States.

They seem to be grim places where people who lack jobs and money gather because they have nowhere else to go.

But I’m struck how often those places have hopeful names, positive names.

For example, in St. Petersburg in Florida, there’s a place called Pinellas Hope.

It’s named after Pinellas Bay, I believe.

And there’s Hope City in Providence, Rhode Island.

These are both places where people have gathered together in public parks or public land of some sort, sometimes in church parking lots, in order to build a small community of homeless people with tents or whatever kind of shelter they can build for themselves.

There’s more.

Safe Haven in Champaign, Illinois, and River Haven near Ventura, California.

Even a place called Umoja Village in Miami.

Umoja means unity in Swahili.

And so I think they’ve intentionally given these place names so that it’s not, you know, it’s not Dirtville, you know.

It’s not something really ugly.

Yeah, or Hooverville, which was so snarly, you know, blaming it on the president.

Well, you know, there is one shantytown name that I found that is kind of modeled after Hooverville, and that is Nicholsville.

It’s the name of the Seattle homeless encampment.

It’s named for Mayor Greg Nichols of Seattle.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And I don’t know if I’d be flattered if I was him.

I don’t think it’s meant in a flattering way.

But the most common name generally is Tent City, sometimes even capitalized by the local newspapers.

You know, it is not a tent city. It’s like the tent city. It’s a formal name.

There are just a couple that have some humor in them.

There are two others that have existed in Providence, Rhode Island.

One of them is Camp Runamuck, and the other one is Camp Runamuck II.

Oh, no.

Oh, yeah.

And I guess I should mention that this kind of naming of these temporary towns is perfectly ordinary.

The military does this when they create a tent city in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Anytime there are immigrant populations due to disasters or even during the Hajj, the massive numbers of people going to Mecca, a lot of times they’ll give their temporary communities a name.

And one here worth mentioning is in Calais, France, there is an encampment of illegal immigrants, and it’s called the Jungle because it is an incredibly rough place where all of these people are trying to climb aboard trucks surreptitiously so that they can go, say, through the tunnel and make it into the U.K. Or to go somewhere else where there might be work.

Well, Grant, I never would have thought about this kind of thing, but it’s fascinating.

It reminds me of those old photographs from the WPA, you know, that were so grim but also kind of beautiful.

If you know of the name of your local tent city or shantytown, we’d be interested in finding out about it.

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