Summer camping in New Hampshire isn’t just for those who want an outdoor vacation.
It’s also for people who don’t have any other place to live.
Some of the homeless campers are couples, many are families, and most hold down jobs.
With the passing of Labor Day, campgrounds are beginning to close.
And as NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports, that means for those folks, the rush is on to find new accommodations.
A good quarter mile from Park Avenue in Keene, a stand of matchstick thin pine trees buffers the Wheelock Campground from the traffic and sounds of the city.
The public campground charges $85 dollars and fifty cents a week to camp.
To Mike, who works maintenance for Wal-Mar, that’s affordable.
Mike’s split the summer between living in his Jeep and living in the park.
Some of the longer-term residents have nicknamed the campground the Enchanted Forest.
But Mike says, some days it’s anything but ‘enchanted.’
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2:24 you’ve got rain coming down, everything is wet. You’ve got skunks, you’ve got neighbors you drink way too much and make too much noise. You’ve got very little privacy. Your living room, your dining room, and just about everything else is under a picnic table. You share a common bathroom.
Mike admits when there’re no lines for the shower or the sun shines down through the trees, he can almost forget why he’s there.
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:45 it feels, almost in a romantic sort of way, like home. But when you stop and think about the circumstances... all of that dissolves. It’s kind of interesting ‘Wow, when I was 45, I got to spend my summer camping out.’ But what about next winter when I have no place to go?
That’s a pressing question for a lot of people.
Laurie Jewett runs the homeless program for Southwestern Community Services.
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:00 the camping population has dramatically increased this year b/c of a lack of affordable housing. We have campground that are terminating campers at the end of this week. We have some next week, and the week after. We will have hundreds of campers to place in shelters soon. Hundreds, hundreds.
While nobody has precise statistics on homeless campers, outreach workers agree they tend to be single parents with children.
And they can be found anywhere in the state.
Joie Finely works with homeless families in the Plymouth area.
She says in addition to having children, most of her clients who do camp, are working.
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2:32 ... All of the families I got calls on today, all have jobs, and all have jobs in the Plymouth area, and they want to keep those jobs. They are tax paying people with wages they can put into tenant situations, but there are no vacancies and if there were, you can’t afford them, so you are camping.
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Sfx: chatter
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:06 we are at Plymouth Sands Campground in Plymouth, NH...
That’s a woman we’ll call Pat.
During the school year she washes dishes at Plymouth State University, earning 8 dollars an hour.
Pat admits before she and her two sons hit the campground in early June, she didn’t really know what she was doing.
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1:22 ...I just went to Walmart to get a tent and some sleeping bags. It’s like, I didn’t think of a lot of things, a tarp, my brother gave me that. I didn’t have any utensils, using plastic ones. Doesn’t work very good when you are stirring spaghetti.
Pat’s campsite is fairly small.
There’s a fire pit next to a covered concrete picnic table, and of course a spot for the tent.
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:30 well this is my home, it’s my eight-man tent. It looks small on the outside, here comes my wonderful teenager...
The 15-year old Mark pulls back the broken zippered nylon flap.
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:39 This is our house....I sleep right there, my mom sleeps right there. We’ve got clothes all around.
The jumble of clothes, bedding, and books makes it impossible to see the tent floor.
And it smells sour and funky.
Mark shrugs, when asked if he thinks the tent is a mess.
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:03 not really, it’s a tent, there’s not really a lot of room.
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:00 sfx: M&M Show cd—fade up
Aside from the bad weather, Mark’s biggest complaint is boredom.
He distracts himself by listening to M & M.
He’s read the latest Harry Potter book 7 times.
This life is a striking shift from just a few years ago.
Social worker Joie Finley remembers that’s when Pat was a welfare reform success story.
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2:05 first time I met her, she was doing really well. We were working with the welfare to work program...and was employed...She was living in an apartment complex that was subsidized, so only paying 30% of her income in rent. Then she made a decision that kind of snowballed, of bad things happening.
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:39 I lived at Plymouth Apartments, but I made a big mistake and moved out of there. Moved in with my boyfriend. That’s where the shit went downhill. I got kicked out in the middle of a snowstorm with two kids.
Since then they have kept moving.
And, in the words of Pat, have left a number of burned bridges behind.
Alienated family.
A tarnished reputation with local landlords.
She’s even on bad terms with people at the local shelter.
Finley says if Pat wanted, she could relocate to one of two shelters out of the Plymouth area.
But she says Pat wants to preserve the two things in her life that are going right.
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:22 she says she really likes working for the company she works for...and I think it’s a true sense of accomplishment, and to walk away from it would be difficult. And the kids, she’s really happy with the education they are receiving in the Plymouth area.
But with the scramble for any type of affordable housing, Pat’s choices shrink.
It’s the same elsewhere around the state.
In Keene, social worker Laurie Jewett is bracing for the crush.
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2:09 it’s is going to be a rush for shelter beds. Hotels are going to be full. People are going to be here at the door. It’s already started to happen.
Pat’s campground closes on September 15. When asked what she next, she said move into the woods.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
