I’ve long known that the frequenters of Boing Boing were suckers, a mob of bleating “sheeple,” if I may borrow a term from the tax protest nuts, who lack not only critical thinking skills but the most basic human element of curiosity. This explains why if someone tells them something which fits their preconceived notions they accept it without fact checking it no matter how outlandish the story is on face value.

A story like this for example, which I found being promoted on Boing Boing:

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The BBC has an accompanying article by the intrepid Rajesh Mirchandani who goes on to “prove” that America’s sub prime crisis is creating tent cities by interviewing one unnamed source whose story Mirchandani didn’t fact check:

But one man, who did not give his name, said he and his family were living in Tent City because they were victims of America’s foreclosure crisis. It came down to “feeding my family or keeping the house”, he said, “so I got rid of the house”.

The property he lost is nearby in Ontario, which, in places, offers a middle-class suburban dream – green lawns, wide pavements, garages big enough for two cars.

Yet it is in an area known as the Inland Empire, where the rate of foreclosure is the third highest in the entire US.

No longer able to afford his mortgage payments, this man saw his lender repossess the property, and now someone else lives there.

“It’s hard for me to see it, when someone else owns it and I am homeless with nothing,” he said.

That’s good reporting, if you’re not interested in uncovering the truth that is. One could ask why the man is homeless since he should, if he had a mortgage, still have a job. That being the case why doesn’t he rent? Barring that why not the old standby and stay at a long term motel? Or with friends?

That was answered in the story before Mirchandani introduced our nameless mystery man:

Others told tales of family disputes or houses burning down. Some were addicts, some fresh out of prison.

Ah. Now we see some real truth gleaming through. Drug use would explain why a grandmother and her husband, featured in the above video, were forced to stay in a trailer on a campground rather than being invited to live closer to family. In fact a sex offender status would explain why the couple were staying outside the city limits in general, but so would a warrant.

That’s speculation however, but reasonable speculation given the dearth of information in this story. Not being able to afford a mortgage shouldn’t make you an unemployed homeless drifter anymore than having your college loans go into default. It may be the case that losing your job first could precipitate all these things, but the breathless BBC reporting doesn’t bother to find any of this information out.

Instead they ignore the larger context, the Ontario homeless camp has been in the news prior to this. And in these other articles the BBC implication that these people are all former homeowners from an area which was hard hit by the sub prime mortgage crisis is proved false. In this one we find that the camp is full of people with a much different story:

ONTARIO – Explaining how she came to live at a homeless encampment in Ontario, Barbara Wirth, a 27-year-old originally from the East Coast, said “love makes you do stupid things.”

She left her estranged family in Connecticut for California and a boyfriend who abandoned her, Wirth said. Her friends at the city-sanctioned camp near LA/Ontario International Airport, helped her recover and became closer than her family, she said.

Next week, she will have to leave them.

City officials Monday began screening camp residents with an eye toward cutting the population in half and improving safety and sanitation.

The camp opened in July 2007 with about 20 residents, but grew to around 400, said Brent Schultz, director of housing and neighborhood revitalization for Ontario.

Ontario’s effort to help the local homeless attracted people from all over Southern California and as far away as Florida, he said.

“We can’t possibly help everyone. We have 200 to 250 people from other cities here,” Schultz said.

Well that’s odd. I guess Mirchandani is quite the reporter because from reading that story I didn’t know how integral the sub prime crisis was in this situation. It also took Mirchandani’s critical eye to see exactly how deprived these people were. From the BBC article:

Amenities are basic – no mains electricity, no plumbing, no drainage. Portable showers offer a chance to wash, but there is nowhere to prepare food, apart from makeshift tables in the open air.

Dogs and children scratch around in the dusty earth.

Quite the scene setting, like a modern Grapes of Wrath. But look at this quote from a L.A. Times piece on the encampment:

Land that includes tents, toilets and water had been set aside near Ontario International Airport for the homeless. Officials intended to limit the camp and its amenities to local homeless people, but did little to enforce that as the site rapidly expanded, attracting people from as far away as Florida.

The Times report seems to imply that the conditions have deteriorated because of over crowding but that they would otherwise be perfectly acceptable. Mirchandani seems to think the camp is little different from a Sudanese refugee camp. This was a temporary campground set up to get homeless people off the streets and let them stay somewhere safer that’s literally attracting homeless people from all over the country because of its amenities. It is not a makeshift village of former homeowners.

This isn’t a shanty town but a government program to try to help keep the homeless from wandering the streets. The evidence of a failing U.S. economy the BBC is using is a perhaps wrongheaded attempt by local officials to help homeless people who were already living on the streets. But watching the BBC video you’d never know that.

Some suffered metal illness and drug addiction, some are criminals. All have problems and we deserve to have their stories, their real stories, told by the journalists who cover them.