Tent Pitching

More than six months since that massive earthquake and Haitians are still living in massive tent cities, and now hurricane season is upon us.

Vladimir Saint-Louis is glad to be back in business months after January's devastating earthquake in Haiti shut down his large athletic complex in the heart of Port-au-Prince.

Although he was unharmed, his father nearly lost his life when cement blocks fell on his car, injuring and trapping him for hours.

On this particular afternoon six months after the quake, customers worked out at Saint-Louis' main gym, some hitting the weights, others at the Ping-Pong table, a welcome break from all that still plagues Haiti.

Still, just footsteps away, stands a tent city erected by 7,000 homeless Haitians on the complex.
"This is a 400-meter track, and this is my soccer field; it's my land; it's part of the same property," Saint-Louis told CNN.

He said that on the night after the quake, desperate Haitians climbed over collapsed walls and found refuge on his land. At first, it was understandable, he said. But six months later, it's clear he has become frustrated.

"All the government officials we sent letters to, all the letters went unanswered," Saint-Louis said.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the government is working on a resettlement plan, not only to solve land disputes, but also to provide housing for all displaced. But he says the government's hands are tied until billions of pledged funds for Haiti come through.

And thanks to Austerity Hysteria, everyone else has decided that Haiti is no longer a priority issue.  Sorry guys, we can't even get together the billions needed to keep Americans out of tent cities, much less worry about Haitians.  Parts of Hawaii are looking like parts of Port-au-Prince, for instance.

The strip of land is bounded by Waipahu High School on one side and the calming waters of Pearl Harbor's Middle Loch on the other, where the Navy's mothball fleet sits idle. It's the most visible portion of an enormous homeless encampment that stretches five miles over approximately 50 acres of city, Navy and state land that serpentines around Waipio Point Access Road, the Ted Makalena Golf Course and the city's Waipio Soccer Complex and back down to Pearl City in the opposite direction, said Beth Chapman, who uncharacteristically lost a suspect in the swampy brush last year after five straight days of searching the area with her husband, Duane "Dog" Chapman, and their bounty hunting family.

But the deficit's more important.  After all, the homeless in their Hoovervilles are invisible anyway, and it's not like they count as Real Americans.  Haitians in tent cities count even less.