Spring Street Bridge Research Paper

By the side of the Elk River in Charleston West Virginia lies a community within a community. This is not your ordinary idea topic when you come to think of a community beside a river. It’s not a community of birds, or snakes, but of people. "We're not animals," said Ronald McKeever. "We are just people that are down on our luck." These people have made tents their homes, and tarps the roof over their head and none of have a permanent home. In the summer the river bank next to Spring Street Bridge was home to about twenty five homeless people (Molenda). Only between six and eight people reside there now (Molenda). Some of those people are just like one time comers, just passing through Charleston, but out of the four remaining from the summer, two are on their way to having apartments (Molenda). “Basically, the other people that have been staying down there really just haven’t wanted assistance with housing,” Strickland verbalized. One resident expressed to Strickland he has a place to depart if he so chooses and needs it. Workers haven’t been able to

Most companies come with baggage and some sort of life they need to get away from, and escape the reality of the world they come from. A teenage girl, age seventeen, came to reside at Tent City for the second time, “I came back, because things got messed up again,” she stated (Molenda). The past has psychiatric effects on the body and mind that people may not realize. What seems outrageous to the people not of Tent City seems perfectly normal and acceptable to the community on the hillside. It is their own little world down there along the river, they see the world different then the people above them in all aspects. "Just another day. Welcome to hell," said Charles Plants, who's lived at Tent City for nearly a year (Autler). "I've seen a lot of tragedy in my life," Plants exclaimed. "I haven't seen so much good