ABSTRACT
The various homeless camps and people in East Orange County are connected by a "grapevine" through which pertinent information travels quickly—information about food availability, what's happening at the day labor outlet, law and code enforcement activities, and the presence of new people in the woods. The daily lives of woods people are consumed by the struggle to find food, income, and a measure of physical security. Day labor, principally out of the large day labor pool near the homeless camps on Colonial, is the least popular source of income because of the long hours and comparably low hourly wages. Many participants also recounted numerous previous negative experiences at the Coalition for the Homeless, the Union Rescue Mission, and the Salvation Army as additional reasons to avoid downtown. Some described city police as "vicious" in comparison to county law enforcement and cited this as a reason they avoided going downtown if at all possible.
