Tents. They protect many homeless people from the elements. But they have another, far less benevolent role. Tents and the new meth seem made for each other. With a tent, the user could retreat not just mentally from the world but physically. Tents often became pods of exploitation where people used dope, sold dope, or performed acts that allowed them to procure it. In Los Angeles, the city’s unwillingness, or inability under judicial rulings, to remove the tents has allowed them to stay for weeks, sometimes months. Encampments resembled Third World shantytowns. The tents went from gifts of
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