Foreclosures and Housing Crisis Cause 'Tent City' -- Well, Not Really

Here is a textbook example of [mainstream] media bias: Reuters' Dana Ford laments the growth of a "tent city" in Ontario, CA, east of Los Angeles, blaming it on housing foreclosures and "wider economic downturn":

Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

There's just one problem with Reuter's thesis: No one in the tent city is a victim of any housing foreclosure ... as they admit themselves (but not until the fifth paragraph):

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

Let's see -- now we have Reuters using "all" of the tent city residents as "proof" that, even though no current residents are there because of foreclosure, well, things are just bad! And, even though no current residents are in tent city because of foreclosure, well, it's only just matter of time!

No need to let one inconvenient fact ruin a nice hyperbolic article that invokes the Great Depression after all, right?

(Hat tip to NB readers T. Wilder and Steven Parker.)