by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

If you live in a major city, you can see them all around you.  I am talking about aging vans, RVs and trailers that are parked on the side of the road for months at a time and that obviously have people living in them.  There is an entire class of people that live in such conditions, and there is an entire class of “businessmen” that prey on such people.  When I was growing up, there were lots of headlines about “slumlords” that were taking advantage of the poor.  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a “slumlord” is “a landlord who receives unusually large profits from substandard, poorly maintained properties”.  Today, we have a different sort of a problem.  “Vanlords” are parking vans, RVs and trailers along the streets of the worst parts of our major cities, and they are renting them out to people that cannot afford regular homes.  Sadly, we live at a time when lots and lots of people cannot afford regular homes because homelessness is absolutely exploding all over the nation.  In some areas there have been efforts to crack down on the “vanlords”, but when things get too hot in one area they just move somewhere else.  As long as there are vast hordes of homeless Americans that are deeply suffering, there will be “vanlords” that are eager to take advantage of them.