tent city

noun

: a collection of many tents set up in an area to provide usually temporary shelter (as for displaced or homeless people)

Tent cities of displaced homeowners have sprung up in the state's Central Valley—even in the capital, Sacramento.—

Matt Woolsey

Anti-sweatshop protesters at FSU pitched a tent city last March to demand that the school join the Workers Rights Consortium …—

Meline Toumani et al.

Examples of tent city in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web New York — Officials in New York are assembling tent cities for those who can't be placed in a shelter system of more than 200 hotels and other facilities that is already housing 60,000 migrants and more than 50,000 homeless residents. —

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News, 22 Aug. 2023 Images of men crammed behind metal barricades in a line that wound around a Manhattan block drew comparisons to migrant surges that have overwhelmed the streets of European countries and chaotic tent cities on the West Coast. —

Nate Schweber, New York Times, 10 Aug. 2023 The worst off are in tent cities, many of them informal, erected on sidewalks or empty blocks, the skeletons of standing buildings casting shadows around them. —

Melanie Stetson Freeman, The Christian Science Monitor, 6 Aug. 2023 Despite shelter capacity reaching its limits, Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president, said the prospect of tent cities popping up throughout New York is unlikely. —

Nicole Hong, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2023 New tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown. —

Mark Thiessen, Anchorage Daily News, 30 July 2023 Read full article Get 6 Months of Unlimited Access for $1 A tent city pops up before each big home game at Cameron Indoor. —

BostonGlobe.com, 24 July 2023 Migrant centers, used to a more transient population, have been saturated beyond capacity, causing temporary tent cities to emerge – even in Mexico City. —

Whitney Eulich, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 May 2023 Thousands of migrants requesting asylum were sent back to Mexico to wait for their appointments or court hearings, resulting in the creation of a large-scale tent city in Matamoros, Mexico. —

Mireya Villarreal, ABC News, 6 May 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tent city.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.