how bad was weedpatch?

REally bad!

How bad? It was basically a place where unemployed migrant workers languished starving and hopeless.

I'm really sorry, I got my camps mixed up. It is actually a decent camp. The Joads come across the Weedpatch camp, a decent, government-sponsored facility where migrants govern themselves. There are jobs, showers, food and even dances.

The weedpatch camp is deceptive. Superficially, there was this "home" this inticing, welcoming place which welcomed a family into its midst. For the first time these emigres felt "human". The other inhabitants aligned with them and they felt the safety of being united with those who were going through the same mental and physical journey. However, beneath this facade of parties and friendly faces was an undercurrent of instability. Weedpatch camp is limbo. There is a taste of all the things they've never had and could only have dreamed of, existing in such a way that they could fantasize about owning it; but, in reality their position was tentative. They were threatened externally from the enraged, bigotted, native, wealthy Californians and work being inaccessible; and, internally by their own awarenes of injustice, the inability to provide and live in the way they had previously and the growing number of desperate insider willing to self-sabatage for a small amount of money and food. The real "problem" with the Weedpatch is the open display of the power of greed and how it motivates the landowners to work to deny and deprive their fellow man of the most basics of human necessities.