Also I am curious; I read often about the US (I presume you are from there, apologies if not) that people say what you say 'have to live on the streets if it didn't work out'; don't you have friends and family? Friends and/or family would take us in or provide a house until we get out of the hole; don't you have people like that? I read a lot in the news (but news is not very accurate these days) that for instance 60% of Americans couldn't get $1000 in an emergency; I wonder if this is some group where everyone is completely broke or if it's just sensational press.

When I am out of money I am done. Come take what you want.

Don't spend what you don't have. Ever.

If there is something of yours that I want, it has monetary value, and thus you are not actually out of money until everything that we could possibly want is gone.

Just sayin'.

Rough sleeping is not the only situation that qualifies as homeless. A home is about more than a literal roof over your head.

For one thing, sometimes they bring up good points that legitimately need to be addressed, even if they aren't brought up in a very nice manner. I do my best to focus on replying constructively, though, granted, it can be hard to figure out where to draw that line and sometimes the framing of a remark makes it hard to reply without sounding defensive or something.

For another, if I take a hard policy of "ignoring the haters," then someone not being "nice enough" has committed an unspeakable crime, so to speak. My experience suggests this creates more problems than it solves. It is a form of shunning and I don't really want to do that. It works better to be willing to talk to people who are engaging me about the issues, even if it isn't always sweetness and light.

I continue to try to figure out how to do that in a way that furthers constructive discussion of the issues and without making it overly much about me, but sometimes that isn't obvious to other people. Sometimes people think I am upset and taking it personally when I'm not. I'm just trying to make a larger point and using this detail as an example to further that goal.

I don't know a solution for that. Maybe, someday, I will have everything figured out. But today is not that day. For now, I will continue to muddle forward as best I can, however imperfectly.

Have a great day.

Homeless colloquially implies it's involuntary and they want but can't afford a more secure place to sleep.

I've technically lived homelessly many times, often while employed, commuting from beautiful campgrounds w/showers in off-seasons or nice hotels.

I know rich people who live entirely out of hotels and airbnb's who are technically homeless. There's a literal meaning to homeless and a figurative one, most people are using the latter.

Very basics are still in play, and secure for periods of time. Plans can be made, changed. And the set of options is broader.

Homelessness, coupled with, or rooted in poverty is a much more difficult thing than hopping from hotel to airbnb, etc... is.

Not that I want to marginalize or judge this excellent thread, or anyone sharing.

Not my intent.

Just some clarity to improve relevancy.

A homeless individual is defined in section 330(h)(5)(A) as “an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family), including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility (e.g., shelters) that provides temporary living accommodations, and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing.” A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. [Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C., 254b)]

And even if you weren't you should show more kindness to those that experience hardship - because that's what good people do.

[1] https://www.nhchc.org/faq/official-definition-homelessness/

I was running out of money and couldn't find a job as a developer in Moscow due to language barriers (also, developers don't get paid very well over there) - I tried to apply for jobs in London from Moscow but recruiters were ignoring my resume (probably because I was in Russia and didn't have a UK phone number). So I decided to fly to London and rent various AirBnBs (changing every week or so) while desperately applying for jobs and attending interviews. Thankfully my risky strategy worked out in the end and I managed to get a decent job and found an apartment in London.

By the way, Russia is a particularly bad choice. Russians are not permitted to work in London, it's outside of Europe and there is no immigration agreement. The resume won't survive the first pass from HR.

Remember that you're competing against 300 million Europeans who can move to and work in London overnight. You better have a great profile to be worth the hassle. Forget about low level roles and smaller companies.

Let's ignore for a minute that the parent was not Russian. Having a Russian number is a red flag that the candidate may be abroad and not have the right to work in the UK. It's definitely screened out by HR.

London is full of employed Russians so your information is perhaps outdated.

Also, the prospect of ending up homeless in Russia without speaking the language was much more terrifying than being homeless in London; at least I would know how to beg in English lol. So I had a strong incentive to move even though I knew that my situation would become a race against time.

I never meet anyone from my actual company until 7 months after being hired... So I guess that just seems normal to me...

Isn't that the kind of situation that you can turn up to the Aust consulate and say "Need ticket home!", which they'll generally make happen (for Aust citizens, in actual need).

If you have a high income at least you can get into AirBnBs or hotels, because they don't do credit checks.

I wonder if it would be just ok in a warm place with near zero crime rate.

Police regularly steal and destroy homeless folks' belongings in most major cities. Every time a "tent city" is broken up, it means that everything someone owns that they can't carry on their person is being sent to the dump. Any time a homeless person is arrested, even for small infractions or for warrant violations because they couldn't afford to pay a ticket (I know several homeless folks who've gone to jail because they were ticketed for sleeping on public property and then couldn't pay the ~$300 fine), they probably have to start over when they get out...anything of value they had will be gone.

Homelessness could be much less destructive than it is, but people don't want it to be. They want "tough on crime", they want police to "clean up the streets", etc. Most cities, and their police, are actively out to get you on a daily basis if you're homeless. It just adds to the pile of uncertainty and stress that the very poor endure, and it's part of the cycle that keeps people homeless.

  * food & water
  * access to shower
  * laundry
  * medical care
  * dental care
  * education
  * legal advice / support
  * the list goes on...

Some things that increase safety on the street:

Don't take any disrespect off of anyone. Push back or walk away at the first insult. Otherwise, it escalates.

Try to stay clean and look middle class. Short hair and cleanliness can get you mistaken for a tourist. It helps.

Camping in a wooded area is a good thing. Don't sleep too close to housing. They will call the cops.

Try to not be a trouble-maker yourself. The cops are much less likely to hassle you if you are merely dirt poor and sleeping outside somewhere.

Pushing back is a fast way to get arrested. No one questions a cop tackling a "crazy homeless guy" who was having an altercation with a fine, upstanding citizen.

It's something I do a lot of. What you want is to avoid standing idly by while people slippery slope you into something super bad.

There was an incident at a library in Fresno where someone working for services sent their people to come "help" us and they were horribly disrespectful and I refused to answer their questions and called them on their rudeness. They went and complained to the librarians who basically sent them away.

After that, all library staff were vastly nicer to us.

Push back doesn't mean calling them names. It means calling out their socially unacceptable behavior.

I also sometimes refused to give my name to strangers who wanted to help and were inappropriately grilling me for information. I would point out that if I weren't homeless, they would never in a million years think it was okay to walk up to me and start peppering me with invasive questions.

If there is no reward, some work, you can be on your way.

An important concept here is your agency in interactions, dialog.

You do have control of your end of it, and that is a significant contributor to how it all goes. Put simply, there are a lot of options besides righteous indignation. Use them.

Doing that is not taking shit, more like managing it down and away.

Where power differentials are in play, this all matters. Peers, in that sense, allow for more.

These can be life saving when we are vulnerable and lacking resources, friends. Been there in my past. One time, it involved a gun, pointed right at me, loaded.

At that time, my agency, it's implications were never more clear.

The way I see it, being here to talk about it is a nice problem to have. Priorities. Sometimes they end up being really basic.

In my experience, that basic nature, personal agency --what is proper, what may be needed, what that all means, even just seeing the options possible, like all of them, or more than expected, is hard for people who have not had these kinds of experiences.

I eat low and don't feel hungry (although I don't suffer cold which drains energy fast)

I agree that it can be daunting but I think it's not the quantity it's the regularity of supplies.

This measurement is meaningless without calibrating for how dirty you were to start with. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you were mostly clean and presentable, wearing freshly cleaned clothes daily, only needing to wash off some sweat and skin oils.

A person living rough on the streets will probably be wearing dirty clothes for days or weeks, and constantly be exposed to the elements. The grime accumulates, and unless you've reproduced these conditions in your experiment, your figures are unrealistic.

A bit related too, if you're homeless, cut your hairs. You won't look homeless and you'll need less water :)