It seems like the biggest issue is not that he doesn’t have the skill set to find a job but his (admitted) mental illness. He needs someone to help him through that first. No, I don’t have any answers, but I do know how hard it is to do well at a job if your mind isn’t clear.

Being homeless is so detrimental to mental health that it's impossible to address it without addressing the material conditions that have led to mental illness being unmanageable. In other words, this is the same catch 22 that has countless homeless folks trapped in a cycle of despair.

It doesn't need to be a catch 22. Housing first. Which is, perhaps ironically what the LambdaSchool program in the top-voted comment does. Which is great. There is no reason government funds on addressing homelessness for people who aren't developers can't do the same.

https://endhomelessness.org/resource/housing-first/

I spent nearly 6 years on the street. Practical solutions for helping me solve my actual problems was the best thing for my head space. I wrote some of it down. Most of that can be found in the above blogs of mine.

I'm not at all unfamiliar with mental health issues. This is what I deeply and sincerely believe works.

If you disagree, perhaps you could hook him up with a better solution instead of raining on my parade.

Thank you for providing the resources you did. I am grateful that your homelessness is behind you.

You can disagree without offering a solution. His comment was with the aim of addressing the underlying problem. OP could get a dev job tomorrow and lose it within a week if mental health issues impede his ability to function on a team. Your parade isn't as important as OP's predicament.

These two claims conflict:

You can disagree without offering a solution.

Your parade isn't as important as OP's predicament.

You and the other commenter are offering nothing of help to the OP. Your entire focus is on taking me down for some reason.

Meanwhile, my opening comment offered actual resources to try to help the OP. If you think that addressing his problem is the most important thing here, then you could do the same thing I did and leave comments aimed at being helpful instead of comments aimed at shooting me down.

Hmmm, my reading of Scarface's comment was that it's more just trying to be constructive "He'll need to work out the mental health issues too..." kind of thing, rather than negging your comment.

But, maybe I just need more coffee. :)

I think this is a perfect illustration of what happens.

The (mentally ill) person does something which they intend as a benefit and people react. The (mentally ill) person feels attacked, often where no attack was intended.

This is the problem that needs to be addressed, as has been stated.

The reason (mentally ill) people don't have jobs is because they can't keep them, due to their illness, not that they can't find them.

I'm not trying to attack anyone in this thread by using the term mentally ill.

I suffer from something that has been variously diagnosed as aspergers/bipolar/borderline/crazy/mentally ill and I understand this pattern completely.

I was homeless for 3 months when I lost my job because of problems interacting with other employees. I seem to be too sensitive or maybe I'm imagining slights. Whatever the cause, the result is I have serious problems maintaining any relationships with anyone, even my family members.

I can be highly functioning for months at a time and I did have a 10 year relationship with someone, so I'm not beyond help and I'm not an awful person (though I feel like one despite my best efforts at positive affirmations!) but something seems to build inside me until it erupts in a stream of negativity that most people would rather not have to deal with, and so they don't.

My parents were both alcoholics, so I'm sure that is part of it, but being a slave 8 hours a day is very difficult for me, and always has been.

I'm 54 years old and on the verge of homelessness again after working IBM and Intel, among other industry giants.

There is no safety net in the US for unmarried males without dependents. It is assumed we are immune to struggles and should be able to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.

I applaud the efforts of people like AustenAllred who are attempting to find market solutions to problems like homelessness. Bravo!

I can relate to this as I'm quite sensitive and when I was younger had an incredibly hot fuse, largely related to being socially awkward, getting teased in school, and not knowing how to deal with it. That carried on into the work environment and left me adversarial and feeling isolated.

For me the problematic dynamic came from having things upset me and build up until I would get so angry it would explode outward. I grew up learning to hold it in, so I had no idea I could talk about problems with people. It wasn't so much letting go of the anger as talking about feelings and difficulties with people allowed me to avoid hitting that breaking point and over time, the anger and resentment has faded. Additionally, those conversations led to a level of trust where I feel like I can reach out to the person when something comes up or even strongly supported by them.

Coming from alcoholic parents, you might want to check out Al Anon. I found that and Codependents Anonymous invaluable as places where I was surrounded by people struggling with many of the same social issues I did. Also, it was unique in that it's an environment where talking about these sort of things is encouraged and invited, in public I tend to find that people find these topics uncomfortable and unwelcome.

I don’t know you. To me you’re just a random person on HN. Why would I care about “taking you down” and how did a submission about someone else’s problem become a conversation about you?

I have no idea. If proving me wrong is not your agenda, why keep arguing this? If you really care so little what I do, why not walk away already? Or apologize for making the very first reply to my original comment and being so dismissive in your reply?

There are many possible responses here, but your pattern of response is very consistent with some need to prove me wrong, even if only to prove me wrong in my claim that you have an agenda to prove me wrong.

It's recursive.

And I think I shall stop replying at this point. I think I've made my point and I don't want to keep putting more into this unpleasantness.

Your advice shouldn’t be about “your parade”. It should be about him. He’s had plenty of jobs in development and he admitted that his issues are due to him not being able to handle for instance a dissolved relationship. There will always be strsssors and challenges in life, if he doesn’t have the tools to deal with them,he will stay in that cycle.

Give him credit for admitting he has a mental illness. There are too many people that won’t do that much.

No, it shouldn't be about my parade at all. So why are you making it about my comment? Why aren't you making comments aimed at actually referring him to useful resources instead, which is what my first comment here does?

You said I was raining on “your parade.” I admitted that I had no resources on mental illness. The best I could do was Google it. Getting him another job is just dealing with the symptoms. He had a job, a car,a place to stay etc. and lost it all because of the emotional issues he admitted that he had.

Why would things be any different this time without dealing with the underlying issues? I’m not judging him any more than I would judge someone with cancer. Mental illness is just as real and could benefit from treatment just like any other illness.

You were raining my parade. It's an expression. It doesn't mean I commented in order to make things about me, but you are crapping all over my advice instead of offering help yourself. This is in no way a useful comment, for anyone.

No, you aren't judging him. You are merely condemning him to a no win situation. This is done all too often to both mentally ill people and homeless people.

What would be different is that I have given him a list of remote platforms (plus other supporting information sources). If you are homeless but can access the internet, you can do work on the internet and no one cares when your last shower was.

Holding down a job while homeless is a tall order. Some people do it, but it's hard. Doing remote gig work online is very do-able. I did it for years while working on solving my personal problems.

I was frequently a loon while homeless. Doing remote gigs meant that I just didn't work when I was a loon, and I wasn't fired for taking time off. As long as I completed gigs in a timely fashion when I agreed to them, I got paid and I built my skills and reputation and increased my hourly pay and it helped me eventually get off the street.

I thank you for your list and I find it very helpful for my own personal job search at this moment. You are right to defend yourself against what you perceive as raining on your parade. But I would also caution you to pause before responding to apparent criticism and try to see the situation from their point of view. It is this "empathizing" that is so difficult for people on the autism spectrum, but we have to develop it in order to survive in this world.

I'm not on the autism spectrum.

Best of luck in finding solutions that work for you. :)

Thank you so much for this response. All of those blogs look super interesting and I'm looking through the spreadsheet now. I wanted to write similar material a while back. I still do. I likely will end up doing that and will get in touch when I do, if that's okay!

Yes, it's fine to get in touch.

Doreen, did you perform any manual labour jobs that helped you on your way off the street?

As a cleaner myself I'd suggest him building up a small round anywhere there's retired folks. He'd need a small ladder, a stepladder, squeegee and applicator, bucket, cloths. The problem isn't really the capital costs - just having attention to detail, observing for good working techniques, being patient, polite and once you're seen actively working in the neighbourhood people begin to start offering you all sorts of odd jobs.

I say this because I think some times people from middle class families identify so strongly as 'software person' it detracts from other possibilities when they're stuck for $$$.

I collected recyclables for a time. My son briefly tried panning for gold, but it didn't get results.

Hey Doreen!

Do you mind if I get in touch? I ran into a young homeless man (who has a felony on his record) in a big box parking lot in Central Florida the other day. He has an AC HVAC technician license, and is having a hard time finding someone who will hire him, and I'm looking for suggestions into how best to help him not just get back on his feet, but maximize his available skillset by getting back into an AC HVAC gig (instead of a minimum wage job). Is it just a matter of me cold calling every AC/HVAC company in a 30 mile radius and inquiring if they'd hire someone with his record?

I'm not actually super good at job hunting, so emailing me could be a total waste of time, but you are more than welcome to email me anyway. My email is in my profile.

Edit: There are job hunting resources for felons in specific, such as this:

https://www.70millionjobs.com/

Hi Doreen,

As someone who has careened on the edge of homelessness, due to mental illness, but thankfully not yet fallen into it straight out: thank you for your replies and posts in this thread :)

Kind regards.

A good place to check is the county offices that serve the local district court. There will often be mental health and counseling services for probationers, and those places generally have a billboard full of current jobs that are felon-friendly. If your state has an unemployment office, they will probably have a website with jobs where you can post a resume. The best help you could give that young man would be an obamaphone, a library card, and some help making a resume.