According to the article, Twigg has only been homeless for five years, and she is currently 56 years old. Twigg wasn't really a "free spirit"- She held down jobs, had kids, and made a normal life for herself up until her 50's.

So I feel that this story is instead about an older tech worker who has aged out of the workforce. As a 40-something developer who has already experienced age discrimination as well as the realization that many of my skills are becoming outdated, I feel for her. Without a nest-egg, many of us may very well be in her situation in our 50's.

>“I felt at one time that I couldn’t accept housing because there were all these other people who need it”

>“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,” Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

No, the article is a bit confusing on this point. Read through the whole thing, though: Twigg was homeless as a kid, before she was ever a top tier cyclist. Her mother kicked her out of the house, for some reason the article doesn't explain. This most recent stretch of homelessness has only been five years though.

I wonder if truly free living is possible - looks like someone is always paying some price/ doing unfree things to make it happen.

Eventually a family member got annoyed though and bought me a new sim. :/

But you're right; most everywhere else is either quasi-legal, or require money to access.

I'm very sensitive to people on the edge. Mstly because I feel very much part of this edge. Reading Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London" made me rethink homelessness. There is a lot of stigma around it and most people I know think this would never happen to them. All it takes is a couple of falls in their life, or events that are hard enough to upset what is a fragile balance. I think anyone (no matter the intelligence) could be sitting in the street without a roof, it has nothing to do with education, friends, or their intelligence, once life has just kicked them hard or long enough.

Where I live right now (a former war zone full of people with PTSD from the Yugoslav war horrors) there are many homeless and even more close to the edge of it. Thankfully we have the dream of a EU membership making everything better for the people here, but which unfortunately does nothing for this places (other than create a massive brain drain that makes the situation even more precarious for those off-grid or those not wanting to be part of the system).

Someone that constantly (or most of the time) depends on other people's work to sustain themselves and to have a place to stay, aren't free spirits, they are just piggybacking on the effort of people that live according to society's norms.