Homeless people

Last night at a club in Boston my elements shielding wool university jacket was stolen. Out into the spitting wee morning I went in search of my car, which I realized I hadn't noted the street it was parked on. I had lots of energy, tho, even though I hadn't eaten much during the day (and week), so I ran down deserted streets which increased the wind shear and pelting of the near freezing drizzle but generated some core heat (bit of a catch 22). A homeless man accosts me. I tell him I'm looking for my car and he asks if he can help. So I agree and ask him what his story is. He says he was manager of the Pottery Barn in Boston but lost his job and his wife, who was ill. I often think that homeless people are degenerate drugnkies or mentally ill. It's always hard for me to imagine how people go from 'normal' to homeless. We soon find my car and I give him five bucks, which he was very grateful for. He really did seem like a stand up guy. It was sad to see his life reduced to helping people find their cars at 3am.

In the town I live there is a young girl (19, 20, 21?) who seems completely normal but apparently has chosen to be homeless over trying to find a job or place to live. I haven't talked to her but I see her all the time sitting on the sidewalk with some kind of cardboard homeless sign and hanging out with her friends who seem less homeless. I really haven't been able to figure out what is going on and don't feel comfortable talking to them. Given her relatively clean appearance my guess is she had only been on the streets days or weeks the first time I saw her. I would be curious to know the circumstances that led to her situation.

What's your experience or impression of homeless people? Have any interesting stories or insight about them?

Let's not do this topic again. The last homeless topic was legendary.

Technician, a link is now mandatory. :P

Grain of Salt said:

Yes, it's strange how many people choose to be homeless. Don't they like being warm and financially solvent? Weirdos.

Try reading some Bukowski and you'll understand their viewpoint better: a homeless person doesn't have mortgages, bills, bureaocracy, deadlines or any "high level" worries to speak of.

Of course there are a whole different host of stressors in that situation, but someone "homeless by choice" (or just a notch above that, like Bukowski was for much of his life) feels that it's a fair tradeoff: you basically trade off stable(?) housing, a stable(?) income afforded by a steady(?) job, a steady (?) social circle etc. with the luxury of pretty much not giving a fuck about all the stressors that are usually associated with the above, and being happy with maybe a place to crash (now and then), something to eat and a bottle. Base level substenance.

You could call it a sort of "least effort" survival strategy. Of course, between the totally "least effort" bum that lives in a cardboard box and is ALWAYS drunk and the "maximum effort" highly efficient, 24/7 workaholic high-ranking executive, there are all sorts of in betweens, with maybe a "sweet spot" somewhere in the low ranks.

People like Bukowski thought have hit that sweet spot at times: as long as he could afford to pay the rent (with the "money" he got from the odd job of the moment) for whatever shithole he was living in a given day, plus some booze and maybe a piece of ass now and then, hey, he was a-right! No mortgage etc. and it was better than jail, after all. If he thought that a situation was good enough for him, he simply didn't try any harder and left it at that. Quite unlike the stereotypical All-American "ambition" and "get up and go" mentalities, sure.

A year ago there was a homeless woman roaming in the streets close to my home. She was only wearing a jacket and old dirty trousers, and had an unusual face. She was walking around, and I used to find her by chance. She rarely asked people for money (well, I saw her one time), and all I can see in her hands some coins. The problem here is, while you are sitting in your home and feeling relaxed, but in the same time bored or sad, she dreams of a house, even if it was a very small house. Once I saw her asking a guy for money (she can't talk), but he refused while sitting in his car.

I was homeless for 4 very cold months of 2008. My girlfriend and I split up and being the prideful dumbass that I am, opted to not take up the offer of staying at her place till I found somewhere of my own. Three days after that split, I was laid off from my job and was absolutely terrified of what my future would hold. I still had my truck, a 2001 Chevy S-10, which isn't exactly ideal living conditions. I did have a recording studio, but the rent was $200 a week and they closed at midnight. The only thing I had to keep me afloat was selling off my recording gear.

It was an interesting experience to say the least. Having absolutely no responsibilities what-so-ever is liberating. I felt like some kind of animal surviving in the wild with my fate really decided by nothing more than my own actions. Would I want to live like that forever? No. But, at the time I can honestly say I was actually kind of happy amidst the looming threat of the tiny life-line I had left giving way. I ended up being taken in by one of my friends in a rat infested flop house that smelled like urine and rotted onions. The carpet next to my bed looked like the underside of a octopus' tentacle with the years of used condoms that had amassed there. From there, homelessness looked more and more appealing.

Eventually, I won a case against my former employer and walked away with half a year's salary and got a place of my own. I'm still feeling the effects of those 4 months, but I think it gave me a tough skin to deal with problems that would probably kill me had I not experienced that.

Edit: As far as homeless people go in my city, there are quite a bit more than the national average. We have an aging mental hospital about a block from my house (Taunton State Hospital). In the 1970s-80s, the state cut their budget and they released a lot of them onto the streets. To this day, many of those that were are still walking around and most of them congregate around where I live due to the state's solution to their budget problem (park a conversion van in the middle of the parking lot of the hospital and dispense medication and hope they show up). It's really ugly. There's a massive tent city by the old silver mills where a lot of them live. They're mostly mentally ill, but harmless. One of them, 'The Gangly Man' has been a local celebrity since I was a kid. I saw him walking a few days ago and his pant-leg was torn, showing a horribly untreated diabetic infection in his calf. It was swollen and purple, thicker than the width of his thigh.

Unfortunately, Taunton State is closing up shop very soon and the same thing is going to happen again as the privately owned home health service is overburdened and understaffed. The state solution this time is to turn Bridgewater Penitentiary into a mental health unit.. so basically, if you're mentally ill, you're options are the street or a jail. It's shameful.

One of my friends tried being homeless for six months a couple years ago. He was in Montreal at the time and he said it was great. There were so many services available to him that he could eat for free five times a day and have hot showers. I didn't find out about this until the middle of it; he would come online in the middle of the night from a McDonald's.

The homeless people I see on the streets here come in all sorts of varieties. Some of them are pretty nice, some of them are thugs, some of them feel entitled, some of them need to be in different kinds of hospitals, etc. I like the honest drunks who ask for beer money; they're funny.

Aliotroph? said:

One of my friends tried being homeless for six months a couple years ago. He was in Montreal at the time and he said it was great. There were so many services available to him that he could eat for free five times a day and have hot showers. I didn't find out about this until the middle of it; he would come online in the middle of the night from a McDonald's.

The homeless people I see on the streets here come in all sorts of varieties. Some of them are pretty nice, some of them are thugs, some of them feel entitled, some of them need to be in different kinds of hospitals, etc. I like the honest drunks who ask for beer money; they're funny.

It's funny, here in Toronto it's quite difficult to find a single meal a day. Finding a bed is relatively easy, but the places are dives.

I always found it funny, up north it's relatively easy to get on social assistance and have a warm place and food. The places you'll be living in are squalor, but it's survivable. One of the best things you can do if your a female is to get knocked-up. Canadian social assistance for single mothers is very good. The more kids you have, the more assistance you can rake in.

Two years ago after I outstayed my welcome at a friend's house and had become myself astray, I befriended a homeless man on the streets of Canterbury in the UK. For the best part of a week we exchanged stories, books and sugar-laden coffee (mainly so that we could tough it out 'til sunrise) until, one day, I improperly left him a copy of Down And Out in Paris and London, walked across the south of England for two weeks, lost my contact lenses and phone outside of Hawkhurst, walked blind to a train station the following morning then flew to Spain to pick olives for 8 months.

I still have one of his books I think - Queen Victoria Demon Hunter. I'm sure I'll find the time to return it one day.

I thought homeless = hobo.

st.alfonzo said:

Two years ago after I outstayed my welcome at a friend's house and had become myself astray, I befriended a homeless man on the streets of Canterbury in the UK. For the best part of a week we exchanged stories, books and sugar-laden coffee (mainly so that we could tough it out 'til sunrise) until, one day, I improperly left him a copy of Down And Out in Paris and London, walked across the south of England for two weeks, lost my contact lenses and phone outside of Hawkhurst, walked blind to a train station the following morning then flew to Spain to pick olives for 8 months.

I still have one of his books I think - Queen Victoria Demon Hunter. I'm sure I'll find the time to return it one day.

That's an interesting story. I simply can't imagine how people end up in those sorts of situations myself, but I've luckily had it pretty easy.

Grain of Salt said:

Yes, it's strange how many people choose to be homeless. Don't they like being warm and financially solvent? Weirdos.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/02/BAG2K42A441.DTL&ao=all

Technician said:

Let's not do this topic again. The last homeless topic was legendary.

Truth. Last time there was a homeless thread, I tried to murder someone through the internet. I'm going to avoid this thread.

Danarchy said:

Truth. Last time there was a homeless thread, I tried to murder someone through the internet. I'm going to avoid this thread.

Why isnt there a link to this thread?

yellowmadness54 said:

Why isnt there a link to this thread?

Here ya go. It's not a huge thread though. A lot of people were getting quite heated anyway, myself included. Mostly because 40oz was being insufferable. I do like where he compares homeless people to hell knights because they are basically the same thing.

Quast said:

Here ya go.

That was an interesting read...to be fair it started on a different context and went to shit for various causes which weren't really limited to homelessness.

There's this guy in the deli nearby my workplace in the Bronx that has a burger king crown. He sits on his "throne" (an eggcrate) in front of the deli at daytime, sporting a natural ice. He's always so proud of himself.

Sorry, I feel partially responsible for that thread going to hell in a hand-basket. My apologies. *resumes regular lurking schedule*

BlackFish said:

There's this guy in the deli nearby my workplace in the Bronx that has a burger king crown. He sits on his "throne" (an eggcrate) in front of the deli at daytime, sporting a natural ice. He's always so proud of himself.

Can you please take a picture?

I don't think anyone that ever disses/looks down upon homeless people have ever been homeless. I knew several homeless kids. They lived from house to house. We used to have one at our house while his parents battled in court for reasons I don't remember. He cried himself to sleep every night.

I can't imagine what it's like for someone that's old. The very idea of a 70-80 year old living on the street hurts to think about. That shouldn't happen in a first-world country at all.

I don't think anyone that ever disses/looks down upon homeless people have ever been homeless.

You'd be surprised. There's a lot of resentment from the homeless people who are genuinely trying hard to get out of that situation and feel the majority of other homeless people aren't, which ends up hurting the reputation of homeless people as a whole and hence, hurting them. Again and still, I'm paraphrasing.

It's a lot easier to have good sentiments about people when you're not competing for food, heat and a place to sleep every single day.

There was this older woman nicknamed "Slipper Lady" (I imagine it was because she was always wearing slippers) who hung out down town. My friend would pass her on his was to/from the comic book store and toss her some change every other week or so. One week, after cashing in his paycheck, he was going around town doing a fair bit of shopping. His last stop was the comic book store, where he passed Slipper Lady, and thinking nothing of it, he gave her the change out of his pocket like usual. He made his way to the comic book shop only to find out he was suddenly out of cash somehow. Then it dawned on him: What he had left was around $40.00 in change that he just gave away to Slipper Lady. She hasn't been seen since that day. Hopefully that forty bucks was exactly what she needed to get her life back on track.

I don't really have any particularly interesting stories. One time I asked a hobo if he wanted to smoke some weed, so we went to the shed he was crashing in at the time, stood around in and talked in the darkness while sparking one up. I didn't feel threatened by the man and I suppose he enjoyed the brief intoxication. I'm not sure if I'd do that now.

My father suggested that the best way to go through Harlem or Bronx unscathed if you are white, is to dress up as a smelly, unshaven, drunken hobo who can barely drag his feet, and stumble about with a bottle of wine hanging loosely from your hand.

Harlem isn't that bad these days. Bill Clinton bought a condo there not long after he left office.

Danarchy said:

Harlem isn't that bad these days.

Yeah, now they call you a "motherfucker" only 9 times from 'hood to 'hood. Used to be 10.

Grain of Salt said:

Either you had information about her from somewhere else that you haven't mentioned, or you've just made a pretty arbitrary assumption.

Well, sure. Always seeing her in rags and/or dirty and/or asking people for money might just mean she was living an alternative lifestyle, that she was conducting some sort of social experiment or that she actually belonged to la creme de la creme de la creme of the intellectual avant-garde doing something we mere mortals cannot comprehend.... but if it quacks like a duck....

Edit: heh, it now occured to me I once had a hippie/no-global type of housemate that literally dressed like a bum (perhaps TOO much), with friends to match, and if I had seen her on the street and didn't know she was actually the daughter of a wealthy engineer who paid her rent and expenses, there was very little to infer that she WASN'T actually a "true" bum.

Sometimes it's really hard to tell hippies/backpackers/alternatives/no-globals apart from a first glance, as they tend to dress and behave the same or even hang around together. The only way to tell them apart from casual observation is to see what they do in the long run: e.g. a backpacker will sooner or later leave, a bum will tend to stick around, a wannabe will sooner or later go to some place or spend more money than a real bum etc.

Check out the documentary "Reversal of Fortune." It's ostensibly just about a homeless man, but after a day of filming him and getting to know where he goes, the producers hide a briefcase with $100k where he'll find it. They generally don't interfere, but they do try to provide some guidance and set up meetings with financial advisors and such.

I won't spoil the movie, but at one point, though, the guy is at the DMV trying to get his driver's license. Through all the normal DMV BS the dude get's pissed off and says "this is why I'm homeless."