What’s it like?
Closest I ever came was when I was working several hundred miles from home and couldn’t pay my rent because my stupid employer was slow in issuing my first paycheck. Landlady demanded payment up front - “This ain’t a goddamn motel”. I finally paid it using a cash advance on a credit card, and my paycheck arrived shortly thereafter. But it was kinda dicey there for a few days.
I was homeless for three months when my mother decided that she needed to inflict ‘tough love’ on me. She thought it would stop me from being gay.
I slept in parks, under bushes, and on rare occasions and bad nights, at friends houses. I was seventeen at the time, and fresh out of high school, so my friends were all living with their parents, which made it hard to have me over on a regular basis.
Lost my virginity during the three months, so she only got to find out that I was REALLY gay, and have resented her from the moment she threw me out. That summer SUCKED.
It’s pretty damn crappy.
I lived on the streets of Seattle for about a year and a half. I started the day getting kicked out of the shelter(when I was lucky enough to get in) at 6am sharp. Breakfast usually consisted of two-day-old bread from the local bakery. Two days a week I sold plasma, which gave me enough money to eat a McMeal and spend the whole afternoon in a 5th rate moviehouse. At 5pm the shelter opened back up, so people started standing in line at about 3pm.
It was a nasty circle, and damn near impossible to get out of. It does no good to apply for work when you haven’t an address or phone number. The shelter allowed you to use their number as a source, but all of the local businesses knew that number, and blacklisted anyone who put it on their application form. After a few months on livng on bread, your energy level is about shot, so after awhile you just quit caring about anything.
Yes and no. In my starving college student days, I had no place of my own and lived with friends… now in my “I’ve moved from Rhode Island to the most expensive place to live in the US days”, I’m doing the same. Nowhere near as awful as most other homeless experiences I’m sure. I’m damn lucky I have good friends.
Czarcasm, I cannot imagine what it is like. How do you get out of the hole?
:: deb enters and raises hand ::
I was going to start this exact thread and another with the question about what SDMB members think about that measure in Cali to require homeless children to go to a separate school.
My ex-husband was not good at making money. He was very smart book wise but couldn’t make a nickle. And at that time I was not the forceful person I am now, this may have been my training grounds for how to speek up and say “what do you think you are doing? Just stop!” So we ended up living in a camper for about 6 months when he decided we could not afford the apartment rent. I learned that you can buy showers for 7 days at the local KOA campground. We would shower every three days so that they lasted. I was the one who applied for the food stamps and was the only one who used them since hubby was too proud. He owned his own business but I could not get him to give it up and get a job and he was still spending alot of money on that. Ironic that when I finally left him, he got a job making decent $$.
I don’t know if you consider living in a back room of a business homeless, but that was a place with no shower, no real cooking facilities and paint peeling from the walls. We did that for about a year. I remember running out of gas so many times cause I never had cash on me and no credit card.
I finally ended up taking two jobs and we moved into a house. Still broke and not a good scene, but not homeless.
I got lucky, sailor. The Seattle Center used to hold Science Fiction Festivals once a year, and I met up with a group of nutcases who kidnapped me to an SCA meet, got me drunk on home-made mead, dressed me in period garb, and included me in their “Let’s really blow their minds at tonights showing of 'Rocky Horror Picture Show!” gettogether. I must have made a decent impression, because 24 hours later I had a job as live-in housekeeper(room, board, and $50 a week) for a wonderful woman named Marla. With a real permanent address, I was able to get minimum wage jobs, save up, and get back on my feet.
::raises hand also::
Homeless in the most complete sense during fall of 1984. I had emigrated to New York City and failed to land a job, an unfurnished room (for which I initially had the money in traveler’s checks), had my backpack with most of my possessions stolen from me, and only managed to link up with the contact people I’d figured on being able to turn to after I had been on the streets for several days and lost my stuff.
Spent my days scouting around for a place to sleep at nights plus seeking food. I’m not an effective beggar and I’m unable to sleep in a situation where I’m out in the open in a public place. Churches were good (by virtue of having lots of windows and doors and often being older buildings, therefore easy to slip into when deserted). Once I hovered in the offices of a small independent drug rehab org and managed to be in the bathroom and forgotten when they closed up, and got to sleep on their rather nice couch. More often than not, though, sleep took place at the top level of 4, 5, or 6-floor walk-ups, on the landing below the locked opening to the rooftop.
Lots of small eating places existed where paying customers would leave their plates on the table when they left, and often would leave behind morsels worth snarfing up. Some chain establishments had policies dictating that they had to throw away take-out orders not picked up within a certain interval, or a certain number of hours after initial preparation. Some of them deliberately destroyed what they threw away (dumping coffee grounds or other icky stuff on it) but others tossed it in inside the box the customers would have received it in, and this was often recoverable.
Eventually I got sick (throat infection) and the free clinic doctor I found pointed me towards the NYC shelter system for homeless people, which was quite a zoo with noisy yelling zookeepers, but it was a cot for the night and food the next morning, and the yelling was impersonal because they didn’t know us as individuals. (Fort Washington Shelter for Homeless Men, 168 Street Manhattan, 1984). That ended the “most complete sense” of being homeless, but I was in Ft. Washington for a couple months before negotiating placement in a permanent-bed shelter for the “homeless mentally ill”, which in turn became reorganized as the “Residential Care Center for Adults”, where I lived for over a year, commuting to college via bus (for which they grudgingly supplied tokens) and dealing with their condescending overly-familiar and insulting ways of providing “help”.
Moved into the dorms Fall 1996 and was only homeless subsequently in the summer between terms when the dorms were closed.
There but for the grace of God, go I…
Anyone who has pulled himself out of such a situation has my utmost respect.
:eek:
To those who lived thru that horrible experience…
Were you begging for money while you were homeless? What is better, donating to charity or directly to the homeless?
Been there, and you really don’t want to know what it’s like to be homeless. Eating garbage, hoping the cops don’t find you and roust you out of your place, finding anywhere that’s safe to sleep… basically doing whatever it takes to ensure your own survival. Donations don’t help, advocating for the disenfranchised/poor polically does though (i.e., living wage, housing, family planning) I’m just glad not to have done it with small children.
But, will Bush include “Rocky Horror” in his faith based welfare refore programs?
We spent a summer tent camping lakeside when my younger brother and I were in grade school. We thought we had the coolest Mom because our “vacation” lasted all summer. A couple of years later we where in nearly the same situation. We had a place we could go at night to shower and sleep, but had to spend after school and through until the late evening hours in the park. One evening while we were sitting at a picnic table, my younger brother made a comment about the lake time and I realized that we’d been there because we had no other option. I didn’t label the experiences as “homeless” until I was an adult. After all, I WAS home, I was with my mother and brothers.
So very grateful for her home,
Abby
In late 98/early 99 I was homeless for three months. I had lost my job as a web designer during the Crush when hundreds of web design companies opened up. Money went quickly, and I couldn’t get another job. I lived in my apartment which in reality wasn’t mine since the apartment complex took all my stuff. I just happened to keep the window open so I could sleep there at night.
One night they found the window open and I couldnt get into the apartment to sleep. I walked around the complex looking for somewhere to sleep, and finally ended up sleeping under the stairs in the pool pump room where it was marginally warm.
During this time I ate mainly rice that I would cook in various peoples kitchens that would allow it. Thanksgiving was a god send because I could get food at shelters and my parents house.
I met my future wife during this period. She saw me in this state and let me use her address so I could get a job in a law firm as a legal secretary/receptionist. Thankfully she pulled me out of it, and we were married just over a year later.
Wow…
I’ve never lived on the streets, quite. But I spent several months in 1985 alternately living in a van & nasty motels, until I saved enough money for a deposit on an apartment. I had just lost everything I owned in California in an arson fire (including my dog :(), and drove to Colorado with about $1000 in my pocket. Why Colorado? Tossed a coin…it was Colorado or Alaska & tails won.
Great story, Czarcasm!
If you want a taste of the homelessness “experience” some time, eat nothing but day-old bread for a week, never change your clothes or take a shower, and sleep on your back porch in the middle of February.
As far as whether or not you should give money to someone who asks for it-Try to imagine the malnutrition, dispair, fear, distrust and shame felt by someone who has to ask someone for money. The “Hand Up, Not A Hand Out!” campaign did a lot for people who needed an excuse to keep their pocket change, btw, but it didn’t seem to incrase the amount of money donated to charities.
What a surprise. 
It was bad enough while I was still clinging to my apartment in Georgia; The only food I had moeny to afford was potatoes and leftover bread that the bakery delivery drive next door would give me.
When I lived in the car for a few months, that was worse. Potatoes became a luxury. Most nights, I’d have dog food. I could buy a 50 lb bag of Gravy Train for next to nothing, so that became my staple.
The most embarassed I’ve ever been was when I was getting weak, and absolutely driven by hunger to go to a friend’s house and ask him if I could have a can of soup.
I’ll never be that way again.
I never lived on the street at anytime, but was so close a few times. Had I not been able to return to my parent’s house a couple times, I would have been on the street. I find it hard not to hoard food even today. The worst time was asking a coworker to buy me three sandwiches for a buck. I had already gone over two days not eating, and didn’t get paid for another three days. I had already sucked empty all the ketchup packages. This is the same time period to which I attribute my great hate for hot dogs. One pack a week, a loaf of bread, and a jar of jelly. Add in one gallon of milk, if I could, and a couple cans of soup.
People can’t understand why I’ll help them out, when times get bad. I’ve been there and lived it. They can’t understand why I pay a hundred on a bill, that’s about to be the last straw for them. I just tell them that it’s a gift, and as far as I’m concerned, they don’t owe me the money. Some insist on paying me back months later, other’s don’t. I don’t do something big like that to often, as I don’t have the means, but being able to keep someone from going over the edge is worth it. The air gets highly charged with emotion, and it’s hard for either of us not to become extremely emotional. You know what you did was right, and they can sleep for a bit that night.
Been there, done that, read the book, saw the movie, bought the t-shirt, wore it out and bought another one in time for the television serial.
Summer of 1975. Two fabulous dogs, an Italian racing bicycle and me, without a frickin’ cent. No job skills coming out of high school. Parents who didn’t give a d@mn about minor things like a driver’s license, college or career path. Sleeping on couches and under a friend’s porch.
[Scarlett]
I’ll never be homeless again.
[/Scarlett]
I slowly grabbed my bootstraps and tugged awfully hard. Rented a room in a house, had a wonderful woman move in who became my first live-together lover. Inspired by her love, I stopped my “free-lance” work and sought out a real job doing technical assembly. Got a temporary one from a friend, and used his referral to jump-start my high tech career.
Left everything behind and moved to Silicon Valley, went through a lot of the economic downturns and barely survived save for the kindness of my landlord (whom I have repaid in spades). I even worked at a homeless shelter to begin my brief career as a chef. That gave me all the impetus I needed to vow to never be homeless again. The sneering and condescending attitude shown by so many of the homeless “advocates”, right up to the top of their administration (I was sexually harassed in front of the top woman administrator in her own office without her making a noise about it), was genuinely disgusting.
To this day, when I am able to tell that someone is in a bad way and doing something to get out of their situation, I will give them some bucks. I always try to donate to street musicians (I have a soft spot for anyone who can play music) and others that at least have some sort of schtick. Many, many of the homeless I have seen are far too busy trying to put one over on people and scam them to actually want to get out of their rut. I have lost almost every iota of sympathy for those types. Seeing a homeless child still rips my heart out, which is why I used to volunteer to cook at the family homeless shelter.
Best of all is the happy ending to all of this that seems to be developing. Tape at eleven.