You're a homeless person. Someone gives you $50. How do you spend it?

In My Humble Opinion
81

The problem with the word “homeless” is that it’s such an elastic term and different people think it means different things.

Lots of people think it means living on the streets. But others think it just means “doesn’t have their own place to live”. If you’re sleeping on your buddy’s couch for a month or two, does that make you homeless?

If you’re currently employed, making good money, and a leprechaun poofs you under a bridge, then sure, you’re going to get recover. And so what?

This is why the people that just say “Hey, I’ll get a job, any job, save some money, get a better job, and pretty soon I’ll have enough saved to share an apartment with some guys, then get a better job, and pretty soon I’m back on my feet” rub me the wrong way.

Sure you will. Because there’s nothing stopping you from doing that. You’re not like that guy wrapped up in a blanket passed out in the gutter. Why doesn’t he just follow your clear 3 step plan to get himself out of homelessness?

The thing is, ending up living on the streets isn’t something that just happens to you by accident. That’s why this leprechaun scenario doesn’t make sense. People aren’t homeless because they got dusted by the homelessness fairy. There’s a long line of causation here, and if “just get a job you lazy bum” was the answer then nobody would be homeless.

It’s pretty easy to imagine your house and workplace getting hit by a tornado on the same day you find out your savings were embezzled. Now you’ve got nowhere to live and no job and no savings. You’ve been dusted by the homelessness fairy. Now, are you going to be wrapped up in a blanket passed out in the gutter in a week? No, because even with no job and no home and no savings you still have your family and your friends and your skills and your social capital.

The guy passed out in the gutter may at one time have had those things too, but whatever he used to have he’s used them up. He’s used up his family, he’s used up his friends, he’s used up his social capital, he’s used up his body and he’s used up his brain. And that’s why he’s not going to get up, take a shower, and start working at McDonald’s tomorrow, like you could if you lost your home and job and savings.

And this is why a guy who doesn’t speak English can sneak across the border and walk through the desert with nothing but the clothes on his back and then get a job at a chicken processing plant and work 12 hour days and send hundreds of dollars a month back to his family back home. So why doesn’t the guy in the gutter do the same thing?

If you think this means I’m denying the free will and agency of that guy in the gutter, well, there you go. Yes I am. There are lots and lots of people with the capacity to pull themselves out of the gutter with a little bit of elbow grease. Those people are not passed out in the gutter. You aren’t stepping over them on the way to work in the morning, because they’re at work themselves.

82

Drugs. Probably meth.

And a lighter. You need a lighter to smoke meth.

From there, I’d offer the guy I bought from to sell it for him. And with that, I’d work my way up to being a meth addict with a supplier.

That would land me in prison, eventually. Free meals, room and board. And an entire group of like-minded individuals to network with, for when I was done.

Once out, get a job from the guy who’s uncle sells used cars. Figure out my lay of the dealership, until I can eventually steal the best car and take off for Mexico.

Once in Mexico, I’d join a gang, pay my dues, and eventually become a kingpin.

I hear kingpins live well, so I figure that’s about as far as I need to chart this trek.

I don’t know why everyone else wants to make this all so complicated.

83

Why a lighter? Friends who are into cigars tell me that lighting them with a cedar spill is the only way to go. Maybe you need to reappraise your meth ignition technique.

84

Well, then that’s not the way this should have been framed then. If anything, this is a good exercise in “checking your privilege”, and that makes it worthwhile. In the original scenario, your whole support system didn’t die overnight too, leaving you nothing. I assumed it did in my answer, but that wasn’t specified. If that too is not the case, I’d just go to my parents house, sleep over there, and ask for a loan for whatever I needed.

85

I can’t square this with this:

Unless you’re saying that those with the resources you listed will never lose them. It’s frighteningly easy to do so.

You also don’t mention getting sick, which happens to many temporarily homeless people who do start out with the resources you listed. Since for many in the USA that means little to no health insurance. Sure, there are people’s clinics and emergency rooms, but in the likely chance your illness becomes chronic, that’s no more than keeping the even worse at bay.

Middle-class foreigners are not sneaking across the border. People who have survived at a subsistence level have the stamina to do those things or they don’t make it here at all. Towns who rely on chicken processing plants for tax money and middle-class jobs look the other way when the undocumented cram six people into a one-bedroom apartment. And those hundreds of dollars sent home can move their families into the lower-middle class, giving the worker the hope he can someday rejoin them.

86

I’m one of the lucky ones who got approved for disability before I ran out of savings (yes, a good bit before I was no longer able to work). I was a month away from homelessness when I found a low-paying part-time job that keeps the roof over my head. My disability is chronic depression. Coupled with severe sleep apnea and high blood pressure, a couple of months without that job is all that stands between me and mumbling incoherently in the gutter. Are you taking me in and nursing me back to health and self-sustainability, Lemur?

87

Sure the guy passed out in the gutter may have once had a job and a family. But he’s lost those things. He doesn’t have them anymore, because they got used up. Is he mentally ill because he’s a substance abuser, or is he a substance abuser because he’s mentally ill? Does he alienate people because of his mental illness, or does his alienation cause his mental illness? Is he disabled because he has a bad back, or because he treats his bad back with massive doses of opiates? Or is it all of them in a physical disability-mental illness-substance abuse-social isolation Ouroboros?

If tomorrow I just lost my house and my job and my savings, I’d recover, because I’m mentally and physically and emotionally healthy. Lots of people aren’t. My retired friends are living comfortably off their savings. If they lost their house and their savings they’d be helpless, because they’re old and worn out, and getting a job washing windows is not in the cards for them. So don’t lose your savings, and keep your homeowner’s insurance paid up. Except even then they wouldn’t be on the street, because they’d go live with their siblings or children or whatever. So even though their bodies are used up they still have social capital that would keep them from the streets. But that can get used up too.

But even that guy in the gutter has some sort of safety net. He’s somehow getting food. A few generation ago and he wouldn’t just be living in the gutter, he’d be starving in the gutter. And then he’d die in the gutter.

88

I would have never, in a million years, guessed that a subscription to Cigar Aficionado was de rigueur for your accomplished meth head.

The Dope:you really do learn something new each day.

89

No one has said it was uncomplicated either, or trivial to do. Saying something is not impossible, or that something is better than nothing, or that there are no guarantees but you have to try, is not the same as saying it’s easy. Or uncomplicated or trivial.

Regards,
Shodan

90

That is literally my point. You’re not getting a job squeegeeing windows, because your body and brain can’t take it. You’re employable, but only at a job that can accommodate your issues. I work at a desk job. I could keep my job if I got hit by a car and ended up in a wheelchair. But if I worked cleaning windows, I’d be unemployable.

I have a friend who worked as an engineer. He was smart, driven, energetic, creative, and capable and made good money. Then he got bone cancer. He beat it, but he wasn’t energetic anymore. He needed a slow pace at work. He was accommodated, but he was certainly off the fast track and on to the “serve your time” track. Then his cancer came back, and he couldn’t work period. They burned through all their savings, and ended up living at the guest house of his wife’s sister, but he was recovering. Then his cancer came back even worse, and not only could he not work, he couldn’t walk or take care of himself. Then he died.

So when he was younger, he could easily bounce back from any setback. Then he could slowly and laboriously crawl his way back from setbacks. Then could could barely hold his own. Then he was dragged down by any little setback. And then he couldn’t even keep breathing anymore.

The only reason he didn’t literally die in the gutter is because he had excellent health insurance from his job, which he kept for years after being unable to work. And he had huge reserves of social capital from friends and family that took care of him when he couldn’t take care of himself.

91

That’s complete nonsense. I used a simpler version of what I’ve gone through in real life. I’ve mowed lawns, landscaped, done construction work and similar jobs using the owner’s equipment. It was that or lose everything and starve before I could scrape together a couple of jobs. There was no reliable pay for me so your traveling goal post of impossibilities didn’t work. Telling me I can’t do what I’ve already done is pointless.

It’s weird how many advocates of failure succeed in their expectations.

92

But by your own admission, you weren’t homeless, you were just temporarily jobless. There’s a big difference. Yeah, I’ve been temporarily jobless too, and I did exactly what you did: scrounged by on casual piecework jobs (and temporary debt) until I got a better job. That’s not the sort of challenge actual homeless people are facing.

You, a healthy respectable reliable community member in a stable housing situation, used short-term employment with unskilled-labor contractors and/or word-of-mouth customer base building via a network of acquaintances who are affluent enough to hire unskilled labor, in order to tide you over short-term lack of income. Good for you, and I mean that sincerely. But that’s very different from being a homeless person begging for squeegee work from a strip mall owner.

I notice you still haven’t answered any of the specific questions I asked about the unrealistic nature of that strip-mall window-cleaning scenario: you just changed the subject to nebulous tut-tuttery about alleged “advocates of failure” (of which in fact there aren’t any in this thread).

93

Seriously? Probably cheap whiskey. I wouldn’t drink it all at once but would stretch it out at night/over several nights after long days of scrounging some sort of existence.

94

I put forth my plan. You don’t like it that’s not really relevant to me. I did stuff like this as a kid. I didn’t ask the strip mall owners, I asked managers of stores. It’s not hard to generate $20 at a time doing simple odd jobs. Seriously. the world is starved for small task jobs.

Try throwing your back out while trimming trees and laying on the side of a road in 95 deg heat while horse flies bite you. If you want to survive you do what you have to do. I really don’t see where there’s an option.

95

How about a good real ID? When I became homeless, the DMV didn’t track me down and repossess my driver’s license, which has my last address, which is the same address I put on my job application.

ETA: Since this was from a ways back in the thread, the background: Czarcasm pointed out that WallyWorld or MickeyD’s would ask for an address and phone number. I agreed that the phone was likely a problem, but giving my most recent address shouldn’t cause any problems. He disagreed, obviously.

ETA, again: In theory, Obamaphones would solve the phone number problem, but to get one, you’ve got to satisfy one of several requirements, all of which are a challenge if you have no job and no address. So unless you got one during your descent into poverty but before homelessness, they’re gonna be hard to get.

96

No problem…until mail sent there from your company or bank gets bounced back.

97

I never get snail mail from my employer.

Maybe companies that are worried about weeding out homeless job applicants do it?

But every time I got a packet of papers about whatever, they just handed it to me. Never at any time did I get something mailed.

Although I have had “background checks”. I always figured that meant checking my criminal record and employment history, but I guess it could also mean checking my home address. Just in case I was homeless or something?

Still, getting a working phone is probably going to be a prerequisite for a McDonalds type job.

98

Bank? I still had a functional bank account from before I went homeless that I hadn’t exhausted to the point where the monthly low-balance fees killed it? If so, cool! I get direct deposit for my paycheck, and I can access the money by ATM. And the ATM will tell me my bank balance. That makes life a lot easier.

(I was assuming that when I got my paycheck, I’d have to go to the bank issuing my paycheck, and show ID in order to cash it.)

I really don’t know why you keep harping on the relatively minor problem of the address, when the more serious problem is going to be the lack of a phone number where I can be reached.

99

Well, at least you came up with an good analogy for what keeps the homeless down.

100

Weed and baggies. Then repeat. Worst that can happen is you get robbed or arrested, but you are already homeless.