Memories from the time you were homeless

Lounge
#1

My mom was abusive. When i.got sz i started to feel sorry for myself. So one day i packed my packbag and left on the street. I remember sitting on the dock and thinking IM FREE. The same night i went to homless shelter. It smelled there. Homeless men freed a space for my food items in the kitchen. I had to take turns cleaning the floor once a week. I was the only one there using the shower. Everyone waited infront of the shower room to see me coming out cause noone ever did that before. But then i got a gov room.

Im thinking about my friend who has sz and he is on the street right now. He was so sick.that he forgot to pay for appartment bills. So he lost the appartment. I dont know if he is able to take his meds now. Cause he got harrassy and i stopped connection with him.

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#2

I remember one night i woke up and had a hellish feeling. I started walking around the shelter …i felt i was in hell…it was dark…and i.looked out of the window and men and women we sleeping on the lawn totally drunk.

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#3

It was so bad for me that there was no way to stay down there. In fact it’s just dumb down there. Ya gotta walk everywhere, scam rides on the trains, ya gotta stink unless you’re making special trips to go strip naked in the showers publicly, and it’s terrible sleeping.

All of those things like walking, hiking, and camping, and even stinking for work or for recreation aren’t so bad…

…when you have all of your bases covered, but when you don’t, and you’re sheered off, down and out, and all on your own, it is a broiling internal inferno to put it lightly. I wound up with PTSD so bad from there I couldn’t even understand people talking and I could barely speak.

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#4

Once I was in a construction site grabbing the recyclables because that’s what I’d do for money, and I did it far more than anyone else that’s ever been out there. That’s an understatement.

Well someone called on me this time. They were worried. Okay, so I went out to see the police straight away no hiding and no running. They did a pules and pupil check, and they put me in the sober room for the night because they thought I was on stimulant drugs. My urine analysis came back pure.

I had PTSD that bad that it fooled the police. No family, no friends, new city, in an scz hell. You don’t forget it when it was you.

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#5

Sorry you had it hard Kerli.

I think I’m going to be on the streets one day.

I wondered if there is insurance against being homeless… probably not, but there should be.

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#6

Why would you be on the streets if there are nursinghomes?

I think if time comes when im on the street i will valunteerly go to live in a nursinghome.

I was 26 when i was on the street. And when someone said nursinghome…i started to cry. But now at 35 i would have no problem sleeping all day long and having served breakfast lunch and dinner.

#7

I spent several weeks living in a house with no power…alone in the winter… i ran out of fire wood about a week in… i started burning anything that would fit in the heater… i lost my family… i lost my car… i lost my mind… luckily my buddy let me stay with him to recover… we played alot of skyrim and i helped him on the farm he worked at… sometimes you just have to ask for help…

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#8

Wasn’t homeless for long st all. But just a few nights in Los Angeles. I decided the safest place would be where security cameras were so I would sit outside the hospital on a bench at night.

Fortunately the weather isn’t that bad out there.

In the morning I would go in and try to freshen up a bit in the bathroom. County hospitals are packed full of people. It wasn’t hard to disguise. I didn’t look too homeless.

There were plenty of homeless people around there. Ones that were homeless years. I still remember their faces. And they are in my thoughts almost all days.

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#9

I was staying in a trailer with a hole in the wall, and a blanket racked up over the hole. There was no running water. I was sleeping on the floor and scorpions crawled over me all night. I shared this place with two other people.

We split the cost of a gym membership so we could use the showers. We had a garden for all of our food. I ate cantaloupe, sweet peppers, and squash for every meal.

I would cry on the phone to my mom and ask to come home, but she wouldn’t let me. Now, she says I was never homeless and I could have come home whenever I wanted to.

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#10

I’m in the UK and I think you need to be above a certain age to get into a nursing home, or be physically incapable of looking after yourself.

I’m not sure, but there are plenty of homeless people in my country, and I assume it’s because there is nowhere else to go.

#11

In life there is a choice as to whether one wants to work, be social, have a family, have insurance, home, car, devices, amenities and so on. There’s a choice as to whether someone wants to study the occupation of buying and selling things for a business venture.

What most people fail to realize simply because they are so disassociated with anyone that is homeless, and anyone that was homeless but is not now never talks about it with them because of the stigma is that it’s just another kind of living.

It’s like asking why would people for thousands of years do anything more than what they are doing on the streets? Why? Why would people travel to the middle of nowhere just to start a fire and live homelessly, but then call it camping or “survivalism.”

Homelessness is a rugged person’s journey. People in the world have lived in tents and slept on the ground or similar for thousands of years, and I find it hard to believe that they will never stop.

No rule says you must have a home, and if you were to go in the streets, and enforce that all homeless people must live indoors, it will never work. This is the least of what they want. I’ve seen the documentaries about it. They hate those laws. They are just rugged people sleeping outdoors on their individual journeys, and they have their own social climate and culture there as well.

I’m not saying that that is 100% of the cases, but I am saying that is the bulk majority.

I was homeless for a stint, but I busted arse to make it so I was no more. I lived in an urban area where the homeless were a very common feature I assume no differently than something like in India or where the Gypsies are common. I’ve talked with many of them about as much as I could.

When you are living right in the face of every opportunity that human kind ever had, and you refuse even the most basic ones, it’s a choice and a lifestyle. There are so many stepping stones and cordoned stair cases for people to gain their footing from homelessness to indoors living with a job, education, health etc that it is astounding. I know. I walked that road, and I climbed those stairs. It was a lifestyle choice. Becoming scz however was something a little different which led me to trying homelessness. I had no fear of becoming homeless, and I was interested in the rugged challenge myself now that I recollect my individual experience.

#12

Being homeless is horrible.
There is nothing romantic about it.

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#13

I think I’ve seen a statistic before that the majority of the homeless are people with a mental illness. It may be that they’re incapable of working and not a choice. Maybe there are some people who prefer that way of life, but I doubt the majority do, especially during freezing winters.

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#14

The majority of homeless people did not choose to become homeless. It is very easy to end up homeless due to a string of bad luck. If people liked being homeless, it wouldn’t be considered a global crisis. I can guarantee I spent the entirety of my homelessness wishing desperately I had a place to live.

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#15

You would prefer to have a million dollars and be eating something entirely different than what you have to eat today, but until you change your life around, and go make it happen some day in your life, you just deal with what you have means for. It’s no different with homes.

Have you ever heard of Thomas Thoreau? How about Lewis & Clark? Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone? Billy the Kid & Jesse James? All people that chose to sleep outdoors away from everyone.

I will give you this though. The higher the prices of real estate, the more homeless per capita. Where you can get a home for pebbles, you’d come around to getting one. Where you must work endlessly day in and out none stop to get one, you may come around to relieving yourself of one. True story. They aren’t mandatory neither religiously nor legally not even scientifically.

I tend to see the homeless around here sleep outdoors all arm months, and save up their dole checks, and then get a rent room in the winters at a flop house.

As long as there is food and supplies for a culture to survive, that culture’s population will multiply. The mathematics and economics of this “homeless dilemma” or what I and most homeless people would call it without you knowing any better; “homelessness parody” for all of the people dumping all of the freebies out there for them to live on on their terms while the same people cannot live on their terms while they make and earn the things they give away to them (that is how they see you)…the mathematics and economics of this niche of civilization are simply that it is economically feasible to continue to grow it.

It’s even economically beneficial for politics for this to continue to grow. Central banks too who make tons of money off of the interest on money lent to the governments throwing money around of course while they pocket a large portion of these funds themselves…

What I know about the phenomenon of civilization is this. There will always be as many homeless characters and dole check recipients living indoors on tax payer money as the market will support. More excess funds means more dole check recipients, welfare cases, and homelessness with “direct to you” life lines.

That’s the hard fact just like the fact that as long as there are people that will buy stolen things from crooks at the cheaper rates than what it costs in stores, there will always be crooks brokering stolen goods to stolen goods buyers.

In China years ago the commies said they need to kill all of the sparrows because they hurt the crops. The country of China killed the majority of sparrows, and as a result the insects destroyed the crops because the sparrows no longer were there doing their duty. The commies knew this ahead of time, and they intentionally depopulated the humans there with this and many other tactics of direct interference with the human and environmental ecosystems.

There are many examples of supply of resources causing big shifts in populations in nature not just the sparrows and insects. The rabbit population in Australia and the rodent one in China at one time were the same way.

What I’m saying is that this is more complex than you’ll lend mind to, and it’s okay if you don’t think into this all that much. It’s harmless.

#16

Actuay, people who are homeless have much shorter lifespans, get sick at higher rates, and develop more chronic conditions than the general population. It is proven that leaving m a homeless individual on the street costs more to taxpayers than just giving them a home. This is because homeless people tend to be uninsured, and then go to the ER for treatment. They never fully recover from their condition, and end up right back in the hospital. Somebody has to pay those medical expenses.

When people are given homes, and set up with Medicaid, they tend to seek preventative care, follow through with their treatments, and stay healthier. They are much less likely to die.

I honestly don’t care if it’s seen as a free handout. I believe the homeless should be given homes.

And the writers/fictional characters you listed were trained in how to survive outdoors. They grew up knowing how to hunt and forage, and lived in an area where that was possible. Most homeless folks haven’t been taught how to survive in the wilderness. And most of them don’t live in the wilderness. Your examples are totally irrelevant to the homeless population today. If you enjoyed being homeless, congratulations. Most people do not.

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#17

There was just an article regarding this: that providing housing to ill homeless (mentally ill or physically ill) was less than the cost of/reduced expenses to government in the form of emergency medical treatment etc. But that it was housing first, treatment later.

We have a serious problem in the metropolitan US. There’s a major hepatitis outbreak, homeless are victims of violent crime, it’s not like extended urban camping/couch surfing for most.

#18

So do smokers, alcoholics, junk food eaters, and drug abusers, and people who contradict admins. :sweat_smile:

Fictional? They are historical figures. The archives are here online. I can retrieve, your honor. :expressionless:

#19

I have been homeless lots of times. Almost died each time.

#20

What if no one has to work? Is that possible? Or should people learn to survive independently? What do you say? :slight_smile:

The problem is that a mere rental room in a house with other people you don’t know in a Western Metro costs as much a ranch with a three story home in places like Mexico. What is the homeless rate in Mexico? Same? Less?

Where is the line drawn between victim hood homelessness and free range independent adventurous living where people are just living wherever the road takes them. It is good for moral to hand it all out to them or anyone actually, but why should I work then? Why should I tell and compel people to think and be self sufficient? Is it necessary any more? Maybe it is not depending on where you live? :thinking: What say you?