I recently sold everything I owned and started living out of my converted dodge caravan while I was prototyping what I wanted to build next. With an eye on my burn rate, I lived as cheaply as possible. I can tell you without a doubt that there is no natural system in place for homeless to get out of that rut, and it looks and feels dehumanizing.
I wasn't completely broke but I couldn't keep affording rent as expensive as it was. I was able to shower at a gym, and worked out of Tech Shop on what I was trying to build. But it's hard -- like super hard to just be homeless. The social stigma associated with the word alone is hard for people to get beyond. I would often hear, "But you don't seem like the type to be homeless" and then they would slowly just distance themselves from talking to me. Super weird.
I have been harassed by cops, you feel extremely transient and embarrassed just to be alive at times. Sleeping in a van sucks too. Street noises keep you up, cramped for space, etc. On the up side there is a contingent of tech people that are doing the same thing, so I had the pleasure of meeting some others like myself.
I've never taken up the opportunity of food, shelter, or clothing offered by the city, because frankly I'm doing this on my own accord, so I can't speak to how that part of the system helps people get back on their feet.
After this entire experience my heart breaks every time I see a fellow human having to resort to sleeping in the cold, wet, outdoors with no shelter and nothing but some cardboard and discarded newspapers to cover up with. I often wonder how close I could have come to being completely broken by this decision, and what coincidences led someone down this path. In the end it has helped me understand that we must all care more for one another, no matter what.
I'm not trying to be rude when asking this but why would you choose to become homeless to prototype a business/product?? I've seen this come up several times on HN over the last few years and every time it blows my mind, especially when the person then goes on to talk about how difficult life is.
I'm guessing you're in tech as you're on HN - why not keep your day job and work on your business from 7pm-3am every night. Save some money while you do this and then leave your job when you can afford to?
It seems like a lot of tech folks have adopted the whole starving artist approach to starting a business when it is entirely unnecessary. I mean, even if you don't want to be an employee and want to focus on your product, move somewhere inexpensive, work freelance a few hours a day to support yourself. It just seems insane to me that anyone in this industry would choose to be homeless when they really don't have to.
If a lot of people are making this choice voluntarily I'd say there's a major problem in the industry and how people view the path to a successful business.
Many people believe in the mistaken "no pain, no gain" philosophy. People seem to believe that somehow the universe will recognize their sacrifice and reward them accordingly. John Oliver did an excellent piece on a new crop of so-called "seed faith" televangelists that have popped up to fleece poor people that believe in this philosophy [1].
The reality, of course, is the opposite. The most successful people I have known have all started their businesses while their lives were relatively stable. That doesn't mean they started off rich, but it does mean they weren't spending all of their time trying to figure out where they were going to sleep or where their next meal was coming from. These days, it is wholly unnecessary to quit your job or move to SV to make a startup happen, and doing so is counterproductive in almost all cases.
> it does mean they weren't spending all of their time trying to figure out where they were going to sleep or where their next meal was coming from.
This is also a crucial concept in understanding why the poor stay poor: they simply can't afford to spend time and resources on the long term if they need to worry about meeting basic needs on a daily basis.
I wholly agree with this, often it takes some sacrifice; while others play, you're working or living frugally to fund your dreams but this isn't the same as forgoing basic amenities. Also, I don't know the backstory but anyone looking to do this by choice may want to consider the ramifications of the outside looking in if you're looking for investment. To most looking to invest, I'd imagine going to this extreme raises red flags regardless if they're warranted or not.
I can understand your point but you're not just giving up comfort - you're giving up something we all consider a basic necessity: shelter. I'm willing to bet the end result of your work, whether you do it your way, or do it part time, will be the same. I don't want to come off condescending but the attitude (and it's not unique to you, I've seen many other people with a similar attitude) seems like that of someone who has been brainwashed by the SF/SV startup culture mythology.
His Dodge Caravan is shelter, which is pretty fancy shelter if you were from a poor village in Africa so I think he'll be alright. If he's not brainwashed by pain = gain, then I think what he's doing is really cool.
That's not true, because in a poor village in Africa you'd have family to look after you and keep you well. You also won't have police harassing you all the time. Lastly, it is easier to find a legal and free place to use the bathroom in a poor African village.
Why not Thailand? For $8 a night or less you get a bed, WiFi and living costs for food run in the dollars a day. $10 a day is possible, $20 a day is good living.
Even with the cost of a flight, that pays for itself in no time.
how can you devote 100% of yourself (or as much as is possible) to something when so much of your cognitive resources are devoted to surviving day to day?
It's actually possible to run a startup entirely on 5$ droplet. I would suggest switching to Vultr (still 5$ but 0.75 GB and block storage and they accept bitcoin)
It's motivating to get that first paying clients quickly to pay for server. (ramen profitable)
This is a highly absurd comment. No one I know is paying anything more than $3000/month and they all make well over $100k as software developers.
I love how when people come up with these numbers they cite salary-only/pre-negotiation/entry-level income and then they compare this to a small-family sized rent expense to justify your "typical" SV absurdity.
The fact is, many people make well over that with stock options, raises, etc. And even while making that money, lots of my friends in their mid-20s opt to live with multiple roommates and flex their living rooms to reduce their rent cost further.
> Well it's pretty foolish to go even more into debt with a mortgage if you are at risk of having a negative net worth.
Negative equity is usually something that happens after you take a mortgage. And whenever you take a mortgage, there is a risk of getting into a negative equity situation (though the degree of risk varies.)
At the same time, think of all the energy lost to the stress of not knowing where those basic things are coming from. Think of what could be done with that energy.
I built a community crowdfunding platform to help inventors, makers, developers, etc to find the community, resources, and feedback needed to build and share quality products, and transparent companies. Check it: Baqqer - (https://baqqer.com)
Our plans are to also turn this into equity crowdfunding, and eventually have a fund to contribute to and support popular/promising projects.
I'm building this to build some other projects down the line like Playa (http://getplaya.com)
Because working a day job takes approximately 100% of the work capacity (not to mention overall time) most people have available?
Most people don't function on 3 hours of sleep, for one thing. And if 5-7 PM is your between-jobs time, that's all you have to do errands and chores.
Personally, I have a little capacity (2 hours, maybe?) left over before burn-out starts to set in, and I am using it to fix up my house. I could cut that out and live in what I have, but there's no way I have 8 hours available.
>> "Because working a day job takes approximately 100% of the work capacity (not to mention overall time) most people have available?"
I'm not saying that schedule would work for everyone but I seriously doubt someone has more capacity and is less likely to burn out by voluntarily deciding to be homeless. That's going to introduce a lot of complexity into your life that will end up being very time consuming. If you don't have the physical capacity to work late at night and sleep less then move somewhere with a lower cost of living and do some freelance work part time while you work on your business. The problem here seems to be that the OP finds it necessary to be in SF. Considering great businesses are created all over the world it seems like he's buying into a myth.
Work on your business from 7pm to 3am every night? Let's say you work 9am to 6pm. Let's assume you have to get up at 8am, that gives you, very optimistically, 5 hours of sleep. Some people can survive on that. Even more people think they can survive on that and just end up becoming crazy people who nobody wants to be around. The vast majority of are simply not physically equipped to do that.
My father has been homeless at times. I'm not sure why anyone would CHOOSE that path. Having a home, even if that means a bed in a shared room, or a small sublet in an apartment, is pretty crucial to one's sense of well-being and safety.
It's hard for me to understand how someone can get productive work done when they don't have a comfortable, safe place to rest their mind for a few hours.
It's hard for me to understand how someone can get productive work done when they don't have a comfortable, safe place to rest their mind for a few hours.
I think you misunderstood my remark. I don't sleep in the library. I get most of my work done at a library. I am medically handicapped and this substantially interferes with my ability to be productive. But finding a place to work mostly boils down to making sure I have access to a decent public library.
I think you misunderstood the original comment, not the other way around. It's about a place to "rest your mind," not exercise it. The comment is about how it'd be hard to be productive without consistent sleep.
It is difficult to be productive when you aren't sleeping well, regardless of your socioeconomic status. There are homeless people who typically sleep well. I am far from the only one.
you can easily do it if you have a bullshit dayjob, perhaps through no fault of your own (i.e. you work for a dysfunctional organization with tons of money and no direction)
in fact... it's probably one of the best ways to launch a bootstrapped company. it's both the motivation and the sustenance to do something meaningful with your career.
most people just surreptitiously look for a new job while on the clock, or dick around until the gravy train stops, but you can also just do your easy-ass dayjob and work on your startup at night until it's time to switch.
> in fact... it's probably one of the best ways to launch a bootstrapped company. it's both the motivation and the sustenance to do something meaningful with your career.
It is possible with good motivation and caffeine. It is not sustainable long-term but you should be able to get a good 4-8 years out of it while you are young and in good health. See: college students at high-workload universities.
In my case, it wasn't very long. I had a tendency to stay up till 4-5 AM working on my side project, and would tend to get in 1-2 hours late. I was fired after two months of this.
It wasn't the only reason I was fired, of course; there were some other reasons, ultimately coming down to political-cultural clashes. But it was by far the lowest-hanging pretext. I seldom made it in before 10:30 - 11 AM.
I got away with it with those of my ex-employers that were technical companies or had an engineering-driven culture. The last one - from which I was fired - was more the opposite of that.
You shouldn't have a problem if you have a normal employer with a technical culture. Everywhere I've worked has had flexible working hours(within reason), so getting in between 9-10 shouldn't be a problem, and the culture in the US is such that getting a couple cups of coffee while you read email and the company IRC/Slack isn't really a problem in a decent working environment. If it takes you longer than 30-45 minutes to be productive though, or you have a long commute, maybe you should get more sleep :p
If you're dedicated and it's something you really want I don't think that's an impossible schedule to follow. 5 hours sleep, 8 hours in the office, dinner, 6 hours personal project. Do that Mon-Fri and relax on the recuperate on the weekend or do fewer hours in the evening and make up for that on the weekend.
> The social stigma associated with the word alone is hard for people to get beyond [..] I have been harassed by cops, you feel extremely transient and embarrassed just to be alive at times. [..] After this entire experience my heart breaks every time I see a fellow human having to resort to sleeping in the cold, wet, outdoors with no shelter and nothing but some cardboard and discarded newspapers to cover up with. [.. ] In the end it has helped me understand that we must all care more for one another, no matter what.
which you might also call an attempt to give a small voice to the voiceless.
How many comments are essentially glossing over that, the ratio between posts responding to the gist of this comment to those that don't, is incredible, and to describe the main point you're all mostly ignoring as
> especially when the person then goes on to talk about how difficult life is.
is beyond tone deaf. The comment is not at all about life being oh so hard for OP, ultimately. It's not about "the industry" either, nor is the original article.
The things described in this comment, the article, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11646078 ought to be enough to give a person PTSD after a while. Part of that is simply caused by social stigma, which is something everybody is complicit in and nobody can directly be blamed for. And when cops have power trips and abuse the defenseless -- not saying they do that all the time, but when they do -- any remotely decent society would come down on them like furies. Not just some of them, every last person. None such societies exist as of now, instead we numb ourselves to being numb to it, and that is the major problem I see. "The industry" is but a speck of dust in that river, and the hellish ocean it leads to.
I know of at least one person (Lenny Flank [1]) who's living in a covertly converted cargo van possibly for some financial reasons but also to be able to travel cheaply and see the USA. He's writing mostly about places he stays, but there are also some articles about how he's doing it, the van and its conversions, etc.
Lenny's been crossposting to Daily Kos as well as on his site, and "What's it All Cost?" [2] has a list of links to all the relevant articles there. This is a better place to go if you're just wanting the meat of it.
I also know of at least one other person who's more legitimately "homeless" rather than "camping," she's been posting about her experiences with PADS (homeless assistance group, runs shelters particularly during the colder months) and some job search related items, also on Daily Kos [3].
TL;DR Lenny bought a used windowless extended cargo van with a security grid across the front of the back compartment (which can be covered to block light from inside at night). He mounted a decent-sized solar panel on the roof, has a battery setup inside that he can use for lighting, a fan, and recharging his laptop and other devices. He added a small sink, etc. and sleeps in the van overnight while taking public transit to various sights in each area he stops in. He works via laptop from various public libraries, coffee shops, and restaurant wifi.
Because it drives you. You must succeed. I'm preparing to do this myself. In Russia too. Succeed or die by ice, wild dogs and military police. This is authentic.
Homeless in San Francisco hanging by coffee shops, getting change is like a mansion. In Russia, homeless people disappear. This is why my mvp will be superb.
If you're serious...it's not worth it. Life is long. Find other ways of motivating yourself. Commit publicly to shipping something awesome. Find a community of badasses to support you. Don't do this.
My brother's startup wasn't bring in much money and there was always the near promise it would. He went through all his savings and retirement funds and went close to $100k into CC debt. This was a swing of +$1m to -$70k. Yes, he had a problem (unacknowledged, btw) that was more dire than yours. Just be aware that this stuff can get out of control, if you let it.
After getting to the -$70k state, he asked me and my parents for money to continue. We all refused because we knew that our money would be like the $1m+ he had already gone through. We told him to get a job. He refused. He couch surfed for a while. After 6+ months doing that he realized, because his family had abandoned him, he would have to get a job. He did ($155k/yr). He started a month ago. He's angry at the family and won't talk with us now. Ironically, he admitted that he wouldn't have the job now, which he needs, if we had given him money last year. However, that doesn't matter. He still maintains he did the right thing and we didn't support him.
It's been a sad year for my parents and me. Actually, sad few years, since we all saw this coming (and tried to prevent it, but he only got angry at us for being "negative").
It was personally hard for me to let him go right to the brink of being on the street. I did it because giving him money would have drained my resources, and for no reason. His reality distortion field was so strong, he would not listen to anyone.
Yikes. I hope the wounds heal over time. What you all did sounds right. It seems like your brother had a problem and giving him more money would have exacerbated it.
Hang in there, I'm sorry you all had to go through this.
I always see comments like this when people bring up failure stories. I get wanting to be positive, but surely at a certain point you're deluding yourself?
There is no comprehensive stats on this, but the big question is, of the people who went in to serious CC debt, how many of them became massive unicorn companies, or at least mildly successful?
Just out of curiosity, what was the idea behind his startup? I've been avoiding getting a job along the same lines, but can never imagine going into 100k debt for a startup obsession.
I don't want to say too much, because I don't want him to find this, but it was a web service for a popular non-profit. It helped them manage costs of a certain nature. It was definitely a good idea, but the non-profit is notoriously stingy, and the sales cycle was very, very long. So far they've only sold one copy. I think the obsession he had scared off some investors, but mainly I think they didn't see a big exit. He had a partner, but the partner got a job years ago, because he had a wife and kids he needed to feed.
Why was living in San Francisco so important to getting your prototype built? Friendships, community, family?
I wonder why more people don't choose to move to places like Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo where housing is dirt cheap. There aren't many jobs there, but if you are working for yourself it shouldn't really matter.
Hm. I guess because everything I've built is out here. I know I have a TechShop membership that if my car breaks down, I have tools, I can prototype hardware there, etc. I have a good solid 6 years here in the city for friends and community that I could tap into if I needed to. It's just nice to see the people that I care and love for. Also for startups this seems to be the place to be.
In terms of major cities, San Francisco is among the best choices in terms of year-round weather. Snow, subzero temperatures, and associated clothing needs would definitely be much more problematic in your suggested cities.
[Atlanta native here] Tell me about it, and don't forget to mention the humidity--a factor 5x more important than temperature per se, in my eyes. If I had to be in the hot sun, I'd take 100F in Phoenix over even 70F in Atlanta _any_ day.
This is a pretty important point. You can get a very small apartment in Austin, TX, for $500 (and many other non-SF cites). If you're able to, spending ~$16 a day versus living in a van makes a lot of sense. Completely different if you don't have that $16.
Landlords very often just won't take you on at all if you don't show evidence of preëxisting stability. No proof of stable income? No housing—you can even offer to pay up-front or whatever, and they just won't bother dealing with you as a special case, because why would they deal with the special case when there's a dozen other safe, predictable, normal people in line behind you?
Got an income, but can't prove it to be consistently enough? Congratulations, no housing for you. And thus begins the downward spiral.
Yep. I have bad personal credit (< 600) due to a cash-strapped entrepreneurial background and a strategic default, and it took over 10+ apartment tours before we found someone willing to rent to us--at any price, and with any amount of up-front deposit--once the credit check came back.
I doubt most of the folk we dealt with would have taken us on even if I had offered to pay a full year's rent up front. It's just not worth the bother when there's a dual-income, no-kids couple with good credit next in line.
Just FYI, I know some great people in Cleveland. West Cleveland is a fine place to hang out and think in reclusion. I've camped out there several times, and if you wanted to stay longer, you could find a decent house to buy for under $20k. I'm sure one could find an extended-stay situation with room and board for $1 a day, or so. The city is relatively walkable. Food is cheap enough. Lots of shit to do.
I'm from the rust belt and went to college in Cleveland, hence my comment. I think it is a great place to live because the city was built before the car was invented and has a surplus of infrastructure.
I would definitely move back there instead of living in a van in SF. It would probably even be cheaper.
Because the type of person who would move into a van because STARTUP LIFE! can't contemplate moving out of one of the most expensive cities in the country.
There's lots of tech jobs in those places, and places like those, even if it means throwing out your expectations and program in something like Java for a large corporation.
As an aside - I think we should start a ground-up movement to buy up as much of detroit as possible and create 'Silicon Detroit' as the land value is ridiculously low - and tech could move in where the biggest expense would be bringing in only strong connectivity.
Other initiatives like urban farming could be done as well. I think detroit is super fertile.
Imagine what just a billion dollar fund could do for tech in that region.
Got to be careful with urban farming in those areas - lots of lead ended up in the ground during the 20th century.
That said, I'm in on the concept. For a few months a year (at most), I just need a small, private, quiet room with net, electric, and heat. Other amenities can be shared.
With a good plan and some solid leadership, I'd put money into it. But, there'd have to be some sort of contractual way to slow gentrification, if it took off.
Alameda naval station chose to just try to build a big metal wall in the ground to capture the leakage as opposed to spending the money to clean up the toxicity...
I would suggest it's so he doesn't move out of the potential area for users/testing/investor meetings/hiring, but if he's living out of a van, that's probably adding more challenges than it's resolving.
Because intellectual community is extremely hard to get. Unless you're moving to Ithaca, it's hard to find a place that is full of interesting people and ideas. This pushes you in ways you wouldn't get in places like Buffalo and so on - the culture of a city like San Francisco or Boston is full of smart people with a certain background (i.e., people who are interested in tech) who can stimulate you. You're far more likely to overhear a conversation about Claude Shannon or minimum spanning trees in SF than you are in Buffalo.
Absolutely not, I agree; I'd just say that "interesting" varies widely with the context. If what you're interested in is running a tech startup, Detroit is less "interesting". There are many, many terms on which San Francisco is less "interesting" than the rest of the country.
Huh. Never lived in Ann Arbor or Detroit, just visited/had friends and family who lived there. My impression of Ann Arbor is that it's a college town where the population is relatively insulated from the surrounding community, unlike Boston where the colleges are heavily connected to local industry and so on. Everyone I've known from Detroit is an activist of some kind, so I probably have a biased sample set. But based on that I'd say "no", whereas I would definitely lump Cambridge in with Boston or Berkeley/Oakland in with SF.
> I've never taken up the opportunity of food, shelter, or clothing offered by the city, because frankly I'm doing this on my own accord, so I can't speak to how that part of the system helps people get back on their feet.
I think you don't qualify as a homeless. You 're living in a van. There's a reason people prefer homes to a van. I can't fathom what is so pressing that makes you sleep in a van instead of moving to a much cheaper area.
When I was homeless, I lived in my car. I lived like a king compared to those actually sleeping rough. I frequently slept near/at the Burnside Project (PDX), and saw many far worse off. I had a water tight heated home that I moved whenever I wanted.
My father and ex husband were both career military. I never slept in a tent before I went homeless, but I had heard enough stories about keeping warm, dry, or whatever while out in the wilderness.
I have never once slept on a sidewalk. I hike out to a patch of wilderness every single night. Where I currently sleep, there are deer and coyotes (a few minutes walk from a paved road).
I blog about my experiences in part because I feel strongly that homelessness does not need to be as rough as it obviously is for so many people. Humans are food and got sleep well before modern housing was invented. I feel strongly that putting out information can go a long way towards lowering artificial barriers for homeless Americans and helping them maintain ties to society in a way that can make it easier for them to get back off the street.
As Utah found, just giving homeless people a home, without demanding any substantial money or qualification or whatever from them for it, reduced the number of long-time homeless by a huge percentage and in the process saved net money for the state because of reduced medical and policing costs.
This is one step, but it's not a silver bullet. New York City has had a similar program for a long time, and it's actually come under fire from homeless advocacy groups for being ineffective (while simultaneously expensive).
New York City also poses a greater challenge than Salt Lake City for a number of reasons, but so does San Francisco, so solving SF's homelessness problem will require more than just building more housing and giving it to homeless people, even if that's ultimately one step of the solution.
In a very real sense it's crazy to give people free housing in the world's most expensive locations. And it's kinda unfair too – the only people that get those units are lottery winners.
From the perspective of wanting to do the most good with our limited resources, paying for housing in SF or NYC, let alone SLC, is probably pretty stupid.
There are three legs to that stool: stable living situation, stable job, stable transportation. Without all three you can't get better.
There's a guy I know who runs a business employing homeless. His rule is he never fires anyone. He understands that without a home/transportation, it can be impossible to make it to work. That gives them one stable leg to try and build the rest of their life from.
Just out of curiosity: what about reasons unrelated to absenteeism, like some sort of gross misconduct, drug or alcohol abuse on the job, untenable behavioural or psychiatric issues stemming from that, etc?
He requires that they go through professional treatment for whatever the issue is before they return to work. They're not fired, just required to do something before they can return.
For example, one guy had HUGE anger management issues. When it came to blows for the xth time, the manager pulled him aside, and said "I'm not going to fire you. I don't fire people. But you can only come back here when I've gotten a call from a counseling professional (he gave a number of one) and they tell me you've been through a successful treatment." It took six months, but he got the call and the guy came back to working. Apparently been one of the best employees ever since.
I'd start by legalizing every form of 'marginal' housing, e.g. boarding houses, micro-apartments.
I have no idea where to start if one accepts the current political, legal, and cultural environment as-is. Assuming you did just accept the status quo as a given, I can better appreciate why the idea of 'just giving homeless people housing' is so enticing. [And there is evidence that it works well. I'm skeptical about the long-run costs and skewed incentives, especially in places in which lots of people want to live.]
> I'd start by legalizing every form of 'marginal' housing, e.g. boarding houses, micro-apartments.
This. Outlawing "flophouses" throughout the United States exacerbated homelessness, made it much harder for people on the margins to improve their material circumstances, and grossly distorted the housing and rental market by removing the lower end: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse#Cage_hotels_in_the_U...
This would be huge. When researching, I couldn't believe sleeping in a vehicle was illegal. Building reasonable living accommodations -- no matter the size -- is absolutely something we must do for people.
Housing policy, formal and informal, just drives me crazy. I despair that the future everywhere will look like third world countries, where only relatively wealthy people can afford to live in legal housing. Everyone else, maybe me too, will live in 'favelas'.
Here's a great post about this by a blogger I really like on this topic:
We need to offer free camping in federal, state, and county parks to citizens? We have a catastrophe that's just going to get worse. It is homelessness.
We need to allow homeless to sleep in their vechicles, if said parking allows overnight parking.
We need to build Kibbutz's. (Or just give them a field to pitch a tent? A outhouse? Anything?
We need to stop making homelessness a crime. Every homeless person I know is camping illegially. They get tickets. They can't pay tickets. Tickets turn into felonies. It's just wrong.
If Jesus appeared, he would be ticketed for a multitude of municipal/criminal violations in a matter of days?
I think I mostly agree but it's hard to tell because I'm not sure what you meant by turning what seem like statements into questions.
I don't think it's necessary tho to allow free camping in government run (and government owned) parks necessarily. Maybe it would be sufficient to just allow, or not prohibit, someone from renting spots on their property for otherwise homeless people to pitch tents.
It'd also be amazing if someone could figure out how to do an end run around all the laws and regulations that make housing so expensive and time-consuming to build. Where's the 'Uber for housing'? Very likely there is none; housing is too easy to 'attack' as it's most useful when its stationary.
Or maybe that's it – maybe someone could offer 'Japanese coffin-style hotel rooms' in a bus that just slowly drives around a city.
I'm not sure, I think about that a lot. I've noticed a lot of homeless do carry cell phones, so maybe more free chargers, free and ubiquitous wifi? But that's dumb tech me talking.
I think a lot of barriers just come from the social stigma of actually being homeless. So thinking reasonably, showers, laundry, snacks or meals? A place where one could feel human and a part of the naturally accepted society again.
I've heard of these places they have in Japan where you can pay a daily fee to get inside and use the facilities. They consist of:
hot showers
books, movies, wifi that you can use while you're there
soup on tap
vending machines with healthy options
exercise machines
Sounds like a brilliant idea that would benefit homeless people, those in marginal situations where it's not always safe to go home, and so-called "normals" all at once, thus serving everyone so as to prevent a stigma caused by their use.
Isn't one big issue for homeless people that they need an address when applying for jobs, bank accounts etc. and don't have one. Maybe a place to help them, not only find an apply to jobs, but to use as an address, shower before the interview etc.
When I try to make purchases online with debit card they often use address for verification and if it's incorrect the purchase fails. Not 100% sure it's necessary just to have a bank account though you may be right.
A far, far better approach is to work on a) providing more
senior and student housing -- aka affordable housing, but aimed at single people and childless couples and not marketed as "affordable" because that means "Built for poor people!" and that is always a terrible idea b) promoting walkable communities and c) helping people who can't fit a "regular" job to find a means to support themselves with some kind of paid work (freelance, part time, whatever).
Homeless people are just people. Once they get off the street, they are again simply referred to as people. You wind up homeless when your problems outrun your ability to cope. The difference between a homeless person and person in housing can be as little as one more problem or one less resource. Some particular thread snaps, it all comes unraveled. Trying to reverse that after the fact is a lot harder than trying to prevent it from happening to begin with (aka "A stitch in time saves nine").
But most people don't really want to hear that. Building more affordable housing (or otherwise trying to make society work better for ordinary people) doesn't feel heroic enough. It doesn't have the same rush of adrenaline of talking about getting people off the street after their lives have gone to hell.
I am on the street for health reasons, not to start a business (and getting pretty grumpy about it), but if you find it that hard cope, you might want to check out my blog: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/
People do realize I am homeless if they see me often enough, but they don't realize it upon meeting me the first time. I am less open about it than I used to be, because fuck prejudice and what judgey, uncampassionate, unhelpful assholes the vast majority of people are.
> I am less open about it than I used to be, because fuck prejudice and what judgey, uncampassionate, unhelpful assholes the vast majority of people are.
I grew up in a nice part of la so I didn't really have any exposure to homeless people until I moved to the bay almost a decade ago. One thing that shocked me then and still really bothers me is how many of my friends (even the ones that I know to be decent, considerate people) completely ignore the existence of anyone who looks or smells or seems "weird". This is presumably under the assumption that anyone who looks like that is probably just asking you for money.
I remember sitting at a SJ light rail station and having a guy in a parka (it was 90+ deg out) come up to us and mumble something while we were sitting at the platform. My friend pointedly refused to make eye contact and pretended he didn't exist. When I asked the guy to repeat what he said, it turns out he was asking for directions....
I'm not saying that everyone needs to empty out their wallet to every person on the sidewalk, and maybe 90% of the time this heuristic is successful (ie they are asking for money), but it seems so shitty to me to just size someone up like that and decide that whatever they're saying to you, you can ignore it. I can guarantee you that none of those friends would ignore a well dressed stranger addressing them on the street.
What you describe has struck me as far more problematic online than off. I am open about being homeless, so a lot of people act like I am "panhandling the internet" while simultaneously refusing to answer questions about "So, how can you make real money online?" or outright telling me "You can't" -- by which they mean specifically that they think I can't, because, in some cases, that is absolutely where some portion of their income comes from.
It's been pretty maddening. And I occasionally hope there is a special place in hell set aside for such people.
I don't mean to pry, but what do you mean by "on the street for health reasons"? I'm trying to think of a medical condition that could be helped by being homeless, and am drawing a blank. Maybe I'm misunderstanding?
The super short version is that I was living in a crappy apartment with mold issues, among other things. I have a serious medical condition that makes me particularly sensitive to things like that. Sleeping in a tent among greenery has helped my health enormously.
I am now well enough that getting back into housing would make sense. But it needs to be real estate I own and have control over, so I can rip out carpeting, or whatever, if necessary. It cannot be rental housing and it cannot be a trailer. So, it will be challenging to arrange.
I do freelance work, when I am well enough. I am developing a number of web projects. I left San Diego County about a year ago and moved someplace cheaper within California and things are still hard, but it has been some months since anyone hassled me for being homeless. That is partly because this is a nicer area, partly that I look more middle class than I used to.
If you want to help, there is a tip jar on the site. (You can click on $1 and then enter any number you like.) Money is always useful. Promoting my work in some way so I get more traffic would also be appreciated.
Being homeless with a vehicle to live in is nothing like being homeless without one. I really don't even think it is the same thing. I've been homeless on a number of occasions (related to addiction, I am now in recovery), and I have done it with and without a vehicle.
There is absolutely no comparison between having to sleep on the street and having a vehicle to sleep in, especially during the fall/winter in seasonal areas. I would absolutely live in a converted van if it meant saving money. Sadly, I don't have a van to convert ;-)
I wasn't completely broke but I couldn't keep affording rent as expensive as it was. I was able to shower at a gym, and worked out of Tech Shop on what I was trying to build. But it's hard -- like super hard to just be homeless. The social stigma associated with the word alone is hard for people to get beyond. I would often hear, "But you don't seem like the type to be homeless" and then they would slowly just distance themselves from talking to me. Super weird.
I've been in such a position following an abusive employment/housing situation. What you say completely rings true. I think there's a partially neurologically wired category of "other" in our brains that is meant to make us super cautious of rootless individuals. Even in our nomadic hunter-gatherer days, we had good reason to be suspect of individuals who didn't have group membership. (Effectively a "home.")
That, and I think a lot of it is also pattern matching. When we hear that someone is homeless, we compare that person to the mental image we have of the homeless people we've encountered on the streets.
One of the great tragedies of our society is that we've allowed our mentally ill to slip through the cracks. Untreated schizophrenics and PTSD-suffering Vietnam veterans may or may not make up a significant percentage of the homeless we see -- but they're certainly the most memorable. They stand out. They ingrain, in passersby, a mental map of homeless people as "crazy," or "violent," or "dangerous." And so we start to believe that homeless people are broken somehow. Many people go a step further; they start to regard the homeless as less than human.
These pattern matches are powerful blocks on empathy for many, many people.
> The social stigma associated with the word alone is hard for people to get beyond.
That's why you call yourself a digital nomad. Instead of people distancing themselves, you get people asking "Wooow how do you do that? I would love to do that? What's it like?".
As a homeless person with a van, you probably have a more permanent base than most digital nomads. Or at least more than what I did when I was nomading more properly. (and yes, I do miss it)
>I recently sold everything I owned and started living out of my converted dodge caravan while I was prototyping what I wanted to build next. With an eye on my burn rate, I lived as cheaply as possible. I can tell you without a doubt that there is no natural system in place for homeless to get out of that rut, and it looks and feels dehumanizing.
I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone who has enough skills to "build things" has enough skills to get an average software job. So, just curious, did you choose to build things and be homeless instead of getting a mundane software job and not be homeless?
Aren't you hijacking the topic of homelessness here then? When people say homeless they don't mean someone who is homeless out of choice and can get out of it whenever they want to?
Probably the best thing we can do for homelessness is to not see it as a problem of "others", but as a continuum with a self-sustaining end that anyone could end up at.
Wasn't his original comment about how his (atypical) experience not living in a house gave him a bit of an insight into some of the issues that "real" homelessness creates for people? I don't see anywhere that he claimed he was just as disadvantaged as the average homeless person or anything like that.
I think your comment was informative. It kind of reminds me of "There, but for Fortune", by Phil Ochs:
Show me an alley, show me a train
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain
And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why
And there but for fortune, may go you or I
Especially in countries with (dare I say) primitive social security, going intentionally homeless could quickly become a permanent thing. A broken down car and a medical emergency, a family tragedy -- and coming back might suddenly become an insurmountable obstacle. Difficult to get a job without a place to stay, difficult to get a place to stay without money, difficult to get money without a job...
Did you want to be homeless? There are SO many people that do not have the opportunity or education or resources you do. And yet you choose their poverty. Why?
It's the quality of sleep that is the biggest concern. Sleeping poorly affects your productivity, creativity, and your health. The social isolation is also bad for all the above since it will likely lead to depression.
Seriously, once I rented someone's large closet in Phoenix for $100 a month when I needed to save money. I showered in the gym and stayed in my office all day. Even in the most expensive cities someone will take a "ghost roommate" for $500 a month; pennies compared to cost of a physical/mental health related disorder.
You seem open to questions so I'll ask :) I've always wondered -- if you're living in a van, and you don't like where you are (food is expensive, winter is coming, etc), why not just drive somewhere else?
I don't even mean across the country. I mean just 4 hours north or south or east. There are cheaper places to be in California than SF, aren't there? It seems you could spend the year driving up and down the coast as cost/weather permits. And I don't mean daily. The fuel costs would get prohibitive at some point...
I did. I worked in Redwood City, slept in Palo Alto (because it's legal to sleep in your car there). I tried to stay within the confines of the law as much as possible because I didn't need the extra hassle.
You could, at least, rent a place somewhere very cheap (Lodi?) and visit it only occasionally, while living out of your car in the Bay Area.
It might ultimately be more sustainable, especially if you're open to having a "roommate" or two (who probably wouldn't mind you being gone a lot!). I spent a year paying $233/month for an attic room in Atlanta (and I lived there), so the opportunities exist.
I've been seriously considering living out of a van with basic amenities like a propane stove and solar. I was pretty much set on doing this 100%, but one of my close friends talked me down to like 90%. Do you feel the impact to sleep/well-being is worth the freedom you get to work on your prototype?
In case you're someone who usually sleeps pretty well, I would caution against talking poor quality of sleep too lightly. Forget the impact to your health, it can fuck up pretty much everything about your life, including your productivity (partly negating one of the reasons you'd be doing it in the first place).
> I have been harassed by cops, you feel extremely transient and embarrassed just to be alive at times. Sleeping in a van sucks too. Street noises keep you up, cramped for space, etc
Would moving into the woods and "living off the land" have been an option? Is this even legally possible anymore in the United States?
* Assuming you had solar-generated electricity and internet access.
You would need to own the land, or arrange a lease with the owner. Otherwise you're trespassing and that can result in arrest or being shot. I'm not saying that you can't do this (there are people living in remote portions of national parks), but there can be severe downsides. Like ending up like Christopher McCandless.
Living in a US national park (on land you don't own) would be illegal. Rangers also seem hyper-paranoid about remote areas being used for drug cultivation.
I believe national forests have a technical time limit on how long you can stay there. Maybe BLM land?
Druggies could be a problem - there are stories of booby-traps and tripwires laid by the growers to protect their crops. So you certainly don't want to stumble across one.
The only BLM land I personally know of is in Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico, and you can't really grow anything on it (it's desert). Looks like there's also land in eastern Oregon, Idaho, Utah, etc. so if you can tolerate cold winters...
I wasn't completely broke but I couldn't keep affording rent as expensive as it was. I was able to shower at a gym, and worked out of Tech Shop on what I was trying to build. But it's hard -- like super hard to just be homeless. The social stigma associated with the word alone is hard for people to get beyond. I would often hear, "But you don't seem like the type to be homeless" and then they would slowly just distance themselves from talking to me. Super weird.
I have been harassed by cops, you feel extremely transient and embarrassed just to be alive at times. Sleeping in a van sucks too. Street noises keep you up, cramped for space, etc. On the up side there is a contingent of tech people that are doing the same thing, so I had the pleasure of meeting some others like myself.
I've never taken up the opportunity of food, shelter, or clothing offered by the city, because frankly I'm doing this on my own accord, so I can't speak to how that part of the system helps people get back on their feet.
After this entire experience my heart breaks every time I see a fellow human having to resort to sleeping in the cold, wet, outdoors with no shelter and nothing but some cardboard and discarded newspapers to cover up with. I often wonder how close I could have come to being completely broken by this decision, and what coincidences led someone down this path. In the end it has helped me understand that we must all care more for one another, no matter what.