Survival Guide to Homelessness

[sarahlee]

Bookmark – just in case. . .

http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/


===QUOTE===
Introduction to the Project

I spent nearly five years, from mid-1996 to the beginning of 2001, homeless, or as I liked to call it with a distributed household. I had storage, shelter, mailbox, telephone, shower, bathroom facilities, cooking equipment, and transportation, even access to television, radio, computer equipment, and ac power. I had the essence of a home. It was simply more geographically scattered than is traditional in our culture.

I'm not the first to do what I did, to live homeless well. I'm not the first to find advantage in homelessness. It is a well kept secret that homelessness can be freedom and comfort can attend it. The secret is well kept because revealing that you are homeless in this society is dangerous. There is stigma. There are even laws prohibiting it. Imagine that. There are laws against being homeless. Let me say that one more time. There are laws against being homeless.

There are laws against sleeping in public, in your car, on the beach, anywhere in the public view. It is the only law that I know that prohibits a behavior that is involuntary. You must sleep. There is no choice. You must do it. If you do not sleep for approximately one third of your life, you will suffer. The less sleep you get, the more physical and psychological symptoms you will suffer, until your mental faculties break down, your grasp of reality disintegrates, your self-control disappears. Your body will make you sleep, and if you use stimulants to avoid it, you will rapidly begin to become psychotic, with unpredictable mood swings, displays of aggression, and hallucinations. Nevertheless, the law in nearly every municipality forbids sleeping unless you are rich enough to afford a house or hotel to do it in. It's a human rights violation, but I will get back to that.

I've been thinking about writing this book, a guide to living well, for years. People think it will be easy to be homeless, that it is a lazy choice. Nothing could be further from true. Homelessness is very hard work. Homelessness can be very uncomfortable until you solve some basic problems. It is vital, for instance, to have a place of concealment. It is vital to assure that you will be warm, and to provide for safety, and for hygiene, and for communications, and even for a source of income. If you are newly homeless, you will not be meeting all of these basic needs, and to the extent that you don't, you will pay for that. This book will teach you to meet those needs effectively and fast.

posted by Mobile Homemaker @ 9:46 AM
===END QUOTE===

If you live in a city,where your library is a resting place for the homeless during the day, you might try giving the URL to a friendly librarian.

[Warpy]

1. I lived near a Department of Public Works public toilet

in Boston that was favored by the homeless. I used to check it every couple of weeks for grafitti, drop off a roll of paper if I had the wherewithal to do it.

The only place that had better grafitti was the basement lab at the Boston Public Library.

The DPW toilet featured correctly spelled ditties. So much for the homeless being anything but unfortunate. They were literate.

[Journeyman]

2. Anatole France commented on this. . .

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894, chapter 7
French novelist (1844 - 1924)

[ooglymoogly]

3. my god how am i supposed to deal with this

how are any of us supposed to deal with this? shout yell demonstrate work for a recount, what else can we do?

[natrat]

6. that's why it's called fascism brother

they /it wants you to be stressed about the whole deal

[wellstone dem]

4. I just got back from unlocking our church community center

so that the homeless people in our community would have a warm place to sleep. The standard shelters are full. We are the "Church of the Week". Last night a homeless woman asked to see a picture of my daughter, who I adopted when she was 9. I showed her the picture. She said, "They couldn't find a family for me when they took me away from my parents." I went home and hugged my daughter.

[sarahlee]

7. Thank you

and the church for opening the doors. I delivered some firewood to a house this afternoon - they have a house, but 5 people living in about 800 square feet and no heat.

[grilled onions]

5. if you live close to the "financial cliff"...

...many of us could some day be in that position. Loss of job,bad health,a costly divorce,or just running away for your safety could be the start of living on the streets. I would think it would be a huge problem trying to become invisable to the local law which tries to "rid the homeless" from the streets,viaducts etc. They try to become invisable to the tormenters,those who specialize in being mean or taking advatage to those who can't defend themselves. You have to try and ignore hunger,illness,cold temps,hot temps,rain,snow and everything in between. A survival manual is something that many need if for no other reason they could help defend themselves until they could hopefully get out of that situation.

[AlienGirl]

8. How can you cook when you're homeless?

I know a lot about how to procure emergency survival foods from the wild but very little about how one would go about cooking if one were in a suburban or urban area. You can't just light a campfire in a parking lot without attracting undue attention.

My plan if I ever become homeless has always been to "go feral" and seek out some woods to survive in, but there are fewer and fewer woods where a person can be un-noticed anymore.

Tucker

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. #1 get to a warm climate state...FL is the best..plenty of fruit trees and

fishing....been there done that