What I Learned While Being Homeless

This article contains some actual advice on how to earn a bare survival income as a homeless person along with some biting sarcasm.

Of course you'd probably want to start with jobs like real people have such as data entry, customer service, retail, sales, cleaning, manufacturing or other traditional jobs. However, you might need to aim for less agreeable occupations such as porta potty cleaner, road kill clean up specialist, or decomp crime scene cleaner. Even for these dirty jobs employers won't hire someone without an address, front teeth, or clean clothes. So, as a homeless person you may need to lower your standards a bit. Or you might just need to try a little bit different set of job hunting and money making strategies.
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The following editorial is dedicated to Justus, a lovely man who saved my life - after society had discarded him and given up on him, too.

For years, America has been working to further dehumanize people who for one reason or another have found themselves living on the street. The recently favored descriptive phrase chills me to the bone. "The Homeless" - they are no longer hobos, transients, children of the street, vagrants, bums, or street people - they have become "The Homeless." You may say it's only words but words speak of deeper feelings. That is what words are, feelings and concepts given life as sound.

Let's look at that phrase a moment. When we use words to name other types of people - daughter, hooker, dentist, criminal, lawyer - do we use "the" in front when we refer to them as a group? Homeless is a state of not having somewhere to live, not something that a person is like a profession. People speak of "The Homeless" situation or "The Homeless" problem. At the holidays, people sometimes think of donating to "The Homeless."

They are homeless PEOPLE. They are PEOPLE who have no place to sleep at night that is safe. They are PEOPLE who have fallen on hard luck. They are HUMAN BEINGS dying in your world. They are HUMAN BEINGS getting beaten by your policemen, your bored teenagers, and your reality show producers.

During my time as a homeless PERSON I learned that many homeless MEN end up on the street because of illness, loss of a job, or as with many WOMEN, they have run from horrifying abuses while still teens. During my time as a homeless PERSON I found that most homeless WOMEN become that way from abuse, sexual or otherwise. They run from situations that their families, their law enforcement agencies, their charities do or can do nothing about. They walk the razor edge between flight and suicide and for some reason, they choose to run rather than face another rape by their stepfather or another bone-breaking beating from their spouse. Once they run away, they discover that they've merely jumped into a more slowly burning fire rather than to true safety. By that point they are stuck. There's no hand up, there's no government assistance to save them, there's really nothing to save them but themselves and sometimes each other. While the rest of the country is shedding tears over the little girl molested by her Uncle on the Lifetime movie the real little girls and boys are sleeping in dumpster surrounds, too broken to understand what to do or how to function.

After my first rape, it was a homeless man who saved me. I was tucked into a bloodied ball behind a dumpster, deep in shock. Without his intervention, I would have died. He covered me and sang mumbled songs. He bathed me like a child in someone's motel room where he'd carried me. Fittingly, his name was Justus. My angel had Parkinson's and had suffered several strokes. His bladder control wasn't perfect so he smelled pretty bad, too. He talked to me of soldiers he'd seen shell-shocked in Vietnam. He prayed and sang "Amazing Graze" as I stared into space, trembling and waiting, hoping to die while he carefully dabbed my face with a washcloth. He showed me a very old picture of his daughter, a cute toddler in corn rows. He spoke of her with such love. It was then I unfroze and began to cry. If this gentle, lovely man could be discarded and dying out where no one cared what hope was there for anyone?

I regret that I was too deeply wounded, too deep in shock at the time he finally urged and convinced me to let him take me to the hospital - I regret I was too damaged at the time to think of how I'd find him again. I was hospitalized for several days while they pumped me full of antibiotics and wrestled to get my fever under control. I never found Justus again.

Of all the people I've ever met, Justus was perhaps the most humane person of them all. Justus was not "The Homeless," he was a man of substance and humanity.

For the sake of Justus, don't use that phrase, "The Homeless."

When I was homeless I was constantly tired. Much of my thoughts were consumed by a desire to sleep somewhere safe. I usually could find no such place.

I eventually learned how to avoid too many problems regarding a place to sleep. I wrote this article both to share that information with others who might need it and to enlighten homed people as to the conditions homeless people suffer.

The homeless shelters are full, you got beat up there too many times, or you just don't like pubic lice. Now you need to find somewhere else to sleep. I'm not saying these places are legal to sleep or even that they are safe. They are just some of the places I slept when I was homeless where fewer people harassed or harmed me.

Depending on the lighting situation it is sometimes possible to find a relatively safe, if somewhat odoriferous crash space in a public bathroom. Only try this where there is a separate, exterior access door for the restroom. Businesses and such don't care for nappers in their johns so the key here is unseen access. After a string of beatings I actually crashed in a port-a-potty for a few nights. It stunk to high heaven but it gave my ribs a chance to heal. It's amazing what a locking door can contribute to a good night's rest, even in the most disgusting of accommodations.

Dumpster surrounds can be decent havens under the right circumstances if you follow a few rules. Never, ever sleep there in the daytime, dusk, or early dawn hours when garbage pickup often occurs. Never sleep inside the dumpster. Always check for security cameras before choosing your nap zone. Remember, even with these precautions you could still be surprised by the garbage truck and get squashed by a dumpster. However, safety is always relative.

Those large patches of wild brush and trees that tend to crop up between big box stores like Barnes & Nobles and Wal-Mart and in the drainage areas can provide excellent rustic camping areas. You can sometimes even find a secluded or unlikely to be observed area in mall landscaping. At night, the degree of concealment necessary depends on the lighting and the potential for foot or automobile traffic.

You'll want some kind of tarp or plastic sheet to sleep on as these spots tend to be rather dirty and can be very moist. You'll need to be very tidy when playing urban Thoreau both for environmental reasons and for reasons of concealment. Nothing attracts unwanted attention like dirty little dens and loose trash. Keep your bedroll portable, never leave anything lying around. Remember, you are homeless so you don't have storage space. Anything you stash somewhere might wander off or draw attention.

If you have a few dollars you can spring for an all day bus pass. Take short naps and make fairly frequent bus changes.

If you keep yourself very clean and presentable and you are young enough, local colleges and universities can be great for daytime napping. You can easily lay out for a snooze where you see students reading or chatting on the lawns. A book or notebook can be used as a prop if necessary. Move around the campus and stop your napping before the dinner hour. I've even walked right into a few campus gymnasiums to shower though I was turned away a few times. As long as you are under 30 and presentable likely no one will suspect you're homeless if anyone notices you at all.

Regardless of where you sleep while homeless you must be neat and tidy. Don't draw unwanted attention to yourself through littering or other bad behavior. The less you are noticed, the less potential there is for unsafe situations to occur.

My prospects were pretty dim; I had little work experience and nowhere to shower regularly. I walked funny and talked with a slurred voice after the brutal beating that had hospitalized me.

I couldn't get a regular job so I walked from door to door in suburban neighborhoods, scouting out homes where older folks lived. I knocked on doors asking to mow and rake lawns, scrub toilets, clean out homes and garages, and clean up dog poop. I also picked up bottles and cans for their deposit. I managed not to starve to death. Just barely.

One day I had a particularly bad day after almost a week of bad days. I'd been beaten up the night before and I hadn't convinced anyone to hire me to do any odd jobs in almost a week. No one seemed to appreciate the bargain at which my services could be had - not even poop scooping a really nasty yard for $2. I hadn't eaten in several days and was feeling pretty down. I thought about suicide.

As I walked along the freeway picking up trash and cans I found a number of cigarette boxes that day. When I picked the last one up I saw the edge of a paper bill sticking from the package. This was pretty common; often people would put a few dollars in their cigarette pack and forget about it. My hands were shaking and I was tearing up. I was going to get something to eat! As I pulled the bill out I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a folded hundred dollar bill! I looked at it in disbelief, thinking that somehow it must be a fake.

This was a turning point for me. I was able to rent a Post Office Box, buy a tarp to sleep on, buy showers at the truck stop, and clothes from a thrift store. I had an address to put on job applications and I could stay clean and well-dressed. I was then able to get a regular job, ten days after finding the money.

It wasn't really that simple but the money got the ball rolling. You can read more about what I bought with it here. The page also includes some new ideas and items that didn't yet exist when I was homeless.

Many homeless people are terrified of police and there's a good reason for this. It is because some policemen use their position of power to harass or even actually harm homeless people. Now that many citizens have video recording equipment on them in the form of cell phones and digital cameras, more of this behavior is being exposed.

If you just search for "police beating homeless" on any search engine you will find many shocking results.

When homeless, I was wakened by non-too-gentle kicks by police "checking on my welfare" on more than one occasion. I was also dismissed when I tried to report a crime.

I don't think most police would behave this way but there are enough around that if a person stays homeless long enough, they are pretty likely to encounter policemen of this type. People see homeless people as worthless, lazy criminals and it becomes dangerous when those people are law enforcement officers.

A few people have asked me "if homelessness has affected you so deeply, why don't you donate your lens earnings to charities that fight homelessness?"

I would love to donate the proceeds of this lens and all of my others to help homeless people. Unfortunately, I'm on the very edge of homelessness myself.

Just over two years ago, I became unable to work my job as a floral designer due to frequent bouts of illness, seizures, and weakness. Suffering from fibromyalgia, lupus, a benign brain tumor, and an undiagnosed fever disorder I found myself unable to hold down a job.

So I applied for Disability. I figured since I was truly ill and unable to work that all the money I'd payed in to Social Security over my working life, many years with more than two full-time jobs at a time, money would be there for me to pay for medical care and living expenses.

Because my major problem (the one that is probably most responsibility for making me unable to work) is the undiagnosed fever disorder which brings high fevers, fatigue, seizures, delirium, and loss of consciousness I've hit a snag. Since the cause of the disorder is unknown its symptoms were not considered in determining my ability to work by the SSA. Only the fibromyalgia and lupus were considered and their symptoms were not decreed great enough to make me unable to work.

To file another appeal, I was told I must have further medical evaluation (at my own expense) and be under a doctor's continuing care. But you see, that's not likely because in Michigan, there's no aid available other than food assistance for non-parent, non-pregnant adults and I've been unable to work a regular job for two years. Medical care would be available - if I were determined to be Disabled by the SSD. So you can see how this is circular - I can't get medical care because I can't get declared Disabled and I can't get declared Disabled because I can't get medical care.

There were a few times, right after I became so ill, once my money ran out, that homelessness became a near thing. I panicked. I talk about my homeless experience with a strong voice and I try to seem unharmed by it but I was deeply wounded by it. I was terrified of becoming homeless and often had suicidal thoughts. I couldn't bear the thought of the beatings, the rapes, and the dehumanizing conditions. I suffer from PTSD and had a lot of panic attacks and bouts of severe depression during that time.

Somehow I've been scraping by, surviving on my freelance writing income and the kindness of friends and my loving though financially struggling partner. Without the love and support of my partner and friends, I'd either be homeless or dead. Even though I earn money writing, it's not enough to live on and my illness prevents me from even writing at times, especially during fevers or bouts of weakness and fatigue.

You can read more about my struggle with the American health care system and government agencies at My Health Care Issues.

So in a way, I guess the proceeds of my lenses are going to prevent homelessness in a very real way - it's just that it's my own.

I thank you all for reading. I thank you for your kind words and blessings.