
Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture - petethomas
http://www.newsweek.com/homeless-millennials-are-transforming-hobo-culture-323151
======
austenallred
Most of these comments are trying to determine why people are homeless, citing
some anecdote of some person the poster met once. It bothers me that we are
trying to determine why people are homeless so that next time we see a
homeless person we can know why. That's simply not possible.

I was (voluntarily) homeless in San Francisco for a while
([http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-
vall...](http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/)),
only because I wanted to work on my company instead of get a job, and I had
read enough Thoreau that I didn't care to give up the majority of my time in
exchange for crap I don't need. So I could have gotten a job, but I deemed it
not worth giving up my freedom for. Of course, that came with other
sacrifices, but I considered it worth it at the time.

In doing so, I ended up hanging out with a wide, wide variety of homeless
people. Some were punk kids who wanted to reject society/capitalism, many of
whom were from broken homes. Some were mentally handicapped. Some had done
enough of some sort of drug that they were completely fried. A few seemed very
intelligent - one lost his job as a physics professor when he had sex with one
of his students, and his family was so ashamed they wouldn't take him in.

Saying things like "homelessness is a choice" is true for some subset of
people, but completely untrue for others. Most of the homeless I hung out with
were very affluent and had iPhones and MacBooks (you don't find many forced
homeless pitching VCs in Palo Alto), but when I was in the city it was a
different story. More mental handicaps, more felons, and more people who had
simply fallen upon difficult times.

The amount of willingness they had in the matter is a spectrum., as was the
tech they used, the reason they were homeless, and their ages But they're all
people, and most of them that I met were _good_ people, with wants and dreams
and desires mostly just like everybody else. Please don't try to say, "All
homeless people are x."

~~~
tatterdemalion
Thankyou, the judgment in a lot of these comments really bothered me.

To me, this is the pertinent question: if people are homeless "by choice" \-
meaning they had some other option - why is our society structured in such a
way that being without shelter and security seems like a better option than
the alternative? How could things be different so that no one would "choose"
to be homeless?

~~~
austenallred
Structures cost money and we trade our time for money (and call it work).

To some, the value of doing what you want is greater than the value of the
physical structure. That could be because they consider time extremely
valuable, they don't value a home as highly, or because they hate the work.
It's usually some combination of the three.

A lot of voluntarily homeless just see "society" as the entire list of rules
of what you're supposed to do (go to college, get a job, buy a house, settle
down, have kids) and reject the whole of it. It could be that you've seen
enough to think that the entire system is flawed, so you just bail on all of
it. It could be that those ideals just don't jive with you personally and are
completely unappealing. That's how I felt when I dropped out of college and
moved to China for no good reason. (Homelessness came after that). I was on
track to be an investment banker or something, but hated the idea a little
more each day until I finally said, "f this, I'm out" and started vagabonding
around Asia.

Maybe there is an element of mental illness, I don't know. I had lunch with a
psychologist once and he tried saying, "Seriously, listen to me, you are
mentally ill." I guess he thought I was crazy - maybe I am - but I never went
in to see him. I had no interest in altering my mind with drugs. I like who I
am, even when it is difficult to interoperate with the rest of society.

When I was homeless, security was worthless. I still think it's largely an
illusion, but that's a different topic. Freedom to do what I loved was well
worth not having a home for. Working happened to be the thing that I loved,
and I especially loved tech. I worked 16 hour days - I just wanted to work on
my thing not someone else's thing. If I had enough runway to afford a House I
would have done that, but I didn't. So living in a Honda civic it was. It
didn't really bother me, to be honest. A bed is a bed.

Now I am married and have a baby on the way. I still don't care about
security, but they need it, so ok I'm kind of reformed in that way. Luckily
we're now funded so i still do exactly what I want all day. I don't know what
would happen if the company failed. It's just not an option.

~~~
Kalium
> Maybe there is an element of mental illness, I don't know. I had lunch with
> a psychologist once and he tried saying, "Seriously, listen to me, you are
> mentally ill." I guess he thought I was crazy - maybe I am - but I never
> went in to see him. I had no interest in altering my mind with drugs. I like
> who I am, even when it is difficult to interoperate with the rest of
> society.

Err. Psychologists don't use drugs. Perhaps you should reconsider this one.

~~~
austenallred
I actually think I'm using the wrong word. I don't think he was a
psychologist, because he mostly talked about drugs I could take.

~~~
Kalium
The word you want is _probably_ psychiatrist.

Some things, it turns out, are best addressed chemically.

~~~
marincounty
Ah--it's not so cut and dry anymore. The Psychiatry profession, along with the
drug companies are trying to climb out of a deep hole of bad science. The
standard chemical treatment protocol is an art. There are no hard and fast
truths in Psychiatry anymore.

Efficacy of drugs used to treat seriously ill Clinically Depressed patients;
slightly better than placebo, and that might be stretching the data?

Drugs used to treat anxiety; the one's that work, for awhile, are addictive.

It seems like every few months, a researcher is questioning "best addressed
chemically" approach. This month is long term use of antipsychotics on
Schizophrenics: maybe these drugs affect the long term quality of life?

[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8687423&fileId=S0033291712000220)

~~~
cbd1984
> This month is long term use of antipsychotics on Schizophrenics: maybe these
> drugs affect the long term quality of life?

So does untreated schizophrenia.

~~~
anon4
Of course. The question isn't "do we stop treating schizophrenia", it's
"should we, and how can we, transition the patient off of drugs that are
potentially harmful in the long term".

------
sanoli
When I was in my 20's I knew and hung out with a bunch of hobos like these.
They were all (yes, ALL) middle/lower middle class, white, fairly well
educated (completed high school). They all lived this way by choice. They all
could get a job if they wanted to, but thought normal life/capitalism/the
system/wathever "sucked". And they all depended on the system/wathever for
their basic needs, or when shit hit the fan (needing a hospital, or the police
in extreme cases, which happened eventually). So yeah, they could get a job.
But also, our society makes this lifestyle possible, and it does have its
pros. They had lots of free time, lots of freedom to go anywhere they wanted
to, no responsibility, no bills to match at the end of the month, etc. But
they weren't there because "you don't know what it's like".

Also, the ones who developed alcoholism or serious drug problems didn't have
the stuff before. They got it through the lifestyle.

~~~
verbin217
You apparently "don't know what it's like" to have something in your life that
causes their state of mind. We shouldn't condemn them for _choosing_ this
lifestyle. Especially not when their alternative is likely minimum wage with
no apparent escape. It does suck and they're expressing just how badly it
sucks by choosing to be homeless. Good for them.

~~~
sanoli
No, you're not getting it. Most of the people I knew could go to college if
they wanted to. Their families would have supported them, or at least helped
them out quite a bit. To give you an example, two guys I knew wanted out of
it. They got a job making minimum wage while they attended welding school.
They make enough to live very comfortably these days.

Some, but only a minority, really had not much of a choice. Either their
family was very fucked-up and had botched their upbringing pretty bad, or they
had gone down too low on drugs/alcohol.

And I'm not condemning them for choosing this lifestyle. Like I said, it does
have its pros. It can be a good, exciting life, especially since you're in the
US, where you can get a lot of society's excesses for free, when they are
discarded.

~~~
derefr
"Could have if they wanted to" is the core signature of ADHD.

Imagine knowing that there are lots of things you _could, theoretically_ do
with the resources you have at your disposal—but having none of the
"willpower" thing that lets people do things that are even slightly boring or
unpleasant in the short term.

Imagine wanting to learn skills that require practice, but being unable to
invoke whatever mysterious forces cause this "practice" to happen.

Imagine being amazing at stupid skills that you got because their training
mechanisms involve short reward loops (for example, video games) and _knowing_
your own potential, and hearing over and over everyone around you tell you
about that potential and encouraging you to use it, but just feeling a stab of
"ugh" whenever you even consider starting that is utterly insurmountable.

Imagine, even, having skills that could get you a great, well-paying job (e.g.
programming—something, as it turns out, that has a short-reward-loop method of
learning) but then just not being able to work up the desire to apply for a
job; to go to the interviews you applied for; to come to work on time each
day; to do anything other than surf the Internet once you're there.

This isn't abstract to me—

I failed out of university. I was homeless on-and-off for a year and a half. I
went back to live with my parents for a year. Then (at the age of 24) I got
diagnosed with ADHD and put on a medication for it.

Now, two years later, I'm making $250K/yr working as a CTO for a financial
startup.

Many people I met while homeless, looking back, also had all the signs of
having had ADHD—or, if not that, then major depression, or a social anxiety
disorder. None of them thought of themselves as having a condition; they just
"didn't want to work." They didn't realize that what they "wanted" was in
large part a function of what they would or would not flinch away from because
of pain; and that their pain response to attempting certain things was not a
matter of "character", not and not something they had failed to learn or
needed to "work through", but a treatable handicap, like nearsightedness.

I wish I could take every one of them to the same psychiatrist I went to, but
it took me eight months on a waiting list to talk to them. There are far, far
too few practicing psychiatrists to help all the people that need help.
Something about this needs to change.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Man that hits home, only I'm still 24 with a complete lack of motivation.

I keep telling myself that I'm using it as an excuse and that it's really
laziness, but if I'm intellectually honest with myself I don't really believe
that. It's like I miss some hormone that motivates me, similar to perhaps a
gay person missing the sexual attraction to the opposite sex and not having
any way to change that, in a world where nobody is gay and nobody gets why you
don't have that genuine, inherent attraction.

Feel free to elaborate a bit on how you eventually got out of this if you'd
like, I'd love to hear more. Perhaps it'll help me, too.

Thanks for sharing in any case :)

~~~
AustinG08
I used to struggle with motivation. Especially at your age (I'm about to 30).
Motivation is a byproduct of discipline. You need to integrate some kind of
discipline in your life.

Something huge that changed my work ethic was when I bought a whiteboard. I
always have two lists on it. One of the lists is "Everything I need to do."
This has things like 'pay my taxes by X date', 'call my insurance company and
find y out', 'start this project', 'build that dream car i have always wanted
to build'. Some of the stuff might always be on it, at which point I can start
really looking at those things and figuring out whether I plan on doing them,
how bad I want to do it, and if it's worth my time vs the other stuff I want
to do.

The second list is titled "Today", and always leads with today's date. Under
that are things that I should really do today, or at least try to start. Some
times the things on it roll over to the following day, sometimes they get
dropped back into the larger 'everything' list. But when I do something,
whether it's "Take out the trash", or "Call Person X", I get to cross that
thing off the list. It stays crossed out for the whole day until that night
when I reassess my everything list, erase crossed out items, change the
current date, etc. It has helped me stay on task and get things done
tremendously. The whiteboard has had a tremendous impact on my productivity.

~~~
Karunamon
This is a completely separate problem than the GP poster described, and comes
off as rather insensitive too, considering they described, yknow, _getting on
medication to fix their broken neurochemistry_.

I'm serious sir/madam, few good insights ever come of the form "You have
$difficult_problem, you just need to do X to solve it".

Personal example: I get done the stuff that I _need_ to do, but for a good
chunk of it, I hate every single minute of it. Example: I just got done with a
number of uni assignments - they were not difficult, the material wasn't
uninteresting, but I already knew the info, I already knew I already knew the
info, so going through the motions to actually get credit for it _sucks_. As
in "God, I wish I was doing just about anything else right now"-level sucks.

The way they described that bolt of "ugh" that stops any motivation to do
anything substantial? That is my fucking life right now, and I can't put down
into words how much I want to get that part of me changed. All the whiteboards
and organized-ness and "discipline" in the world only ensures that you're
getting things done (going through the motions) - it does nothing to ensure
that you will enjoy the process or even necessarily the results of the
process.

If you hate everything you have to do, what's the point in living?

~~~
sliverstorm
How do you know IkmoIkmo has broken neurochemistry? People with ADHD struggle
with motivation. But perfectly normal people struggle with motivation too.
There's a difference, but can you see it in a fifty-word post on the internet?

As for the drudgery of University and crappy assignments- what, do you imagine
"neurotypical" people _love_ to do banal assignments that are below their
skill level? _Everybody_ hates make-work.

The risk with all this is that manic depression, ADHD, etc are mostly an
extreme form of things we _all_ experience, so it's not hard for people to
convince themselves they have it.

As for finding enjoyment- University can be a slog. But I found once I had
climbed high enough (and managed to drive myself to do the un-fun parts) it
became rewarding. The thing is a lot of school is building foundations; the
fun part comes later. That said, if your major is _completely_ un-fun, you
should reconsider your track. E.g., as much as advanced math was a complete
chore for me, I _knew_ I loved to design circuits, and I tinkered with them
through all of University.

You haven't known "God, I wish I was doing just about anything else right now"
until it's June, sunny, and 75 outside, and you are sitting through a four-
hour-solid lecture on linear algebra. But it was worth it.

~~~
derefr
> do you imagine "neurotypical" people love to do banal assignments that are
> below their skill level?

Actually, yes. I say this for the simple reason that dopaminergic stimulants
make banal things fun, with a linear correlation to the degree of their
dosage. Everyone loves cleaning their apartment on enough Adderall.

If the dopamine-receptor-deficiency hypothesis of ADHD holds true (and it's a
far stronger hypothesis than anything about depression et al.), then
dopaminergic stimulants will act to emulate the neurochemistry of someone
whose dopamine "set point" is naturally higher.

Or, in other words, a person with ADHD, taking a properly-calibrated dose of
an ADHD medication, should experience the same level of motivation as a
neurotypical person.

Which _implies_ that if there is something that a particular dosage of a
dopaminergic stimulant makes enjoyable, then people who naturally produce the
same amount of dopamine endogenously will _also_ find that task enjoyable.
There are people who just love cleaning their houses, love banal assignments,
love paperwork and bureaucracy. ("Love" being a bit strong—they experience no
pain from it, and can get into a flow state from it somewhat like a video
game. They probably won't say they enjoyed it, but they probably won't say
they feel like they wasted time, either.)

The weird insight one gets from this is: _if_ dopamine-receptor imbalance
forms a normal distribution (as many people have more dopamine than is
neurotypical, as have less), then there are a whole lot of people walking
around who really enjoy make-work. And _some of them make policy decisions._

~~~
AustinG08
> do you imagine "neurotypical" people love to do banal assignments that are
> below their skill level? Actually, yes.

Actually, no.

~~~
derefr
Not objectively/absolutely banal. _Relatively more_ banal, compared to the
things people with ADHD can enjoy doing. There is a margin of things that are
banal to people with ADHD but not to neurotypical people, just as there is a
margin of things that are banal to neurotypical people but not to manic
people. (Have you ever seen a crackhead picking at the floor trying to find
bits of crack they might have dropped? [A common sight in my city, if you're
wondering.] They can do it for 30 minutes with no chance of finding anything,
not getting the slightest bit bored. Banal!)

------
jokoon
Basically those guys just give up on how they're expected to live: work hard,
pay a mortgage, get a job, consume, be polite, don't have too much fun, don't
ask too many questions, be a good person.

They're not completely unable to avoid homelessness, but they don't see that
what their country is offering them is a fair or interesting deal. The future
is just depressing in terms of opportunity and economics, so to me, those guys
just give up, and they're not to blame. It's their country who betrayed them,
pure and simple.

I too feel that I'm often being blamed for my lack of motivation and
discipline of work, but to be honest, I'm not seeing anything in society that
makes sense at all, so living lifeby not adhering to the common capitalist
pillars seems risky at first, but with the recession and the economical
context, it makes totally sense, and if the country fails because of it, I
don't think I could be accused for it.

~~~
iiiggglll
This is the future that awaits millions more as automation marches forwards.

~~~
arrrg
Rethinking capitalism seems like the only option, then. (Well, this shouldn’t
be surprising … it’s been happening ever since the start of the industrial
solution. Markets are pretty awesome and can be extremely useful, no doubt.
However, I would transition to just seeing them as a useful tool that can be
more effective than potential alternatives in certain situations. Just not the
be all, end all, that’s it. Seems simple enough to me, and also already the
accepted truth, more or less, pretty much everywhere anyway, if you look at
practical implementations of economies.)

~~~
sukilot
There will always be plenty of useful jobs to do, if there is money given to
fund it: picking up litter, gardening public spaces, TSA, etc

------
Rhapso
The cold hard reality is that in most US states 10%+ of people ages 18-30
cannot get a job doing anything. High skill jobs are inaccessible to many
people without extensive training and low skill jobs are highly competitive
and people with more experience get them. We are in a crisis and will be
looking at an unemployed generation soon.

I'm a lot luckier than most of the people my age in georgia. I've also
dedicated my life and made a lot of sacrifices to get here that society told
us as we grew up were unnecessary and irrational. The narrative we got was "go
to college then it is easy to get a job" when the reality is that people are
graduating college and facing unemployment. As somebody that teaches in a
university setting it is soul crushing.

------
aaronchall
I chose to "live rough" for about a month before I found an affordable room to
live in when I first got to NYC. But I was bootstrapping my move to NYC.

This past Saturday, I served homeless from a soup kitchen in Harlem. Most of
the people we served were on their own, and a sizable minority were loopy.
Some of them probably weren't homeless.

Anecdotally, I know a guy (who I tried to help again and again) whose bad
decisions and self-sabotage screwed up all of his chances. He has lost job
after job. And he has two kids he can't/won't support.

Whenever he gets a chance, i.e., someone hires him, he works a max of two
weeks, then gets trashed on his first bit of money and gets immediately fired
because he doesn't show up for work. And he'll live on the street, in a tent
in the woods, or where-ever he can keep his head out of the rain.

It's hard for me to drum up much sympathy for him and others like him.

Then there's people who make poor educational decisions, family planning
decisions, and financial decisions, who live paycheck to paycheck, then lose
their jobs simply due to changes the economy - they may have made sub-optimal
economic decisions. Or there could be health problems that destroy their
finances, and but for the grace of God many others of us could be in their
shoes. And they deserve to have some help, and I even give my own money (my
after-tax income) to help people like that. They don't deserve to be thrown
out of their house. What they need is a second chance and the help from those
of us who could easily be in their situations.

We need to try to get the aid to those deserving, as opposed to the wastrels
in the earlier example of my "friend," and similar lifestyle hobos, or in the
case of those who are making a conscious bootstrapping decision like Austen
and myself.

This is America (or perhaps, a civilized global society). We don't let people
starve in the streets.

~~~
eigenvector
> We need to try to get the aid to those deserving, as opposed to the wastrels
> in the earlier example of my "friend," and similar lifestyle hobos, or in
> the case of those who are making a conscious bootstrapping decision like
> Austen and myself.

The easiest way to do that is to just help everybody. The money we already
spend on welfare is enough to provide basic assistance to everybody, without
wasting money on figuring out who doesn't deserve it and crafting elaborate
schemes to keep them out. Not to mention that even when people are self-
destructive like your acquaintance, helping them out can still be cheaper than
dealing with the costs of their homelessness, like constant interactions with
police and ER trips because they don't have a warm, sheltered place to sleep.

Our welfare systems are designed around a fear of free-riders, rather than to
be simple and easy to administer.

Soup kitchens are a perfect example - sure, there's always a few people there
who don't really NEED it, but trying to keep them out would be inefficient and
use up more resources than the $2-3 of food they're getting.

~~~
aaronchall
Soup kitchens are on one end of the spectrum. You're right, there were people
there who kept coming back for loaves of bread and more bananas, and more
punch and lemonade, and we just gave it to them. They just had to stand in
line again. And I don't begrudge giving more bread away, that _is_ its
purpose, and I hope it finds its way into the mouths of those who need it.

If people will abuse that system, they'll abuse them all, and I think the cost
of preventing welfare abuse is worth it.

In welfare-state Britain of the 70's, they had multiple generations on public
assistance and in public housing who were proud, as a culture, of their
unproductivity, which led to the backlash that brought Margaret Thatcher and
the Conservatives into power.

Bottomline: if you want to ensure the deserving get your tax dollars
consistently over time, you _must_ guard against fraud, abuse, and
overindulgence, or the public backlash may deprive even the deserving.

------
kaitai
The article was interesting, and the title does say it's talking about hobo
culture. As I watch the HN discussion unfold, though, I want to point out that
41% of the homeless in the US are families. These folks aren't usually hobos
-- hard to get the 4-year-old to run fast enough to catch a freight train.
It's a very different lifestyle since families aren't generally throwing off
the strictures of society to live in freedom, but instead desperately trying
to rejoin.

[http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessnes...](http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness)

------
dghughes
In my small city for decades there were maybe two homeless people in their 50s
or 60s who would ask for change they were alcoholics everyone knew them in my
small city. Eventually they either died or got help.

Now within the last five years there has been a massive increase in street
beggars all in their 20s. They get a milk crate and sit on it all day at a
busy corner with a cardboard sign "need food".

There is a group of three who come here every year from somewhere? Two guys
and a girl who go to the median at street intersections and put up a sign walk
down the line of cars looking for money.

When fall came they would all leave but now it's a year round thing every day
even in the winter.

I talked to a few of them one guy in particular was (?) a bit older my age,
mid 40s, he said he had a bad back, a catheter, his guitar was smashed so he
was asking for more money for that I think someone gave him one. Then he was
on the news a few times and it seems he was fairly well-known guitar player.
I'm not sure where he went but I know many people tried to help, I said I knew
of some jobs, but it seems he disappeared when the police wanted him due to a
warrant or something like that. Local news
[http://goo.gl/eBXSv6](http://goo.gl/eBXSv6) His bio on CBC
[http://goo.gl/OxF9eu](http://goo.gl/OxF9eu)

This is all rather shocking for this small town it has been so sudden, and
it's new faces from away not locals. It seems word is out that people are
generous here and they are you often see people giving money.

I agree it seems to be 99% Millennials it's as if someone flipped a switch
five years ago and suddenly homeless people at every second corner asking for
money.

------
giancarlostoro
We used to feed the homeless for as long as we could afford to do so, we were
our own non-profit, so feeding the homeless came out of pocket. In any regard,
we would go out at night when they would be sleeping on the concrete in
downtown Orlando (Florida), and downtown Kissimmee, some choose to be
homeless, some don't even want to be homeless, they'll tell you their story
with tears on their eyes. You can't just decide to judge whether a homeless
man is there because they chose to be without actually talking to them. You
really can't. We helped some of them find homes, others find their way back
home. The homeless people are like your family, they need to be taken care of
too, but not everyone is willing to put their heart out for someone else.

Everywhere I go, if I see a homeless person asking for money I offer them any
food I have in my car. You don't have to give them money, food is valuable as
well. If they don't want it, it's their loss.

------
stegosaurus
Some have posted along the lines of asking 'wouldn't it be easy to just get a
fast food job' \- seemingly entirely missing the point.

Most minimum wage jobs in the UK are worse than nothing at all. A month or
two's salary saved would get you a year of hiking around Europe and sleeping
rough. Perhaps my neurochemistry is atypical but I see the latter as
absolutely better.

The idea of low-paid work as a stepping stone is generally nonsense outside of
a few select cases too. At large corporations management generally operate on
a different 'tier' (e.g. graduate scheme, direct entry from university).
Professionals are educated; going from McDonalds to surgeon requires going to
school first; the minimum wage job will not help you save for those fees
unless you have bank of Mum and Dad on your side.

Das Kapital covers this well. Labourers must be coerced into labouring; if
they are able to provide for themselves they will, and this is a rational
choice.

------
sosuke
Do we need a new word for homeless then? When I think homeless I think the
inability to find work, maintain work, or earn a living. This feels like a
choice. The same feeling I got when I saw an able bodied young homeless person
asking for organic dog food. That does not look like what I've come to
associate with homelessness.

~~~
astazangasta
Do you seriously think this is the first time in history that working people
have been homeless? Travel around the world sometime; the continuum of poverty
includes many different statuses. Why should homeless people not be as capable
as other people of having desires, like wanting good food for their dog?

Living on the street is dangerous. You risk exposure, robbery, disease. The
threat of rape is constant. If this "feels like a choice" to you, you're
ignorant of what's involved. As the article itself says:

> If you want to say I chose to become homeless and sleep on the streets,
> really all I have to say is fuck you. You’ve never experienced it.

~~~
raldi
Wow, you're really going after a strawman here. The comment you're replying to
didn't claim what you seem to think it claimed.

All it was calling for is a distinction between people living on the streets
because it's fun versus people living on the streets because they must. It
muddies the mind to lump them all together in one group called "the homeless".

~~~
fennecfoxen
For that matter... I'm working for a consulting firm right now with a job that
is up to 100% travel. Some of my coworkers are "homeless", in that they don't
have any fixed abode: travel and hotel rooms for 5-6 nights a week can be
expensed to the client, so they just go to the beach, go skiing, or visit
family on the weekend.

Of course, this is hardly the traditional state of deprivation you hear
associated with "homelessness". I mention it not just to add a data point and
widen the spectrum of "homeless", but also to point out that it's still a bit
of a challenge to maintain formal relationships with institutions like banks,
insurance companies, and the government when you don't have a permanent
address -- even for someone with plentiful resources, in the email era, with
readily available Internet.

Perhaps this will continue to improve in years to come, and the (traditionally
deprived) homeless will also benefit.

------
sanoli
One thing I forgot to say on my post: I lived in the US, and I grew up and
again now live in a third world country. The difference in homeless population
is that in my shitty country the homeless are truly poor and most, really most
of the time come from broken homes, substance abuse, physical abuse, etc.
Apart from some hippies who live by selling their handcrafts, you're homeless
because you had no choice. Living in the streets is so dangerous and such a
shitty experience that no one really chooses it.

------
exabrial
I volunteer at a free diner to feed the homeless. It puts knots in my stomach
to see someone intentionally freeload while other suffer with addiction,
health problems, mental disease, childhood abuse/trauma... These people didn't
choose this life.

If you can afford a $70 phone bill every month and post on reddit, you likely
also could probably flip burgers. In that case, you're not homeless: you're
lazy and a sleeze.

~~~
Hytosys
How do you get to pass such judgement on people? There is empathy to be had
for everyone, especially those who are commonly quickly dismissed. I
understand that you interact with the very people you call "lazy" and
"sleazy", but I'm in denial that you understand the intricacies of their
hardships. It is documented that the overwhelming majority of homeless do
indeed suffer from mental disorders and abusive pasts. It should not be a
surprise that the people who can afford a phone bill greatly overlap with the
"sufferers".

------
ChikkaChiChi
Homelessness is a very real problem with people in dire, sometimes life
threatening situations, that we all could do more to help. Addiction
rehabilitation, mental health services, elder care, and other forms of welfare
that allow society to remain civilized are important vectors that help us help
each other.

Your very existence in this ecosystem as a tourist bears no fruit of goodwill.
You are a bad person.

------
EvenThisAcronym
I feel like internet news sites and comments sections have become bizarre
parodies of themselves.

------
mkhpalm
Weird, out of all their problems I would think charging a cell phone would be
the easiest. Laptop, car, food, place to sleep, etc.. thats all seems like the
hard stuff for me. I just have a super cheap solar panel that charges my
phone.

------
fsloth
Wow, my respect of the utility of reddit just soared after reading this.

------
pw
Did any of you grow up in danger of homelessness?

~~~
spacemanmatt
A paycheck or few away.

------
vdm
Interesting that the scarce commodity is power, more so than the network, just
like in the developing world. Perhaps USB-C will help.

------
paulhauggis
"If you want to say I chose to become homeless and sleep on the streets,
really all I have to say is fuck you. You’ve never experienced it.”"

If this is a truthful statement, why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent
out a cheap room? He seems like he is sane and with the ability to work a
labor job or a job at a fast-food restaurant.

Even on minimum wage, you could rent out a room on craigslist or a hotel for a
weekly rate (I did this before and the prices haven't changed much). There are
options for physically and mentally able individuals to get a roof over their
head.

From the bottom of the article: “I’ve become a professional vagabond, and this
is the lifestyle that I love.”

I think many of these people (not all) choose not to get a job because it's
very empowering to live without having to follow many rules. It's a similar
freedom to working for yourself.

~~~
muaddirac
I also found the statements in the leading and final quotes almost absurdly
contradictory. "Fuck you, I didn't choose this, but I love it."

Living in a city with a lot of visible homelessness and panhandling, I
constantly struggle with what the right thing to do is. It seems like the only
way to be sure you're helping is to only ever hand out food, or actually offer
someone a place to stay. I used to hand out money when I had some on hand, but
on reflection it seems irresponsible - what if that $5 is what ends their life
by allowing them to OD or buy unsafe drugs? It could just as easily save their
life by providing food or shelter, but by my reasoning it makes more sense to
cut out the middleman.

Throwing into the mix that some people are choosing this lifestyle for reasons
of "freedom" from society (while simultaneously depending heavily upon its
existence and the generosity of others) just confuses the matter more for me.

If anyone has a good moral framework for this I'd be interested in hearing it.

~~~
rayiner
I always give cash if I have some on hand. Good odds they'll use it to buy a
drink, which is fine because hell, I need a drink after a long day and I'm not
even homeless. And there is a non-zero chance he or she really does need it to
get food or get in from the cold for the night. Wouldn't want to risk not
giving money when there was a genuine need because I'm worried about the case
where there isn't.

~~~
cynicalkane
I'm not an expert, but I've heard from authorities on the subject that the
"deserving homeless" is almost entirely a myth. The scenario of someone who is
down on their luck and has to beg is rare, and they tend to do that for a
relatively short amount of time. The odds are strong that you are giving your
money to a person suffering from substance abuse or mental illness.

Then again, I just moved to New York, and I'm naturally biased towards
interpretations that match my recent personal experience.

~~~
foldr
People with mental health problems and drug addictions also "deserve" to have
enough money to live on. Even if you insist on seeing these things as moral
failings, aren't they already being punished enough?

~~~
cynicalkane
You are arguing against a very insulting straw man, and I would ordinarily not
consider you not worth addressing except that a lot of people apparently think
along the same ridiculous lines.

Panhandlers in major cities are at low risk of not having food available to
them. The idea of the 'starving homeless' is another counterfactual myth, just
as much as the 'deserving homeless'\--but if it really concerns you, there are
far more directly expedient ways of helping them than giving away money.
Services and shelters for the homeless are pretty terrible, but I've never
heard anyone credible say that these services are worse than the shortsighted,
feel-good solution of giving people money they are fundamentally incapable of
spending correctly.

By contrast, it is common for the homeless to die of exposure--not because
they had no shelter available, but because they are mentally ill and fell into
a pattern of denying it to themselves, even on the coldest days.

~~~
tptacek
Look. If you want to give cash to homeless people, do that. If you want to
give to shelters instead, do that. If you want to send your money to Partners
in Health to provide medical care for innocent people in other countries far
worse off than homeless in the US, do that. If you want to give your money to
the Republican party so they can pass legislation restricting same-sex
marriage because that is truly what you believe in, do that. If instead you
want to save your money and ensure your children have an easy time getting
through college: fine. If instead you want to keep it for yourself for your
retirement to ease the burden on the rest of us: also OK. Want to buy 6 PS4
consoles so you can use an HDMI switch to select different games without
reloading them or physically getting up to insert a disk in their drive? Fine
too. Nachos. Fine. Guns. Fine. Meth. Sandwiches. Ferrets. Lightbulbs. Nobody
cares.

Where you lose people is telling _other people_ that they're wrong to give
cash to homeless people.

What's worse is, this thread kicked off with someone laying out in very simple
terms --- terms you didn't really address --- the logic behind giving money on
the street despite not knowing the purposes to which the money would be put.

You can argue however you want, including that people are wrong to give money
on the street, and that it's _not OK_ for them to give to homeless people or
buy ferrets or whatever. But you shouldn't act hurt when people argue back at
you.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Where you lose people is telling other people that they're wrong to give
> cash to homeless people.

Why not? We encourage other people to do things all the time. I certainly
encourage people to vaccinate their kids. Donating money to people who will
immediately spend it on substance abuse is harmful to them. You're making
yourself feel better about how you're SUCH a compassionate person at their
long-term expense.

I laugh at people going, "b-b-but they're still human!!!" Like, do you donate
cash on the street to non-homeless/non-panhandlers too? Yeah they're still
human, why does that mean it's bad if I think about what they'll use my money
for before >>donating<< it? Now if they want to earn money by working for me
in some capacity, sure, they can spend it however they want. That's a
completely different type of transaction.

~~~
tptacek
You may have replied to the wrong comment.

------
sgustard
In previous generations we had a draft to sweep up these kids and send them to
fight in places like Vietnam. Today, with multiple overseas wars underway, our
volunteer army is almost entirely populated with the rural poor, and society
gives urban youth a free pass to lounge in the streets.

