
Lessons Learned from Writing the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide - DoreenMichele
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/01/lessons-learned-from-writing-san-diego.html
======
endothrowho333
From my own experiences, the author is slightly overstating the danger of
being homeless:

The police -- for the most part -- don't care. As long as you're not causing
trouble (e.g trespassing _and_ getting complaints against you), they just want
you to go away and not cause them any problems either. Maybe it was because I
was white, well-spoken, and generally pleasent, but I've never had issues with
the police during that period in my life.

I was going to write more on how the biggest danger you face homeless is other
homeless (and tweakers!) and _very_ poor sleep, but I don't have the time.

The poor sleep sneaks up on you and slowly erodes your decision-making and
risk-assessment skills and consistantly compromised my ability to make good
decisions, i.e get myself out of that mess. I believe the author experienced
the same, because his belief in the impending danger he felt does not match
the reality of my experiences, but does match a mindset I would fall into
while sleep-deprived.

~~~
xenocyon
Perhaps, but trespassing and getting complained about is something that can
happen fairly easily to a homeless person.

As a young (housed) person I once called the cops on a person sleeping soundly
in the exterior stairwell of my apartment complex - a thoughtless decision on
my part that I now regret. The cops who responded were unnecessarily brutal:
kicking him awake, then demanding he stand against a wall and spread his legs
to be frisked (when there wasn't any reason to suspect a weapon). The
trespasser was compliant and meek throughout, but the cops nonetheless spoke
roughly to him. I later asked myself why I had been so naive as to expect any
other outcome. Since then I've learned better.

And this was in Seattle, where cops are reputedly much gentler than many other
places.

~~~
vkou
> And this was in Seattle, where cops are reputedly much gentler than many
> other places.

SPD are not gentler than many other places. They've been absolutely blasted
for police brutality in a 2011 DOJ investigation. [1]

Now, to SPD's credit, it has been taking steps to improve since then. [2]

What you can count on, though, is them usually ignoring homelessness - _if_
nobody complains. There's just too many homeless people in Seattle for them to
do anything proactive about it.

If somebody does, and it's a slow day, the homeless person in question will
get ran off by them. Law enforcement against the homeless is incredibly
selective, which is one of the reasons why being homeless is so hard - you
always live in fear of being the target of essentially random violence.

You never know if you're actually going to get 8 hours of sleep, or if you're
going to be kicked (Or shouted) awake half-way through it.

[1] [https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Feds-findings-in-
Sea...](https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Feds-findings-in-Seattle-
Police-abuse-2407378.php)

[2] [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/in-major-
ste...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/in-major-step-federal-
monitor-finds-seattle-police-use-of-force-reforms-are-working/)

~~~
catalogia
SPD often ignore matters _even if_ somebody complains.

Two years ago there was a homeless woman in my neighborhood who began
screaming in the middle of the night as though she were being murdered. I
called 911, obviously. An hour later she was still screaming and there were no
police in sight. The next night she was still screaming. A week later she was
still screaming. Thankfully she wasn't being murdered, not that the police
would know, because they never came.

Incidentally this experience gave me a new perspective on the bystander
effect. After I stopped calling 911 because it was accomplishing nothing, what
if one night she really was being murdered? But what is somebody meant to do,
call 911 every night until they stop taking your calls?

~~~
droithomme
A guy down the street was a drug dealer. He would also do meth cooks, which
everyone could smell. He was a polite guy though and didn't seem to have
weapons. However, customers would come to buy drugs, exchanges would take
place right in his front yard. Stuff would go missing around the neighborhood,
apparently stolen by customers who noticed stuff like riding mowers in yards,
and would come back when they needed something to pawn to get cash for drugs.

I regularly called the police department and talk to the narcotics detective.
He'd always say he'd look into it. Neighbors told me it was useless to call
the police. The detective was obviously getting annoyed by my calls.

One day the drug dealer knocks on my door. Tells me no use in calling Steve
(name of narcotics detective) because they have an arrangement and Steve is
getting annoyed by my calls.

A couple years later Detective Steve was arrested in a federal sting. His
entire house was full of drugs and cash.

The drug dealer eventually died of a disease he contracted from needles.

Some squatters moved into that house for a while. Sometimes I'd hear screaming
and gunfire. The property is overgrown now and the last car parked in the yard
has four flat tires. Maybe there's corpses inside the house. Who knows. At
least I don't smell meth cooks anymore. And theft has gone down on the street
now that we don't have customers coming to buy drugs.

So, yeah I no longer call police for anything, they won't do anything and if
you keep calling they consider you a nuisance caller and can create problems
for you. It would be better to stop public funding of police all together and
replace it with either private security contractors hired on a neighborhood by
neighborhood basis, or citizen's patrols like the Guardian Angels, Black
Panthers, or a version of Neighborhood Watch.

~~~
ggcdn
> It would be better to stop public funding of police all together and replace
> it with either private security contractors hired on a neighborhood by
> neighborhood basis, or citizen's patrols like the Guardian Angels, Black
> Panthers, or a version of Neighborhood Watch.

This is a bad take, in my opinion. For the most part, all types of crime have
been steadily declining since the 1990's [0][1][2]. You can't say policing is
ineffective as a whole. There are certainly things to be improved upon,
though.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.png)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burglaries_per_1,000_pop....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burglaries_per_1,000_pop.svg)

~~~
droithomme
Yeah that crime rate decline was not due to better policing though. Most
likely the main factor was the elimination of leaded gasoline.

------
Jamwinner
I just want to quote the most important thing in the article as I have found
personal truth in it generally, in hopes someone who may not read the whole
article may benefit:

"If you are doing things that you wouldn't do if you weren't homeless, you are
probably entrenching your situation. If you are pursuing solutions that you
would use even if you weren't homeless, you are potentially building a
future."

------
virtuous_signal
It is appalling to me that anyone with the caliber of ability this person has,
clear from her writing, ever became homeless in the first place (not that I'm
saying anyone deserves to be homeless).

I do have a few questions though:

>The other reason this website does not list homeless services is because I
became increasingly concerned about creating a website that could serve as an
attractive nuisance. In other words, I didn't want to cause problems for a
particular area by advertising all the free meal sites and the like in that
area and potentially having homeless people from elsewhere flock to that area
and overwhelm their services.

1) How common was this attitude among your fellow homeless? My experience is
that people in American cities rarely feel a sense of "ownership" for keeping
things nice around them, much less homeless people who are probably focused on
survival.

2) Have you been accused of "pulling the ladder up behind you" for not sharing
whatever info you had, and how would you respond to that?

~~~
DoreenMichele
_It is appalling to me that anyone with the caliber of ability this person
has, clear from her writing, ever became homeless in the first place_

I have a serious medical condition. As best I can tell, this is a much more
common root cause of homelessness than the addiction and mental health issues
that get so much more attention.

 _1) How common was this attitude among your fellow homeless? My experience is
that people in American cities rarely feel a sense of "ownership" for keeping
things nice around them, much less homeless people who are probably focused on
survival._

I can't really answer that.

I didn't interact that much with other homeless individuals. I did my best to
stay away from both other homeless individuals and homeless services.

I'm a woman. Most street homeless are male and they were pretty quick to
sexually harass me as one of the few females in their perceived "price range"
so to speak

I also avoided other homeless people for germ control reasons due to the
aforementioned medical condition.

 _2) Have you been accused of "pulling the ladder up behind you" for not
sharing whatever info you had, and how would you respond to that?_

Nope. The San Diego Homeless Survival Guide remains online. Whatever info it
had is still accessible. Everyone who talks to me about such things seems to
see me as a valued homeless advocate.

The Yimby wiki lists multiple of my websites and the local police department
has been handing out my flyers listing my websites for over a year.

[https://www.yimby.wiki/wiki/Homelessness](https://www.yimby.wiki/wiki/Homelessness)

The fact that I've moved on to focusing on other types of info has not gotten
me accused of abandoning the cause because I haven't.

Standard practice in most locales seems to be to share such info via paper
handouts rather than putting it online. I think that's a best practice for
helping local homeless individuals find the resources they need without
creating an attractive nuisance.

~~~
virtuous_signal
Thanks for the detailed responses.

>I have a serious medical condition. As best I can tell, this is a much more
common root cause of homelessness than the addiction and mental health issues
that get so much more attention.

I'm just now realizing that my (and possibly other's) unpleasant interactions
with homeless people probably skewed my sense of how many homeless are
mentally ill or drug addicted -- simply because those are the ones more likely
to accost people on the street.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It's worth noting that I did not appear that competent to most people while I
was homeless because I was so very ill. Although my condition is incurable,
I'm vastly healthier these days.

My comments in online forums were frequently riddled with typos when I was
homeless and often sounded like gibberish.

No matter how smart or well educated you are, being extremely ill will hurt
your ability to perform. This gets compounded by situational factors if you
are also homeless.

------
nelsondev
Apologies if this is covered in another post; but what’s preventing you from
getting a job and getting back into stable housing?

~~~
jshevek
Addressing causes of her prior homelessness, she says:

> I have a serious medical condition. As best I can tell, this is a much more
> common root cause of homelessness than the addiction and mental health
> issues that get so much more attention.

------
stebann
How did this person go homeless in first place? As a person who has a mental
condition and still can purchase its medication, I have always being worried
getting into that situation.

~~~
stebann
I really appreciate that you put this online.

~~~
DoreenMichele
For your edification, I will add that I also made a choice to be homeless.
When I was evicted from my crappy apartment that was contributing to my health
problems and family said "No, you can't come home again." I chose to not look
for another crappy apartment. I chose to sleep in a tent and quit my job and
try to get healthier because my job and crappy housing were barriers to me
getting well.

I didn't think it would take nearly six years to return to conventional
housing. I figured I would be homeless for a few months.

It's much, much easier to just walk away from a job and an apartment than to
find your way back.

Edit: Homelessness often involves some degree of choice, but most homeless
don't want to admit that because it just gets them more crap from people. That
choice might be "I can stay with an abusive spouse or go be homeless. I'd
rather be homeless."

Homelessness is frequently _the lesser evil._ If they had better options
available, they would be thrilled to go with some other option. But they
don't.

Point being: If you genuinely think homelessness is the absolute worst thing,
you probably have other options. They may be less than optimal, but they
likely exist.

~~~
stebann
> If you genuinely think homelessness is the absolute worst thing, you
> probably have other options. They may be less than optimal, but they likely
> exist.

My fears are based on whether I would have the enough resilience and mental
strength to be able to bear with the situation without the drugs that I'm
prescribed to or if the condition just get worst. Actually, if something
happens, I don't have anybody to help me. Thanks for pointing to the decision
process that I was underestimating.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If your condition is responding well to standard treatment and you don't just
hate the side effects so much that you would literally rather sleep in the
bushes than endure the side effects, you may not be at as much risk of
homelessness as you imagine.

It's not uncommon for people on the street with mental health issues to be
homeless precisely because they don't want to take the prescription medication
they are supposed to be on. They then self medicate with street drugs because
they prefer that to the side effects of the drugs they are supposed to be on.

I knew a guy for a time who was on the street for that exact reason. He
preferred marijuana and drugs of that ilk to the drugs he was supposed to be
on for his mental health condition. But this meant he was unemployable.

Some people with mental health issues never find the right cocktail to make
their lives work. If the meds you are on are keeping your condition under
control such that you can function, hold a job, etc., you may not be at high
risk of homelessness.

I've never really seen data on that detail. What I know is "anecdotal." But
I'm skeptical that simply having a mental health issue is really a huge risk
factor for homelessness.

