I’ve been here before and while I don’t wanna take the time to write an entire guide, the short of it is you need to fucking hustle and start now.
As of now you are a goddamn sales agent. Your product is yourself. Always Be Closing and No Means Next are your new mantras. Don’t be afraid to stretch the truth if it means you live another day. Your life is about to be very different and difficult. You are now a pariah. People will not see you as a human being. Get used to that fast and this’ll be easier.
You need to find a place to sleep and get food, that’s paramount. You need to find a way to keep groomed and clean, people are fucking assholes to dirty humans. You need to find a way to clean your clothes, too, because people view you as subhuman if you can’t wash your clothes once a week.
Go to a church. Make up a slightly more tragic back story. Get good at this. People are gonna wanna hear your tale and its gotta mostly conform with their preconceived notions about you but should defy them only in one part or another. They’re gonna be demeaning as shit to you while pretending to be nice, be ready for that and play into it. They love that shit. Be ready to switch churches once the congregation gets bored of helping you, which they will. Christian denominations will probably give you the most in the onset, but also they actually give the fewest shits. Mosques and Hindu temples will give you the best foods, but YMMV on how much assistance they’ll provide.
If you can meet and talk with a Rabbi, this is the best option. No one helped me more directly and honestly than the Rabbim I met on this journey. Everyone else gave what they thought was the Platonic ideal of aid. The Rabbi would listen and try to help like a real friend.
Keep clean. It’s so important for getting a job and recognized as human in society, it’s so wildly important.
You wanna find suits and “nicer” clothes at thrift stores. Don’t worry if they fit poorly, a shitty suit and tie makes you more human in the eyes of society than a ratty t shirt.
Apply to min wage jobs like mad. You can use the church as an address. That’ll mostly fly, but also when you tell the pastor you almost had a job but they needed a physical address, they’ll more than likely tell you to use theirs. Look for places that’ll pay in cash, i.e. aren’t big brand businesses. Retail is mostly big corporations now, don’t discount them entirely, but focus on small business shops like pizzerias or delis. Someplace that isn’t gonna have some binder of SOPs or corporate oversight. Food places are great because they usually have left over shit you can ask to take home. Anything going into the trash, that can be yours.
Once you get a lil bit of money, hoard it. Don’t let anyone know you got cash. You want a car or some other way to travel longer distances so in case things go tits up, you can bail. A $10 a month gym membership gives you a shower and place to shave. Burner phones let you keep in touch and network when you can’t use the computers at the library. Dunno if it still works, but I got a lil cash going doing retail arbitrage via Craigslist and Facebook. Do all your exchanges at a police station. Unless you “look homeless”, then the pigs will harass you. Do it at a Walmart lot with lots of cameras during the day. Don’t get into the drug trade unless you know what you’re doing, you’ll get hurt and bad.
Speaking of substances, don’t turn to drugs. They’re too expensive to really help anything. Booze, though, can be useful in small amounts. It’s extremely calorie dense, and a buzz is nice, but 1) you’re gonna need your wits at all fucking times, 2) no one respects an unhoused drunk
Shoplifting is easy. But don’t do it as your main way to acquire things, do it while buying other stuff to stretch your dollar. Your legitimate purchase is your ticket into the store. Be smart. Look for cameras and employee eyes. Take small things to practice.
High calorie food sources are great when you can’t get much food. So is stuff you can keep in your mouth a long time, helps keep hunger away. Chew jerky was a personal favorite. Bags of nuts are good, too, but be wicked mindful of salt intake and make sure to drink lots of water. Many libraries and parks will have water fountains of some kind.
Convenience store hot dogs are great. They’re cheap and you can abuse the toppings for extra food. Do this when they’re busy so they don’t see you loading the box with relish and tomatoes. You can also buy chips and pour the pump chili and cheese over em if no one is watching you.
Come up with stories to tell pigs as to why you’re sleeping outside (got kicked outta home if you’re young, spouce kicked me out if you’re older, etc). If you get caught, don’t sleep there again for a few weeks. Especially if you’re sleeping in your car, the pigs will take it from you, they are monsters, never ever trust them.
Amazing.
Also, dishwasher gigs are always in high demand and Chefs DNGAF if you’re down & out, 9 out of 10 times if there’s an opening you get a shot, show up on time, do the work, what you do on your own time is up to you. Not the most ideal job for some, you’ll figure that out soon enough. but it gives you some time to get your shit together.
I’ve been in the kitchen for 35 years and still spend my time in the dish pit (but now the dishes are MINE).
One hundred percent. I washed dishes while living outta my car for a while. You can also sneak food off plates if you’re just a lil careful. Finding work where you can eat on the job is a huge blessing. If you can wait tables, that works too. Anything where you can get paid in cash. Cash is king when you can’t have an address for a bank account.
Hehe, also, not gonna lie, I think washing dishes with those overhanging sprayers is kinda fun.
It’s a good zen kind of work, you spend alot of time in your own head.
Most of the guys I knew took care (to go/family meals) of thier guys (outdated phrases but fuck that “team” bullshit. Brigade is also acceptable)
Chefs DNGAF if you’re down and out
Nothing ever changes (literally Orwell!)
Holy shit dude. These are real as fuck answers. I have done a few of these while going through hard times. 💯 on the need to project the right image into some people’s pity systems to get what you need from them. They don’t want the truth or to help you, they just want to feel good about themselves. Same for hygiene and creating the illusion of legitimacy to access resources. There’s a strategy for every level of life - and you need to know which to use once you move up or down.
For real dude it’s fucking eye opening to understand how the world works from that perspective. I could waffle on about how we take so much for granted in our lives, but I think most folks could come to those same conclusions with enough thought.
But being treated like you’re a dingy pet just because you don’t have any money? And realizing you can weaponize that to get a bite to eat?
That shows you what a society really is. And it punches through a lotta the nursery rhymes you get told growing up about kindness and meritocracy.
The main takeaway I got was All Cops Are Bastards.
That’s true, but it’s not enough to get you through homelessness.
Your biggest takeaway should be that you will need to rely on the kindness of strangers, have the confidence to ask for help, and the resilience to do it again when you’re rejected.
And that this cursed world is insanely cruel to the most vulnerable. It’s a condemnation of unimaginable magnitude that we could produce such wealth and wonders and yet still treat people the way we do the unhoused.
Out of curiosity, how are things for you now?
Kickass. I got a fairly decent job, a 2 bedroom apartment I share with a wonderful man, a car from 2021 and right now I’m getting over a cold while I eat Chinese food on the couch while I watch Star Trek. (TNG S05E25, Inner Light, it’s a fucking masterpiece)
I’m fighting the company for some more money, but who isn’t these days?
i dunno, the premise of this question seems to me like homelessness is a riddle that homeless people just have not figured out. im pretty sure that if the answer could be crowdsourced in eight hours from eighty sysadmins on the toilet, it wouldn’t be such an intractable problem
eighty sysadmins on the toilet
I’ll be damned if that isn’t the most succinct and accurate description of Lemmy that I’ve ever seen.
… so that’s why shitposting is such a huge deal on lemmy.
Homelessness is never a choice. It is always circumstantial (i.e. very very bad luck and nobody to turn to for help) or based on something like a mental health or substance abuse disorder.
For me, my homelessness was caused by being abused and then abandoned by my family members and the resultant depression.
I am incredibly lucky that I have had people come through and support me and give me a place to crash and distractions from my misery long enough for me to process it until I could get back to a decent working mental order.
On a purely financial basis I’m doing really fucking good. I made a little over $150,000 last year, I live in a three-story home, I drive a relatively new car and things are generally pretty good for me in that aspect, but I also have practically no friends and very few people that I can rely on that live anywhere near me and there are unseen costs attached with reaching those levels of depression and misery that I don’t have the ability to express in text format.
But yeah if it had just been on me none of that shit would have ever happened in the first place. It wasn’t that I was lazy. It wasn’t that I was miserable. It wasn’t that I was useless. I didn’t have issues with drugs.
I was my high School valedictorian.
I did everything that I was supposed to do the way I was supposed to do it.
I still got to experience several years of homelessness because the people who chose to bring me into this world also chose to use me as a punching bag and then throw me away when I got old enough that if they continued to beat me mercilessly they would go to jail for it.
It took me a total of 12 years to pull myself up out of that funk and get back on solid ground again.
Glad to hear that you’ve done so much better. Hoping that you can surround yourself with people that bring you peace.
It seems like 100% the problem is a lack of support. Substance abuse is tied quite a bit to having a lack of support and connections to healthy people. It’s why things like AA help people, they have access to a real person who cares about their recovery. Bad home life, being abused, mental health leading to homelessness, it all sounds like ways of saying “unsupported and left to the elements.”
For me, it was a lack of internal drive. I’ve been homeless twice. Both times, a lack of drive. But more deeply, that came from a lack of emotional support when I was a child, so you could be right.
I’ve met enough homeless people in San Francisco who live that way on purpose to know that first sentence isn’t 100% true.
Everything we put up with in life is a choice, even if the only other option is bad (i.e. suicide). People in a bad situation may say that they choose it, only in order to maintain a sense of control and personal agency. It’s not really meaningful to say that some homeless people choose to live that way, unless we know what their alternatives are. And if they have options that most people would consider better, I’d argue that they’re not what most people mean by the homeless problem.
No, I mean they have told me they like living like that; not by consequences of their own actions. Like modern day Diogenes. Just a super minimalistic lifestyle that includes not having a home. There is a scene for that kinda thing in San Francisco.
I’ll grant that California might be different because of the climate, but I’ve heard the same thing from people here in the Midwest, and, well, I’m not sure that I believe them. I got the sense that they didn’t leave behind privilege and wealth to live a minimalist life. In a nutshell, they couldn’t just at a whim decide to give it up and do something different.
I’ve got a very small home by choice and it’s amazing. Diogenes knew what was up.
Suicide isn’t an option. I know nobody will believe me, but I’ve done it. I just woke up in a slightly different parallel universe: this one.
Other people die. The self does not. Death only exists out there.
Yikes. That must have been quite the shock! In any case, I still figure that everything we put up with in life is a choice, although the bad alternatives might be prison, starvation, torture, ostracism, or any number of bad things that happen to living people.
Hey! I’m not on the toilet.
right now…
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Thanks for sharing this.
If you live in a blue state, then you get in touch with the housing first types who will get you into a small home and off the street. Then you rebuild your life.
If you live in a red state, you hitchhike to a blue state and do the first step.
I would go the Social Services office and explain my situation. Provided I could prove my identity I would walk out with a couple hundred dollars cash, an address for decent temporary accommodations, and an appointment with a case worker to find a more permanent solution for me.
That’s the security of the Nordic welfare state.
So many plots for series only make sense in the US. Your answer in comparison to many others here show why.
It’s mostly just sad. I don’t mean it in a condescending way. Reading that people would likely just kill themselves, turn to prostitution, do crime, etc.
“That’s communism!”
- The USA, probably
I did this pretty much, except I did have a car and family, but I was stubborn and refused help from my family, so really just the car.
Get to a bigger midwest/ rust belt city (Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St Louis, Cleveland) cost of living is low which is good for you, and in my experience not many people are moving there so tons of people are hiring at jobs with no requirements (I got a job in like 2 days). Try and get two jobs close to each other, probably downtown. You’ll save up money way quicker and have less time to deal with living on the streets.
Find a public park, preferably one with those grills and a water fountain. You can cook food over a fire on thee grill, simple things like oatmeal or ramen. The one I stayed in had bathrooms that were open during the day (at night I just did my business in the woods, used a bag for number 2). It also had an old public building that was closed down but I could climb on top and sleep under the eaves out of sight and the weather. I kept my stuff in my car but I could have kept it there.
For electricity charge you’re stuff at work, and get a backup battery, they’re only like 30 bucks and it’s super important. Libraries are a godsend for a million things, electricity and bathrooms chief among them. After 3 months you should be able to save enough for a shitty apartment and have the job history. Lie if you need to, they won’t check more than your current job 9/10 times.
Go to the library and look up government assistance programs. There are usually some programs to help you, even if you have to jump through miles of hoops.
In the U.S. I would also advise calling 211. It’s a hotline that connects you directly to qualifying government resources.
I was there last year. I sat in the men’s shelter and job hunted. Then I ran my money out at hotels before moving in with a friend from the men’s shelter.
A lot of those other dudes at the men’s shelter who literally couldn’t do a job were basically fucked though. It’s depressing that I can’t do anything for them and they’re all on timers before they gotta face the weather and evil police.
It’s sad how easy it is to tell who’s from the US and EU here.
Basically “you’re fucked, be a criminal or die” versus, “go to the Social Services and tell them you’re homeless”
Very important post. We need solutions, not judgements or moralistic catchphrases that are impossible (bootstraps)
The dirty hippie should get a job.
Don’t be daft. Hippies are smelly. Commies are dirty. Did you not read your Capitalism For Dummies handbook?
If you’re in the US, you’re screwed. If you’re in Europe, you can go to the social services office and they’ll set you up in an apartment and get you on a path to a job or education.
I’m a woman so I would become a temp prostitute. I would avoid hard drugs. Bank roll and buy a van. Live in van. Great success.
did I forget my current skills or they are just not in demand anymore? have govenment programs improved? hows my health?
The point of stating “no in demand job skills” was that I did not want someone who has been a web developer for 20 years write something like:
“Easy! I’d just go to the library and get on Upwork.com and start doing freelance gigs”. <- just an example
ok then.
I am barely holding it together in my nice, comfy life. In that scenario the first thing I would do is look for a nice, high building with roof access.
Not the best thing to suggest to anyone who may be in this situation…
I am not suggesting anything, I answered the question of what I would do.
I realize that. It’s still not a great thing to put out there for those looking for input.
You are allowed to think that.
The prompt was “what would you do” not “what would you advise”
I’d start by checking into a homeless shelter. Then I’d get a job within walking distance. That’s the hard part, the walking distance part.
I was in ALMOST this situation in summer of 2022. I was homeless, and stayed in a shelter, and got myself a job. But I wasn’t penniless. I had maybe a hundred bucks when I started, meaning I could ride the bus to work.
The lower you go, the harder it gets. So my solution would have been impossible without the bus fare.
The shelter had a very early curfew. 6:30 pm or something like that. It would have been impossible to walk to the job simply based on time – about two hours’ walk to and from which wouldn’t leave enough time between wakeup and curfew to get to work, work, and get back.
The lower you go, the harder it gets. That’s one of the most useful things to know about life. If you take a break and you slide back, that break just made your life harder. Below a certain threshold, you can’t climb back up again.
I got out of homelessness, but I had the benefit of mental health, and of being pretty tough already when I became homeless. I guess toughness is an aspect of mental health, so suffice to say I had the key ingredient to get out of that which was mental health. Well, and a functioning philosophy of life.
