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Comment by jondubois | Hacker News Reader

I was 'homeless' for a few months (in the sense that I didn't have a home) but for most of that time I had a high enough income that I could afford to stay in AirBnBs. It was a scary experience. At one point I had lost my job, I was about $6000 in debt, in a foreign country, with a 'dependent' spouse (also without job) and I only had about $1000 left on my credit card.

When I hear entrepreneurs talk about how much they risked to build their startup, I roll my eyes.

Once you've had to to do whatever it takes just to be able to afford to keep a roof over your head, what a lot of people call 'risk' actually doesn't seem risky at all. Would they have ended up sleeping on the streets if it didn't work out? It doesn't seem like it.

I understand now that difficulty and hardship are highly subjective. Probably some people would look at my experience and think that I had it easy.

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It is very hard to compare 'risky' (you said that already); I know a fair bit of people who risked their health because of their startup; strokes & heartattacks because of not sleeping and continues, years long high levels of stress. When I see people in a wheelchair at 26, sleeping on the street doesn't sound too bad.

Also I am curious; I read often about the US (I presume you are from there, apologies if not) that people say what you say 'have to live on the streets if it didn't work out'; don't you have friends and family? Friends and/or family would take us in or provide a house until we get out of the hole; don't you have people like that? I read a lot in the news (but news is not very accurate these days) that for instance 60% of Americans couldn't get $1000 in an emergency; I wonder if this is some group where everyone is completely broke or if it's just sensational press.

The author mentions that his grandmother refused to let him live at her house after a falling out. He alluded to his parents being unable to house him. Basically, yes, I'd imagine that most homeless people in the United States don't have reliable family members to live with.

Been down to less than 200 dollars left spanning several credit cards with wife and kids. Never will I dig that hole again.

When I am out of money I am done. Come take what you want.

Don't spend what you don't have. Ever.

> When I am out of money I am done. Come take what you want.

If there is something of yours that I want, it has monetary value, and thus you are not actually out of money until everything that we could possibly want is gone.

Just sayin'.

No house and staying in Airbnb’s isn’t “homeless.”

It fits some definitions of homelessness. You are, for example, considered to be homeless if you are couch surfing and have no permanent address or if you are doubled up illegally with family. This is often termed "hidden homeless."

Rough sleeping is not the only situation that qualifies as homeless. A home is about more than a literal roof over your head.

Michele I always upvote your posts, you are a solid contributor here, ignore the haters upthread.

Most of the interactions here in this discussion have actually been positive. I try to be selective in replying to negative remarks. I don't always get it right. But outright ignoring all of them doesn't seem like the best policy to me.

For one thing, sometimes they bring up good points that legitimately need to be addressed, even if they aren't brought up in a very nice manner. I do my best to focus on replying constructively, though, granted, it can be hard to figure out where to draw that line and sometimes the framing of a remark makes it hard to reply without sounding defensive or something.

For another, if I take a hard policy of "ignoring the haters," then someone not being "nice enough" has committed an unspeakable crime, so to speak. My experience suggests this creates more problems than it solves. It is a form of shunning and I don't really want to do that. It works better to be willing to talk to people who are engaging me about the issues, even if it isn't always sweetness and light.

I continue to try to figure out how to do that in a way that furthers constructive discussion of the issues and without making it overly much about me, but sometimes that isn't obvious to other people. Sometimes people think I am upset and taking it personally when I'm not. I'm just trying to make a larger point and using this detail as an example to further that goal.

I don't know a solution for that. Maybe, someday, I will have everything figured out. But today is not that day. For now, I will continue to muddle forward as best I can, however imperfectly.

Have a great day.

I think what differentiates hopping between airbnbs and being homeless is whether you have the financial means to live in more stable conditions. Living in Airbnb’s could mean you’re a luxury traveler spending $100k+ year on accommodation or it could mean you can only pay for shelter on a day to day basis (ie you hustle for cash every day, convert it to some electronic format, and pay rent on a daily basis). There’s also the case where you can afford a 1room Airbnb in an area but not rent, which I also wouldn’t call homelessness

Agreed.

Homeless colloquially implies it's involuntary and they want but can't afford a more secure place to sleep.

I've technically lived homelessly many times, often while employed, commuting from beautiful campgrounds w/showers in off-seasons or nice hotels.

I know rich people who live entirely out of hotels and airbnb's who are technically homeless. There's a literal meaning to homeless and a figurative one, most people are using the latter.

It's not secure housing, either.

Indeed, but the resource issues are very different.

Very basics are still in play, and secure for periods of time. Plans can be made, changed. And the set of options is broader.

Homelessness, coupled with, or rooted in poverty is a much more difficult thing than hopping from hotel to airbnb, etc... is.

Not that I want to marginalize or judge this excellent thread, or anyone sharing.

Not my intent.

Just some clarity to improve relevancy.

You are objectively wrong.

A homeless individual is defined in section 330(h)(5)(A) as “an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family), including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility (e.g., shelters) that provides temporary living accommodations, and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing.” A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. [Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C., 254b)]

And even if you weren't you should show more kindness to those that experience hardship - because that's what good people do.

In the US, different government departments define homelessness different ways [1]. How and why they came to do that would be a very interesting read. I had looked into this to see what it would take to legally check the "I'm homeless" box on the ACA exemption form, which I believe was under the HHS rule you posted. But that's different from what it would take to get housing assistance from HUD, and that's probably even different than how the average person would define "homeless".

[1] https://www.nhchc.org/faq/official-definition-homelessness/

You rudely preach kindness, for some reason assume that HN and its users are entirely located somewhere in the USA, and seem to think what a word 'objectively' means is how it's defined in some US law.

Do you mind sharing more about your circumstances? I'd like to understand how someone with a high income could become homeless.

I left Australia with the aim of relocating to Europe permanently and I traveled around Europe for a couple of months while staying at AirBnBs and working freelance for a US company (remotely); then for about 6 months I lived in Moscow (Russia) but the work started drying up (and I didn't have much savings left at that point).

I was running out of money and couldn't find a job as a developer in Moscow due to language barriers (also, developers don't get paid very well over there) - I tried to apply for jobs in London from Moscow but recruiters were ignoring my resume (probably because I was in Russia and didn't have a UK phone number). So I decided to fly to London and rent various AirBnBs (changing every week or so) while desperately applying for jobs and attending interviews. Thankfully my risky strategy worked out in the end and I managed to get a decent job and found an apartment in London.

You could have just purchased a UK phone number, couldn’t you?

The company could still figure out that he can't attend an on site interview and he's in Russia.

By the way, Russia is a particularly bad choice. Russians are not permitted to work in London, it's outside of Europe and there is no immigration agreement. The resume won't survive the first pass from HR.

I don't think that's true. In my experience there are many Russians moving to London for software positions. The parent is also not Russian from what I understand.

The company could sponsor a working VISA. It takes a fair amount of paperwork but it's doable.

Remember that you're competing against 300 million Europeans who can move to and work in London overnight. You better have a great profile to be worth the hassle. Forget about low level roles and smaller companies.

Let's ignore for a minute that the parent was not Russian. Having a Russian number is a red flag that the candidate may be abroad and not have the right to work in the UK. It's definitely screened out by HR.

Why do you capitalise ‘VISA’? What do you think it’s an acronym for? It’s just an English word.

Russians are not permitted to work in London

London is full of employed Russians so your information is perhaps outdated.

This would would only have helped me to get past the initial resume screening stage; but the face-to-face interviews are more important. I had to do a lot of face-to-face interviews in order to actually get a job so doing it all remotely while pretending to be a local would probably not have worked out. I did manage to line up a few interviews the week before moving to London; I was generally up front about my situation with recruiters (except for the running out of cash part).

Also, the prospect of ending up homeless in Russia without speaking the language was much more terrifying than being homeless in London; at least I would know how to beg in English lol. So I had a strong incentive to move even though I knew that my situation would become a race against time.

I am surprised you didn't pitch it as a vacation. For example: When they ask... saying "I took a 3-month sabbatical after completing my last contract and am currently traveling extensively. I will be back in London in two weeks after I finish my vacation. However, I am very interested in the role, and would love to do as much of the interview process as possible from here".

I never meet anyone from my actual company until 7 months after being hired... So I guess that just seems normal to me...

> Also, the prospect of ending up homeless in Russia without speaking the language was much more terrifying than being homeless in London;

Isn't that the kind of situation that you can turn up to the Aust consulate and say "Need ticket home!", which they'll generally make happen (for Aust citizens, in actual need).

It's hard to access most services in the UK without proof of a UK address

When I visited the UK (as a tourist), I walked into some phone company's store and walked out 10 mins later with a pay-as-you-go sim card and a UK number, no address or proof of anything other than "I have enough cash for this" needed.

This ^ .

Screwing up in the past and having bad credit would make it nearly impossible to rent a home. You generally need good credit and deposit money. With a high income you could have the deposit but it won't fix your credit.

If you have a high income at least you can get into AirBnBs or hotels, because they don't do credit checks.

Many hotels (the ones I would want to stay in) require a credit card with your name on it, which is a credit check. Many accept debit cards too with your name on it, but I assume opening a bank account also involved a credit check.

If you have a high income it's pretty easy to get a secured credit card or a debit card though.

If you truely have the income paying for several months rent up front will open doors.

do you live in a cold climate ?

I wonder if it would be just ok in a warm place with near zero crime rate.

"zero crime rate" often means "police harass the shit out of homeless folks because their mere presence makes the middle class people uncomfortable".

Police regularly steal and destroy homeless folks' belongings in most major cities. Every time a "tent city" is broken up, it means that everything someone owns that they can't carry on their person is being sent to the dump. Any time a homeless person is arrested, even for small infractions or for warrant violations because they couldn't afford to pay a ticket (I know several homeless folks who've gone to jail because they were ticketed for sleeping on public property and then couldn't pay the ~$300 fine), they probably have to start over when they get out...anything of value they had will be gone.

Homelessness could be much less destructive than it is, but people don't want it to be. They want "tough on crime", they want police to "clean up the streets", etc. Most cities, and their police, are actively out to get you on a daily basis if you're homeless. It just adds to the pile of uncertainty and stress that the very poor endure, and it's part of the cycle that keeps people homeless.

The savage moral superiority complex that so much of the U.S. population has for the homeless is appalling. The Just World Fallacy is a hell of a drug!

There is no such thing as a near zero crime rate for homeless people. Also, just being warm is not sufficient. Homeless people need so much more than that, it's daunting. A short starter list:

  * food & water
  * access to shower
  * laundry
  * medical care
  * dental care
  * education
  * legal advice / support
  * the list goes on...

(disclosure: 16 years of on-again, off-again homelessness as a child and a 6 month period of true homelessness as a young adult -- AirBnbs do not count.)

There is no such thing as a near zero crime rate for homeless people.

Some things that increase safety on the street:

Don't take any disrespect off of anyone. Push back or walk away at the first insult. Otherwise, it escalates.

Try to stay clean and look middle class. Short hair and cleanliness can get you mistaken for a tourist. It helps.

Camping in a wooded area is a good thing. Don't sleep too close to housing. They will call the cops.

Try to not be a trouble-maker yourself. The cops are much less likely to hassle you if you are merely dirt poor and sleeping outside somewhere.

I'll monitor some neighborhood, I really think there are spots with very few people there at night yet with a bit of space and benches to lay at night. Also I'm not in the US, the social climate there might be very different from Europe (more weapons and very sensitive to private property).

> Don't take any disrespect off of anyone. Push back or walk away at the first insult. Otherwise, it escalates.

Pushing back is a fast way to get arrested. No one questions a cop tackling a "crazy homeless guy" who was having an altercation with a fine, upstanding citizen.

Push back doesn't have to be ugly or escalating. It can be subtler and de-escalating. The entire point should be to de-escalate.

It's something I do a lot of. What you want is to avoid standing idly by while people slippery slope you into something super bad.

There was an incident at a library in Fresno where someone working for services sent their people to come "help" us and they were horribly disrespectful and I refused to answer their questions and called them on their rudeness. They went and complained to the librarians who basically sent them away.

After that, all library staff were vastly nicer to us.

Push back doesn't mean calling them names. It means calling out their socially unacceptable behavior.

I also sometimes refused to give my name to strangers who wanted to help and were inappropriately grilling me for information. I would point out that if I weren't homeless, they would never in a million years think it was okay to walk up to me and start peppering me with invasive questions.

That is the walk away part. Obviously, judgement is needed with police, but the general idea is to deescalate and not validate or encourage interaction.

If there is no reward, some work, you can be on your way.

An important concept here is your agency in interactions, dialog.

You do have control of your end of it, and that is a significant contributor to how it all goes. Put simply, there are a lot of options besides righteous indignation. Use them.

Doing that is not taking shit, more like managing it down and away.

Where power differentials are in play, this all matters. Peers, in that sense, allow for more.

These can be life saving when we are vulnerable and lacking resources, friends. Been there in my past. One time, it involved a gun, pointed right at me, loaded.

At that time, my agency, it's implications were never more clear.

The way I see it, being here to talk about it is a nice problem to have. Priorities. Sometimes they end up being really basic.

In my experience, that basic nature, personal agency --what is proper, what may be needed, what that all means, even just seeing the options possible, like all of them, or more than expected, is hard for people who have not had these kinds of experiences.

One week I measured how much water I needed to clean myself top to bottom: two glasses.

I eat low and don't feel hungry (although I don't suffer cold which drains energy fast)

I agree that it can be daunting but I think it's not the quantity it's the regularity of supplies.

> One week I measured how much water I needed to clean myself top to bottom: two glasses.

This measurement is meaningless without calibrating for how dirty you were to start with. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you were mostly clean and presentable, wearing freshly cleaned clothes daily, only needing to wash off some sweat and skin oils.

A person living rough on the streets will probably be wearing dirty clothes for days or weeks, and constantly be exposed to the elements. The grime accumulates, and unless you've reproduced these conditions in your experiment, your figures are unrealistic.

Of course I was talking about water requirement for regular daily showers. It would be stupid to speak about rough dirt.

The context of the parent you were replying to was homeless people, and your reply appears to suggest that they could bathe with a couple glasses of water. It's absurd.

It's not absurd, it was to measure to minimum amount of daily water one needs to maintain hygiene. Some homeless people rely on public bath house which are disgusting and not always available, I know now that I only need two cup of water (and a shower mitt) to do so.

It's irrelevant to the requirements of a homeless person. You're basically not dirty at all living a typical domestic western life spent mostly at a keyboard and indoors.

oh and btw, I didn't mean that as a burden to homeless people, but as a data point. It's worth knowing for everybody else, if you know how few they need, we can all give them a bit every day.

I'll try it on my next forest week

Two glasses of water is perhaps barely enough to wash my (fairly unimpressive) hair with shampoo, and the hand better be steady. Is there some special technique?

True I forgot hairs, maybe I had very short ones at the time. So my comment was for everything else, when I meant top to bottom, I meant scrubbing and washing everything damn clean, not just a quick job.

A bit related too, if you're homeless, cut your hairs. You won't look homeless and you'll need less water :)

Possibly spongebaths and a buzzcut could make that work. But it's quite a goal to work towards. Taking a shower with a closed drain (if you have tub/shower) suggests I'd need a lot more.

Showering is an incredibly wasteful form of bathing, most of the water just goes down the drain doing absolutely nothing.

This is why I used a Glass

Sponges and low standards or 1 gallon glasses

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