Getting out of homelessness is extremely difficult. You smell, you can't keep your stuff safe, you can't keep your devices powered on, you can't get constant internet, you may not be able to find a place to sit and work in peace, etc.
It's a catch 22: without a job, no apartment. without an apartment, no job. you need a phone, an apartment/living space, internet, and electricity in order to work as a programmer.
If he is any reliable and ask for help locally, he will get it.
There is more to it than his text.
There are homeless people out there with alcohol addiction or other hard drugs. Schizophrenia untreated etc.
How homeless and helpless is your situation when you still can write a blog post?
Don't get me wrong, people should get/need help but people are not "just" homeless and something is missing in his story.
Like others have mentioned, this is a stepping stone job. I mentioned in my post that I, too, had a rough time as a kid and young guy. I failed out of Vanderbilt after my first year and had to take a job assembling trophies to get back on my feet. Believe me, it doesn't feel good to go from playing frisbee on Alumni Lawn to being back home in my crappy town, making $4.25/hr screwing nuts onto threaded rods for eight hours a day alongside people who never even went to high school. It was humbling but it paid the rent on my shitty apartment and paid for my dialup internet connection, which led to my first tech job at an ISP in 1994. It's been pretty amazing since then.