From what I understand, writing can be very lucrative but it is far from guaranteed income. It's like being an actor: sure you can make it big, but there are thousands of actors that don't make enough money to survive without doing other work.

From my vantage, it seems that the homeless community has gotten so large and so widespread that it could spawn and support its own economy. Is there anything that could be traded for services such as washed clothes, security patrol, food gathering, etc?

I keep imagining that assisting the creation of such self-supported services is something that the non-homeless could achieve. I would hope that this would scale naturally, and then naturally result in lifting these individuals out of homelessness. Meanwhile, it would mike homeless life much more comfortable.

Thoughts?