Thanks for the tips. You've been a van dweller for quite a long time, so you know the ropes.
I recently got rejected from TripleByte! I have coded well over a hundred thousand lines of code in my career, including a 1,500 LoC custom AWS deployment system in Node.js 2 months ago. But since I couldn't code Tic-Tac-Toe in 30 minutes for TripleByte, they told me the usual "we won't proceed, but we'll keep your record on file and let you know if any matches come up in the future blah blah blah." I look at the software industry's urge to "move fast and break things" and treat coding like a race (to the bottom), and then I look at all of the big data breaches and devastating security exploits (cough cough WTF is going on over at Intel?) being reported weekly and monthly. And then I draw a straight line between the pressure to code fast and the low quality and high fragility of code in the wild. Coding things slower and fully thinking through your problem domain always produces higher quality than throwing slop against the wall and shipping it.
I used to rely hugely on Craigslist for getting work, but in the past 5-7 years it has become a wasteland. This has hurt me so much, because it used to be pretty easy to get small dev gigs. I wonder where did the dev gig economy move to? I have seen many "Learn To Code" gigs on CL, but never applied. First, I have been shocked that so many of them are near minimum wage. What has happened to our software industry, when we're at the point where we're paying minimum wage to instructors to essentially lie to young people to trick them to take on a bunch of debt for bootcamp thinking they will get six figure jobs? I never applied because it felt like I would be a fraud--who would want to learn to code from a homeless guy? Obviously, the coding thing didn't work out too well since I ended up homeless.
The nearest Costco is really far away from the 3 square mile box where I have been stuck for 2 years. It has killed my meager budget to not be able to buy food in bulk. If only I had storage and a fridge (it's regularly 100 degrees during LA summers), I could live on $50 of beans and rice for a month.
Kind of like a soldier, I walk 5 miles or more a day carrying my gear, so no need for a gym. Ironically I'm probably in the best physical shape of my life. The slimmest I have ever been and the strongest. Since I can't afford to eat any junk food or sugar or fat at all, and can only afford the simplest foods, counter-intuitively I am probably eating healthier than ever in my life. Lack of regular meat does worry me though. I drink whey protein powder when I can afford it. One of the biggest lessons I have learned from being homeless is how little food you actually need to get by. I have found it is healthier to only eat enough to remain a little bit hungry. You get used to the sensation of hunger. The food industry in America makes us binge eat on an extravagant level. Our portions are absurd--always cut it in half or by a third.
I do have a PO Box and instead of pepper spray I have several military surplus knives for self-defense, which may be of questionable legality in LA county. But self-defense in no joke in the area where I'm stranded. I'm in a ghetto area which has multiple foreign gangs and a large homeless population. I once almost got shot by some MS-13 gang bangers. They fired but they missed me lol (gulp). That was scary and the closest call I have ever had and don't want to experience that again.
Getting free food from small restaurants would be awesome, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'm not quite extroverted enough to be able to schmooze the staff to pull that off, but I wish I was.
And you're 100% right about the subliminal message when interacting with the Govt Handout Machine. Every step of the process feels like it presumes you're a benefits scammer and is intentionally designed to dehumanize you and discourage you to go away and make you feel like everything is your own fault. I am in a slightly different situation than 99% of homeless, because I have had a career, and I have paid a few hundred thousand dollars in taxes. I have more than over paid into the system, but when I need help from the Govt, there is nothing, because Trump and the whole permanent criminal class of bandits in DC are too busy spending another $2 trillion dollars on the Pentagon's xmas wishlist.