Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?

I am a German university student. Through a hobby project of mine i got to talk to a trans women from Tennessee. She seemed genuinely interested in my project and made valueable contributions. However her capability to contribute has plummeted so i asked her what's up. From what i gathered she works as an independent contractor and was barely making ends meet, then her hours were cut by 10 hours per week and she is in the red and her savings were non existent. I was shocked she has been contributing from an linux environment on her mobile phone!

She can't afford getting enough to eat (!!!), her only phone has a broken touch screen, barely works, her car is slowly dying and dangerous to drive. She has been building and rebuilding a computer at home from discraded parts and it keeps failing.

I am honestly at a loss. She seems smart, really interested, has projects which i find promising and interesting on her GitHub. She has an technical understanding of things and is able to find root causes for strange problems not in her area of expertise. Due to homeschooling and religious upbringing i think she has been denied a formal education. She seems to deeply care about how things work, isn't afraid to learn obscure skills (which is how we met) and cares about building tools which make resources observable and accessable. I have been trying to help her put a resume together by "pair programming" her resume on my PC and me sharing the screen over discord.

Do you have any resources, know any resources, ... anything i could do to help her?

A working laptop, a used phone, an interview for a remote junior position, damn even a big box of hygene products and food would help her. I as a university student am not in a position to support her financially and i am not local enough to meaningfully help. As far as i can tell this fate is through no fault of her own.

I can be reached at johann-tobias(at)xn--schg-noa.de .

Most public libraries will have a public workstation where web based editor might be used if that helps. After that, a base chromebook is like 300 bucks new

She is accessing PCs at work and when she is over with friends. Web technology is great for making stuff accessible. That the local library has a reservation system for public "workstations" makes me dubious one could productively programm there. That the computers in many locations are not available on the weekend makes this harder.

> Public computers and WiFi are available at all five branches of the Chattanooga Public Library. Access to the computers is limited to 2 hours per day if other patrons are waiting. Reservations can be made for the next available computer by phone or in person.

This sounds useful. Does that apply to faux "independent contractors" too?

In Germany we have a word "Scheinselbständigkeit". People are formally self-employed/independent contractor which are actually totally dependent and this is used to circumvent social security protections.

I think something like that might be going on here.

It's getting late here in Germany. Thank you for your input so far. I probably should have put the city name (Chattanooga) in the post. Let me hit on the two aspects so far.

My impression is that the US goverment can't really be relied on to help people dig themselves out of such holes. Those social programs are designed to prevent people from starving not put people in a position where they are able to efficiently be able to contribute to society.

I am not aware of substance abuse issues. There is psychological baggage though related to parental abuse and being trans.

Edit: Yeah i should really sleep now.