Ask HN: How do I escape homelessness after rebuilding my mental health?

I only have a desktop. I thought about getting office space from the chamber of commerce for 250 per month... and I can use their fridge to save money on food (Greek yogurt, Jimmy Dean sandwiches, and string cheese is all I need)...

1. Ignore the haters.

2. Sell or trade in the desktop for a laptop. Portability and space is your friend. Join a local Facebook "buy nothing" group, and ask for a trade or someone's spare old laptop. Any mobility improvement is a win.

3. Immediately make a free account for Salesforce's Trailhead program https://trailhead.salesforce.com/ and start learning everything you can. Badges can be added to your linkedin, and you should go heavy down the path of force.com development if you can.

4. Once you have a few badges, polish up your linkedin (and resume) and start spamming recruiters for salesforce positions.

The ERP/CRM world pays very well but almost all platforms have a stupidly high barrier to entry, EXCEPT Salesforce. You could have a $100k/yr job in a few months if you follow this path, and then branch out to Oracle or NetSuite or SAP from here.

edits (consolidating advice here for posterity):

I should add that ERP/CRM consulting is largely remote friendly and your prospective employers/consulting firms will probably not give a rip where you live. They never did for me.

Find a coworking space (NOT a chain one like WeWork) in your town. Talk to the owner and explain your situation, ask for a month or two discount while you get your bearings and attend every meetup they have or know about. Meet everyone, tell your story, share your skills. A small community will help take care of you in ways a Chamber of Commerce chapter will not.

If you are not religious, look for an Oddfellows chapter. They may be a resource to you in a similar way as a church congregation.

And if you have skills but they are outdated, you're now competing with every unemployed junior, fresh grad, and old coder on the market. Update your skill set, and ideally focus on skills that are in higher demand and with higher barrier to entry or with a captive audience/market. Differentiating will help with jobseeking.

For extra side income, attend garage/yard/rummage sales and focus on books. Books are great to flip, because you can immediately appraise the quality, scan the ISBN number to find the going rate, and only buy it to flip if it's worth enough.

the hardest advice I've received was to find what you are still hanging on to that is preventing change and let it go.

in that spirit: you don't have shelter. I would say you have nothing to offer your kids right now except your emotional need. their mother (or whoever) can take care of them. you're out, done, kaput. accept the failure and earn their forgiveness sometime the future if you are lucky, not now. the belief that you have or can be something for them today in these circumstances creates the constraint on the location of opportunities in front of you, and they will sense they are your anchor and resent you more for it.

get rid of the desktop computer as well. pawn it and use the money for something useful like a spare phone or battery pack or whatever car things you need, it provides no opportunity.

you need relationships of any kind, somewhere else. get a job selling something, even if it's in a mall kiosk, it doesn't matter, so long as you are in front of people.

this is the harshest advice I can think of. I can't say whether it's good or advisable, but anything else you get can be compared against it. good luck.

Apply to jobs. Go to library and review some of these languages before interviews, you can use the library computer.

Have you been trying to get a stable job as dev or data guy? As this is where you should start. You really just need a stable income, so you can get an apartment and space to live.

Once, you have stable situation you can figure out the rest.

Chamber of Commerce is swimming with other hungry sharks. You'd be better off finding a coworking space (NOT a chain one like WeWork). Talk to the owner and explain your situation, ask for a month or two discount while you get your bearings and attend every meetup they have. Meet everyone, tell your story, share your skills. A small community will help take care of you in ways a CoC will not.