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

Immediate Steps:

1. Work. Keep driving full-time or more until you pay off the tires, insurance, car payment and amass some savings. Working a lot will keep your mind focused and bring in income while you start to get other things in life in order and apply for other jobs.

2. Living. There are probably great & beautiful campsites in Utah. Probably avoid hotels as much as you can in order to save money. Sleep in your car or better in a tent at a campsite or in a state or national park (backpack out a bit, pitch your tent and sleep). To take showers and exercise, join Planet Fitness or something similar for $10 / month. If you're not familiar with backpacking, it's easy to pitch a tent. Try sierra.com to find a cheap tent and supplies.

Other Living idea: check out couchsurfing.com. Folks will house you for free.

3. Food. If you camp, you can use a small propane powered stove to cook inexpensive meals e.g. rice, beans, pasta, etc. Eat a lot of nuts, inexpensive fruits & vegetables.

4. Get a Laptop. A laptop will be critical to getting a resume ready & sending it out. Check out Free Stuff in Craigslist, NextDoor, or Facebook Marketplace. Check out real cheap laptops (for less than $100) in Craigslist, NextDoor, or Facebook Marketplace.

5. Internet / WiFi / Unlimited Mobile Data. I recommend visible.com for like $25/month. There are tons of places with free WiFi like libraries which you can use as well.

6. Upskilling / Up-job-ing. To get a new job or learn or other things, you'll need a laptop and an internet connection so first get that. If you already have ready programming skills, then you need get your resume together and start applying and or reach out to your network. Make sure you're in a stable position to work both mentally and otherwise before you start this process. You will get tons of job rejections and it will be disheartening because you're working very hard, so be prepared and don't worry, something will eventually work out.

7. Roommate / Living / Health Insurance --> once you have some savings (a few thousand) and a reasonable stream of income at least from driving, you could look for a roommate situation. If you don't have or lost your health insurance, you probably qualify for an affordable health care act plan (off-schedule) and can get that -- list income very low and you won't have to pay much. You could try Medicaid, but I think the affordable care marketplace is probably simpler and you plan anyway to have income soon.

8. Networking. I highly recommend networking with other professionals in your field in your area. One good way to meet them is to join relevant meetups and check for other events. Some meetups on specialized things like ML or online privacy, etc. can have really excellent and relevant attendees you can network with. These are all generally free.

9. AI/ML work. If you already code, you can start tinkering with the AI platforms and such to get some experience. I'd look for a job with your current skills and simultaneously keep learning -- after you get a bit stable via the current driving job.

Those are my thoughts. Feel free to message me if you have any questions or need any resume editing help (ChatGPT is probably a more effective editor than me :-). I'm not in your area, but hopefully other folk in your area are messaging you already with some potential job opportunities. Focus on small steps, small wins. Good luck, you are and will make it.

Get a job that’s not freelance u til you have a home. Restaurant, retail, mechanic shop, whatever that gives you a w4 and a group of people that aren’t assholes.

Reasons: looks good when signing a lease

Likely to get some sort of health insurance I think? I had it in all my w4s in the US. Group of people to start interacting with, you never know what comes out of that. I think out of the options given, retail is the worse for that, but may give you access to bigger companies.

After hours you can do thumbtack like IT for people at home that don’t want to to go geek squad. Old ladies, whatever. I built a pretty decent group when I was younger and it paid pretty well with very low mental effort.

The car is never a good investment unless you work on it yourself. A DIY oil change is $37, at the shop 120 in my area. If you’re living in a car you can’t afford that, so start thinking about dropping uber and Lyft when you can. You could get some used tires for now, otherwise I wouldn’t buy anything but the cheapest Walmart tire.

Sell your desktop. Put it on fb marketplace, get something out of it. You can get a working laptop for almost nothing, unless your pc is ultra undesirable.

Reach out to recycling places, explain your situation, they ,might give you one at cost. If not, eBay, fb.

Take care of your body and looks. Shave, shower, trim your nails, comb your hair or just get a buzz cut, don’t tell people you live in your car unless you’re close to them. Back in Florida $10 at planet fitness or whatever it was called would get you access to a shower and you could also do some exercise that’s good for the mind and the body, maybe there is something like that near you.y

> Start taking on as much contract work doing "freelance tech" that I can find

Why do you think he could find any?