Ask HN: How to survive as a homeless engineer?

A PO box would work in a pinch, but I can see a couple of issues.

The first one is that PO boxes can be expensive and temporary homelessness is already very expensive. Realistically, to stay in a state of temporary homelessness, you need to be in a situation where you can apply for jobs, go to interviews and hop online or on the phone for quick calls. That requires things like a gym membership (for a shower), car parking/maintenance/gas, food and other basics. The example I always like to give is to ask a question. How confident would you feel going into a job interview looking like you slept in your clothes because you did?

Temporary homelessness is also very time consuming. Simply finding a place to hang out is almost a full-time job. With a PO box, you've got to keep paying the rent and find time to go to your box, pay rent, etc.

The second one is one of human contact and love. I've never been homeless but I have some good friends who have been. The lack of pride is already immense. But, apparently, it can also be incredibly lonely, particularly if you're mentally healthier than the mean. Having someone from your past who meets up with you once a week and gives you your mail is a powerful bit of human contact.

Split this list into people you can be honest with and people who you should be guarded with in order to retain a professional front.

Start calling the honest list, starting with the most social, explain your situation and ask them if they can help, that you are happy to trade skill for this, and if they can't help, do they know anyone who can? Use this last question to expand the list.

Also start calling the guarded list, with a strategy for each. These are basically people who you are trying to setup new work with, people you owe money to and therefore need to carefully manage their expectations, and prospective landlords.

One thing that is really important, do not agree to a start date for work until you have organised where it will be done, where you will be sleeping and where you get food from. You are better bartering skill for basic resources from the honest group first, then trying for some well paid work when you have a platform to ensure that you don't fuck it up. Is basically Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Also, until you are stable, you will need to be constantly creating backup plans for your backup plans. Three deep or more is ideal, in spare time try to generate more, and make this a habit.

Always know where you are going to sleep, if where you were going to go to sleep, when where you were going to sleep fucked up, fucks up.

To get back into stable rent may take being a house guest/garage dweller while starting a new job, which is not always stable and you may not be able/want to be completely honest about at a new job, so keep all bases covered.

Is also worth looking at completely gonzo solutions, such as immediately registering a company, as this may make it easier to acquire property to live in and high paid contracts/investment money. Don't do that at the expense of time spent sorting basic needs, but it is really worth spending time on the high gamble, even if it seems utterly ridiculous from your current position, both for the chance it might pay off, and more importantly, for your day to day morale and self-identity otherwise the new conditions can eat away at your mental horizon. Fight the thought of "This is my life now" otherwise it could be.

And if it really comes to it, get some locks and quietly borrow derelict buildings, very very carefully, and do not advertise their existence otherwise you will generate yourself a crew of the crazy and dispossessed extremely rapidly. Tell them about it when you leave, if you want to be nice.

Hope some of this may have helped. Keep your confidence up and go hustle like you have never done before. Good luck to the both of you from someone who has been there. With the right attitude, bits of it can even be 'fun', in the same sort of way that hiking across remote glaciers can be 'fun'.