Homeless shelters often offer the homeless an address. Use this address to get a bank account (you may have to go in to a few branches to find one who accepts the homeless shelter address). Now walk around town and ask for a job in every restaurant/ Cafe/ whatever and give them your CV and ask if they have any jobs. As long as you are smartly dressed and smell fine, you should be able to find a job. Try not to do illegal work - it's often a scam. Shave in the local library with disposable razors when there are hardly any people there. Use this time to wash as well. Now, the bank may need an employers wage slip. Explain to the employer that you need a letter from them for the bank in order to open a bank account stating that you will be working for them soon. Give this letter to the bank. This often works. Try to tell as few people as possible that you are homeless. You will probably have to improvise on these steps. Most importantly and the hardest: remove the victim's mentallity. You are breathing, appreciate everything that you can, even adversity. Nothing is wrong with you. You will look back on this time in the future and be grateful for this. Without it you would not be as strong as you are going to be.
Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
141–150 of 182 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#142Remote Leaf[1] founder here, I would like to offer you three months of free membership, that might help you land a remote job since you have coding skills. We hand-pick thousands of remote jobs from tons of job boards and only sends the ones that apply to you. Just ping me on Twitter and send me an email to avail this :) [1] - https://remoteleaf.com
Thank you for offering practical help to this person.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#143Find a church - neither too big nor too small. Introduce yourself as someone willing to do assist with the IT/ secretarial / etc. in exchange for warm food and a shelter bed. Churches have very large networks. When you get on your feet, and you will, remember who helped you survive.
Churches aren't like that in Europe. They are not communities nor are they huge. A church is an office where a priest and maybe some assisting staff work, and the priest performs weekly some ceremonies. But there is really no community as such.
Which Europe ?
In orthodox churches and especially monasteries it is essentially mandatory to give you a place to sleep while doing some work for them until you get back on your feet.
It also used to be customary for people in villages and towns to always accept a traveler for the night, but not anymore, unfortunately.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#144Oof... Sounds like a shit situation.
Honest advice:
Quit sitting around waiting for life to drop an opportunity in your lap! Create opportunity for yourself! This post is a great start, but keep going. Approach people in real life with the same friendly and open-hearted attitude, just like you've done here, and your situation will improve - and fast.
Anyone who tries to judge your situation and condemn you for it can fuck right off - ignore them.
Many hostels I've stayed in offer work-for-stay arrangements. Where you spend a couple of hours during the day helping clean, making beds, etc, and they give you a bunk to sleep in. This might help you network with some people - make some friends, and get out of your current squatting situation.
One real conversation can change your entire life, if you are open to it
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#145Remote Leaf[1] founder here, I would like to offer you three months of free membership, that might help you land a remote job since you have coding skills. We hand-pick thousands of remote jobs from tons of job boards and only sends the ones that apply to you. Just ping me on Twitter and send me an email to avail this :) [1] - https://remoteleaf.com
C'mon, don't advertise your website on a post where someone's looking for help. If you truly cared and didn't just want to advertise your service you'd have PMd the OP and your comment wouldn't sound so much like a marketing ploy.
I think we should follow the HN guidelines[0] here and interpret the parent comment in the most charitable way possible.
Sure, you can see it as a (very shameless) plug, but the parent has provided a resource -- possibly a very good one -- that could help OP find a job. Even if the parent is almost certainly a bit biased about Remote Leaf, giving some random person on the internet free access to their service in an attempt to help them find a job and figure out how not to be homeless is a really nice gesture.
I know if I ran (or worked for) a company that helped people find a job, and was confronted with someone homeless with skills that match my company's target audience, I'd be thrilled at the opportunity to throw some help their way.
[0] "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Netherlands has a generous social system that I can't access because I'm not actually from here. Then any reason why you are there? Are you allowed to legally work in the Netherlands. > there's not actually any support in the UK for people like me I'm pretty sure there is. 2/3 of British families receive some kind of benefits in Britain. You might have to ask for it. I also suspect there is more to this story (…
> Then any reason why you are there? Are you allowed to legally work in the Netherlands. I am. > I'm pretty sure there is. There's a very complicated system, but tl;dr being unable to find work would cause me to lose benefits and be left without a home. I don't trust that I would be able to find a job, so I would prefer to keep a roof over my head for now. To add to the mess, I'm trans, which means companies (even bi…
That explains a bit more why you're facing such difficulties. Here are some ideas that could help:
Pick a topic that is not very difficult, but not trivial. Let's say "categorization of data" - you wouldn't believe how many companies need that with the latest ML hype. Create a static page with a bit of bio - native english, whatever you know about tech, + talk about categorization, give some examples, etc. Github Pages is free, so that should work. Same on Linkedin and whatever is used in NL. Go to Upwork, Fiver, etc. and apply to all jobs related to this - include your bio, static website, your "examples". Here is an example kind of post, but there should be plenty - https://www.upwork.com/job/Startup-Database-Data-Entry-and-C....
If you can, try to do the above for more topics to increase your chances, from the top of my mind:
- Find websites that do some kind of aggregation but can benefit from manual work - aggregators for jobs, rentals, products, etc. and offer your help.
- Teach english online
- Review product descriptions
- Find leads based on keywords
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#147My resources are US-centric, but this is what I can direct you to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GigWorks/comments/e81eba/welcome/
Hope that helps. Best of luck.
Edit: I will add There's nothing wrong with you. The gig economy is proving to be a painful transition for a lot of people.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#148Since there is no PM on HN and I don't want to make my e-mail address to spambots please contact me via my projects contact form and I'll get back to you to see if I can give you a hand: tbf-rnd.life/contact/
The OP posted their email:
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#149That’s a bit surprising given that the Netherlands has a generous social system. I’ll try as a first step to ask and look for government organizations that could potentially help and give you free stuff. Next, I’ll drop tech for a while. I’ll look for any job that has low or no barrier to entries. Washing cars, cleaning carpets, collecting garbage, etc... These are jobs with little barriers to entry and that will hav…
The Netherlands has a generous social system that I can't access because I'm not actually from here. It happens to be the last place I was in when I was told I didn't have a home or money any more. Going "home" is kinda pointless - there's not actually any support in the UK for people like me, so I'd be sleeping rough there quickly anyway.
This reads like as a eu-citizen you get support: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/work-income/apply-for-benefit/ (should be similiar for other cities) - there is brexit but there is a transition period until the end of 2020: https://www.government.nl/topics/brexit/question-and-answer/...
I would suggest to look for organisations that support you while dealing with the paper stuff but from a quick glance this might be useful (at least health insurance, monthly money, maybe access to some kind of paid training program that fit's your needs).
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#150>. I'm going to be dead in a few months if I can't work something out. why would you be dead? Can't tell if this is a troll post.
I initially had that the same thoughts, but by quickly scanning the person’s comment history, and also seeing that it goes a long way back, it’s clear to me that they’re not a troll. But, yes, I also don’t get (when thinking from my perhaps too strictly rational and pragmatic point of view) what would imply death being only a few months away.
Negative thought spiral. Life is rough for the OP right now; negative thoughts are begetting negative thoughts. I think most folks have been there, with variance in magnitude.