71–80 of 160 posts
I briefly experienced "freedom" for a few months where I just stopped paying my bills(no expenses). This was dumb later on eg. cc law suits/tanked credit score. But I had the ability to do so(friends/cheap housing/internet access). I learned how to build full stack websites, I was chasing the dream(high traffic ad-revenue based websites). Meanwhile was in the process of failing out of school/fear of how I would pay m…
Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to thing…
Women are a privileged class in America and there is almost no comparison between the lives of men and women any longer because of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not discounting the fact that you have problems in your life. I know what it means to be poor because I have been poor in a 3rd world country . >> People who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed populations There are kids literally dying because they don't have access to healthcare. >> formal education on the topic of homelessness Th…
I dunno why your being so harsh. It's not a competition on who who had the most dreadful circumstances. FYI, the average life expectancy in Papua New Guinea is 64. Homelessness, even in a first world country, is objectively a bad situation to be in regardless. I am thankful to the author for sharing her reality with me. I appreciate her lucidity which is a huge asset I think.
This is what's happening here. Also, all the comments complaining of "whataboutism", "not true scotsman" and so on show a profound lack of empathy with this commenter. You're complaining that this commenter is not showing empathy to OP, when no-one is showing any empathy to his (or other people's) harsher circumstances.
Thanks to covid, I have experienced how it must be to not have fu money. I'm not entirely sure why, but many companies are now hoping to take advantage of the rise in unemployment by trying to lock in highly skilled workers at a low salary. The way those job offers were presented, it seemed like they were feeling like my savior in a shining armor for offering job openings in these challenging times. But they were ask…
> I also really like the scene in Titanic where the rich guy tries to buy his way into a lifeboat and gets told his money won't be worth anything at the bottom of the ocean. In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.
I'm reasonably sure that's because the gates to third class were locked to keep them off the decks and not because first class passengers were successfully bribing staff to let them onto the life boats. So, for me, it doesn't diminish the power of the scene.
The original piece that this was based upon was written at a time when my bank account was locked up for a month by creditors. I was homeless in downtown San Diego, surrounded by modern wealth, and the only cash I had access to was change found on the street and sidewalk as I walked around during the day.
A similar vignette would be a story I remember reading about a plane crash where they ended up burning large quantities of cash to try to avoid freezing to death in the snow-covered mountains.
I was enduring something extreme. It was a tremendous head fuck and I was doing my best to wrap my mind around it. It wasn't easy to come up with similar examples from literature to which other people might relate at all and people tend to think I'm exaggerating when I talk about the facts of my life. They think I'm being a drama queen to state things that happen to be true for me and try to convey what it's like to experience it.
I remember being in a women's day shelter and someone else who was homeless was waving about a five dollar bill and I had no money and no means to get any money and I don't know how to describe how bizarre that was that even other homeless people were so much more comfortably well off than I was that they didn't feel some need to hide that five dollar bill and protect it from the other poor people around them.
And it's like "Just how can anyone in the US be so extremely cut off from money like that in the midst of so much wealth?" But there I was.
And I'm not the only person who is invisibly cut out. Plenty of people can walk past the table where America lays a feast for some, but not others, and they aren't invited to partake and if they touch it they will go to jail for theft. A lot of those other people are People of Color and they serve the feast, but aren't allowed to eat any of it.
The barriers that keep people out are weird and "magical" in that they are invisible and intangible in certain important ways and they run deep. And all these years later, I still don't know how to speak of it effectively as is clearly demonstrated by the numerous scoffing comments in this very discussion.
>> At one time while I was homeless, relatives helped me deal with some of my financial drama >> I was able to resist such pressures and make decisions for myself, including moving my bank account at a later date on terms that made more sense for me, because I had some maneuvering room in the form of food stamps and knowing where I could get a free meal or free clothes. Food stamps didn't cover some essential nonfood…
I'm the author. I'm disabled and the primary provider for my family of three, which includes two disabled sons. I absolutely didn't want to be poor. I'm still poor and I hate every minute of it. I wish desperately that I had more money and I am doing all in my power to resolve my problems and this has been true for years. "First world problem" or not, being homeless in a first world country is still a very real probl…
So, what you write about yourself is only proving gp's point. Amount of social support you receive is on par with 1-st world countries. Which of course doesn't mean you are not poor and your situation isn't tough. In most ways, you are not priveleged.
It is just another dimension of poor that gp is talking about. Where watermelon is not a cost-effective measure, but a luxury.
Sounded strange and offensive, but your perspective sure sounds strange to others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So homelessness is literally killing people. Correlation does not imply causality. I'm pretty sure that an individual's real estate portfolio doesn't play any role in the equation if they experience a health problem that they are unable to treat. Lack of access to healthcare, that's available in pretty much all civilized nations, would do a whole lot of good to bump up life expectancy among the US's homeless popula…
People get literally murdered simply because they are homeless and for no other reason. Health problems that would be readily and easily treated if you were in housing turn into medical emergencies on the street. I'm well aware that correlation does not imply causality. But I also know for a fact that homelessness helps shorten lifespans. And in the US, even if it were the case that we simply dump our dying on the st…
The steps I took to become more happy with my life:
1. Lower my expenses
2. Work from home
3. Work on things I like
4. Work when I want
I'm not rich, but I feel I can do what I want, when I want it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People get literally murdered simply because they are homeless and for no other reason. Health problems that would be readily and easily treated if you were in housing turn into medical emergencies on the street. I'm well aware that correlation does not imply causality. But I also know for a fact that homelessness helps shorten lifespans. And in the US, even if it were the case that we simply dump our dying on the st…
Homelessness alone is only a small factor for that drop in life expectancy. Lack of social bonds is probably way bigger (of course, you probably don't end up homeless if you have strong bonds). There's ample research and evidence showing the lowered life expectancy of housed people with few social connections.
Homelessness is not and has never been purely about a lack of physical shelter. Articles on the topic routinely make a distinction between "homeless" and "unsheltered homeless."
Plenty of homeless people find shelter for the night. So being literally out in the weather all the time is not, per se, the entire definition of homelessness and it never was.
There are many, many ways in which lacking a home -- a fixed address with a sense of belonging -- negatively impacts health.