My Story as a Homeless Developer

I've been exactly there. You're not making minimum wage when you show up to the farm to pick apricots all day.

Bars - need a bartender license. Yes, you do, nobody is risking it in 2018.

Restaurants, sure, but again, you're not making minimum wage, and if you whiff of hobo you're not working front of house and getting tips.

Cleaning jobs are usually cornered by some immigrant class . If you're an immigrant and have friends/family with the hookup or maybe can speak their language, congrats, you're in (not making minimum wage). If not, move on.

Roofing - you need to bring your own tools. Speaking from experience. Also, this isn't just a "show up and do it job," the shysters that manage to sell shit crews to homeowners never last long, so you'll have to get on with a crew that know what they're doing, and they're not going to want to bring someone on that wants to just do it long enough to "get their feet under them" and then bail. Decent pay, sure, but it's a "career."

Painting - this means standing outside of home depot, just like OP said. Not minimum wage.

Other forms of low skill construction - like what? It's not "low skill," the immigrants you see doing it get trained up by their cousins on the job, and once again, it's bring your own tools.

Landscaping/yard work - market cornered by immigrants and highschoolers. Nobody wants a random hobo mowing their lawn. Maybe you can get on with an immigrant crew. Non-minimum wage.

>unemployment rate so low

Yea, because people are being paid like it's still 1991 (the 2009 raise was putting a finger into a ten meter diameter hole in a dam).

This guy didn't have a family to support him. That's how the immigrants do it, in case anybody is wondering - they stay with families, get jobs due to families, and afford life here because they're all supporting eachother. Random hobo programmer dude is going to have a MUCH harder time scrabbling out of the hole.

Yea, you can scrabble a life, but you're not building a ladder out of the hole for yourself. I'd argue, if you can program, the 3.75/hr you'd make for 3 months is meaningless if you can instead spend that 3 months homeless but then pull a programming job for even a month.

Have you thought about this deeply? Seems like perhaps the experience of being kicked out by grandma because of your atheism has perhaps poisoned religion to you to the extent that now you're so headstrong about denying it that you are missing a huge opportunity to get some stability by simply nodding your head and saying what they want to hear at that shelter. Might be worth sacrificing your principles temporarily to find a place to stay. If you can't do that, try finding a church that will you help you if you agree to at least hear them out - maybe you don't need to profess faith but they'll at least accept you listening to their beliefs (even if deep inside you know nothing they say or do can change your mind, letting them feel that possibility and try might be enough for them to shelter you).

The truth is that small towns are probably one of the worst and best places to be homeless, but a lot of that 'best' comes from churches. So if you're going to lock yourself out from their help, you probably would be better off street begging or something in SF or NYC or some larger city with government assistance for homeless and staying in a non-religious shelter there. Because small towns don't have that government infrastructure, but they do have churches with foodbanks and religious families looking to get someone back on their feet if they can feel that they've turned that person into a Christian.

If you're so passionate about secularism - you could lie about believing, live at that shelter, get your life together, and in 10 years use the income and resources you have then to advocate for secularism or atheism.

My other piece of feedback is remove the secret keys from your GH account (I saw some on your IRC bot), you may be missing out on lots of potential work because that's a huge security flaw (or some other word greater than flaw) - no company will want you to work for them if they think you could expose secrets to the world wide web.

Last - try to do less experimentation with code and more experimentation with your job application process.

If you are repeatedly starting phone screens with your story about needing a car and it isn't working, try something different. You're not going to find many articles on the web telling you to lie about yourself, your history, your reasons for resume gaps, or your home situation. But most people aren't as desperate as you are. Maybe get creative with the truth and sell yourself as something you aren't.

Have you considered just making up an address or choosing a random house address when you put down your place of residence on an application?

Now, some harsh advice: You are being completely unrealistic in your expectation of a remote position while you live in rural Iowa.

Problem 1: Where you are located

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Get out of Iowa. Seriously. The tech-hub effect is real and Iowa has very few job opportunities for programmers. Source: I grew up in rural Iowa and I know how to use Linkedin.

All of the places I've chosen to live in my life have been VERY foot-traffic friendly. Examples of such cities: Denver. Chicago. Portland, Or. San Francisco. Austin. Columbus. Kansas City, MO. Minneapolis. Somewhere you can walk and live without having a car. Places that have companies hiring programmers. You can save a ton of money by not having a car and just using public transit and walking.

Problem 2: Transportation:

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I have NEVER owned a car. I lived in Chicago for 10 years. I took public transit or biked. Saved me thousands of dollars over the years. Why do you want to spend $300/mo on car payments for an asset that is constantly deprecating and has poor resale value while you are struggling to keep a roof over your head?

Problem 3: The Remote Position

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Some harsh advice on this remote position notion: You need to look for another job while learning coding on the side if you want to stick to your guns as a remote developer. I'll enumerate the reasons below:

1. Nobody wants to take a chance on an unproven 20-something programmer for a remote position. Remote positions tend to be for people with a proven track record.

2. Your Linkedin is not filled out enough to compete for remote positions. You don't seem to have had any real programming positions for an extended period of time. You should be going for entry level positions currently.

3. You have no formal education, which can often be substituted for actual work experience. Google touts that they hire TONS of people with no formal degree. Almost 15% (on certain teams)! Yep, degrees don't matter if you're willing to roll the dice on being part of that lucky ( Or extremely brilliant ) 15%!

4. Remote positions are still relatively rare. By limiting yourself to remote positions you are excluding yourself from most possible jobs.

Edit: On the list of great cities to move to, Des Moines is also a viable option.

Homeless colloquially implies it's involuntary and they want but can't afford a more secure place to sleep.

I've technically lived homelessly many times, often while employed, commuting from beautiful campgrounds w/showers in off-seasons or nice hotels.

I know rich people who live entirely out of hotels and airbnb's who are technically homeless. There's a literal meaning to homeless and a figurative one, most people are using the latter.