The Homeless Survival Guide

reply to post by LordBaskettIV

---

no transportion out there.... no way to fight the coyotes.... hardly any people,

Yeah one out of the three isn't bad.

Our counselors tell us education is the key to a good job. What you're saying is, that's a lie.

So now what? What's after high school? Looks like I can choose between slavery and homelessness eh? How about emigration? Cannon fodder? Drug dependency?

My dad works hard all the time I never get to see him. That's not right either.

There has got to be a way out of this SLIME.

You're right about pride being a weakness. I could've have probably got out of it all a lot sooner if I had known how to swallow mine. I'm not saying I was proud of living in a hole or eating out of dumpsters, but I didn't have to ask anyone for anything, and I could keep what dignity I still had left for a bit longer. I accepted help when I had no other choice. The officer I spoke of gave me only one option, and I didn't like it at all. I thank him for it now.

If you have family and friends, and an ego that isn't overinflated, ask for help. It will save you months, maybe even years of humiliation, discomfort, and feeling depressed.

I appreciate your apology, and there are no hard feeling at all. I guess to most people a hole in the ground does sound like a rather stupid option. What can I say.. I was stupid and proud. Living like that leaves a lasting impression on you, and makes you a little sensitive. Thanks again for posting.

reply to post by LLoyd45

---

Hey you live and you learn. One upside to your situation though, however bad your situation gets, the better you feel when you get back up. You learn to appreciate things more, small stuff like curtains and blankets, a sink, a washing machine. How wonderful you must feel now. It's probable that you feel the same as you would feel had you hit the lottery in life where you never lived in a hole.

That's how people lose their imagination when they get punished for nothing. My mother's like that scared of everything. That's not right either.

I thought justice and truth are more related than that.

That's a fact. No matter how comfortable my hole was, I still prefers houses.

My lottery was marrying my wife. She really helped me get back on the right path. Now I find myself thinking of others first, rather than myself. I've also learned some humility too

It's not a lie, but a few well-placed connections won't hurt either.

I hope you have more options available to you than that. Military service and drug use are personal choices. I've never been in the military, but as Mr. Mackey says on South Park: Drugs are bad..M'kay

That's too bad. Maybe you and he can find a hoby you can both do, or set aside one day a week just for you guys to talk, or share some quality time together..

I hope so.


[edit on 5/5/08 by LLoyd45]

Great post, I was homeless for 3 weeks, I was blessed to have family and friends, so it didn't last long for me, I'll be prayin for you folks that are homeless, I know it can be tough. Churches are good places to get something to eat, well some churches are, find a small church, they usually preach the right stuff (which is why they are small usually) and see if anyone can help you, go on a sunday at 1 pm or wednesday before 6 pm, or you can attend and people might help you more because you will make friends. You can find work, food and possibly shelter from church folks, the message behind what it's supposed to be is helping others. Bi churches usually don't care much for people who are in need, they mostly just care about making a buck.

Good points though in your survival guide though.

-Jimmy

Excellent thread. Times are tough right now and there's far too many people who have not prepared appropriately and are now faced with the consequences of their inaction. I've never been on the streets but when I was 18 I had the feds after me so I couch surfed for a few months. I would steal food from the local grocery store deli using fake receipts and smoked butts from ashtrays.

As there are already users who have immediate use for this advice let this be a warning to everyone else. Prepare now. Do not be dependent on your job, your dividends, or the Government. You can only depend on yourself.

It sounds like there's quite a few people who have been homeless or had at least a very close brush with it here on ATS. I hope nobody ever needs this type of information, but it can be applied to other scenarios too.

I'd love to see a few more posts from those who survived in wooded or rural areas. I imagine there are similarities, but probably some very interesting difference as well.

That sounds like a really hard life, I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. I am the mother of four small children, I can't imagine letting my ego get in the way of asking for help from my family. Not when it effects my kids like that, kwim? I am fortunate to have family that could help though, not everyone has that.

If you end up in the street the first thing you have to do is to find a squat, just ask/follow some punx and they'll probably help you, squatters have so much tips to live without money and this is why most of them never try to come back in the """"real""""" life, an empty house can become yours, supermarket's garbage are oftenly full of good and totaly eatable food, just beg a bit and you'll can go for party and traveling, some friends are homeless but i can tell you they are more than happy, always on the road and having fun!

I just want to say that end up in the street is not that bad, except maybe in the winter but again there so much tips to get heat, a can+burning alchol=heat for the room.

Find the good fellas and maybe you'll get an entire new better life, one you never dreamed of!!!!

Excellent thread. Very useful; Although, to tell you the truth, you guys either forgot or know something I don't; There's no clean water in the woods. It's very dangerous to drink it straight. Is there a method to this or is it ok (to drink it straight)?

I would interject that that is good advice for anyone wether they are on the street or not. I have said it a million times, "If you look and act like a victim, you are".

[edit on 5-5-2008 by morthn1waytoskinacat]

Great thread, I have also been there and done that. What I found was you also need to work out a network with the more trustworthy homeless people around you. Sure they are looking out for themselves primaraly but if you can manage to find one willing to share the cost of living then it is nothing but a gain for both of you.

I did this with another homeless man, we worked our behinds off at a day labor place and paid for a room two days in advance. The plan was to pay two days three times then the fourth day would be just to get through the rest of the weekend till we got paid on monday again. Our friday check was saved. This led us to be able to put money down on an apartment and we moved in together.

Teamwork is essential for living on the streets. You can't trust everyone but you need someone that will be willing to watch your back if you watch theirs.

I’ve been homeless twice. Well, three times actually, but I don’t count the middle one since it was only for a month or so in the Summer.

I was nineteen the first time. I was living at home with my mother and brother. After my parents divorced, things had gotten really bad. We went without heat a lot of the time, and exchanged canned goods at Christmas time. Part of the roof caved in, and the back wall of my bedroom turned into a sheet of ice. We had no car, there was no public transportation in the suburb, and social services only awarded us $32 a month in foodstamps. I had been going to college and working, but when our car went, that was the end of the line. Well, the real end came that Spring when my father sold the house at a 50% loss.

I did the street thing for a bit, until I found an old pop-up camper out in a field. There were people around, but like the OP said, the trick is to remain unobtrusive if you don’t want to be robbed, attacked, or just run off. It didn’t hurt that there was a homeless camp not too far away that attracted more attention. I did not associate with any of them. Most people never knew I was homeless, even though my job was collecting nickels. I also got some work from a landscaper, but if he didn’t come around by ten A.M., that usually meant that he would be spending his day and whatever money he had at OTB. So I would be on my way. There were a few people who I would talk to who might give me a “hook up” here and there. A burger maybe. One girl at the supermarket used to slide an item or two down the belt that didn’t show up on the receipt.

Winter got rough. Shelters really are bad news. A lot of nights I would lock myself into one of the men’s room stalls at the all-night supermarket, and sleep a few hours sitting there on the toilet. During the day I went to the library a lot. One thing to keep in mind too, is that people don’t usually think twice if they happen to see you asleep somewhere during the day. At night, they will know you are homeless and give you trouble.

Anyway, long story short, I did end up finally getting into an apartment that Winter. A girl I had known from high-school had been kicked out of her house and had a little bit of money and a job. I had more money, and found a job working at a gas station within a few weeks of moving in. It was a nice bit of luck that the job happened to be on the far side of the parking lot from the apartment.

Within a year and a half, the relationship went bad. I was looking to get and stay out of trouble. I had done some things of an entrepreneurial fashion to get by in high-school and wanted to let all of that lifestyle go. She wanted to get deeper into it. So again, long story short, I was homeless once again. Only this time I had a couch to go to at least, and once again I got lucky enough to find a job in walking distance Especially since my beat up old Cadillac coupe decided to die while I was moving out of the other place, leaving everything behind that wouldn’t fit in my trunk in the fifteen minutes the police allowed me. I had paid for everything in the apartment pretty much. All of the furniture and what not. But she got it all because of her superb acting skills and probably some other skills that I won’t elaborate further on. Oh well, I had no place to store furniture anyway.

By this time, my brother had saved up some money and was looking to move out of his girlfriend’s basement. So we got an apartment together. That was many years ago now.

As many of you may know already. I am homeless once again now. But that is for another post another time I think.

Granted that there is no "clean" water in the woods --> flowing above ground <--. A couple of the things that I had while "camping" were a pot and a pan along with some silverware. There were times that I was away from a potable water source. During those times I boiled water. Never used them but I understand there are tablets you can add to water to make it drinkable. I made my stove from 2 cans, toilet paper and rubbing alcohol. Real simple to do. get a can (normal vegi sized) filll it with TP/rags saturate it with the alcohol. take a larger can with a few holes from a canopener (the kind that cuts a triangle shape) around the top sides for airflow. light the inner can, place the larger can over the smaller and presto!!! You have a single burner stove. Also good for heat during cold weather.

Just how I helped myself to "comfort" and a hot meal at night.

reply to post by jackinthebox

---

As a kid we were homeless a few times. I grew up in a very dirt poor single mother house. We were in shelters not on the streets but it still was not fun. I told you what I am doing. I have buckled down big..I dont spend money right now and Im getting the garden action going...freaking seeds are getting expensive its pathetic. GWB is a moron and I cant wait till he gets our (sorry I had to throw that in) Im doing a complete 180 in my life from eating out every night driving fancy cars and living crazy to garden spending no money and driving a little 35mpg yaris. Even if things get better which I dont see it happening Ill never be the way I was again,

reply to post by mybigunit

---

Well, it's no wonder you went on a sort of "splurge bender" after growing up like that. I can't say I blame you. But at least you have an insight that very few of us have. And that is to be able to see the world from two seperate perspectives at the same time. It's like 3D common sense.

I've never been all that well off in my adult life, but when I was young I had everything. It was a rude awakening to have the rug pulled out from under me in my mid-teens, just when I was supposed to be making the most critical decisions of my life.

Great post Llyod! Like many others here I went homeless for a little while too.

I moved out of the house I was renting to go live with my girlfriend 300 miles away. Well things didn't turn out so good when I got there. I left her and moved in with my best friend. About a week later I got into an argument with my boss at the shop I worked over the piddly amount of cash he was paying me (he told me I was going to be payed A LOT more then what he ended up giving me). I told him I couldn't live off the money he was paying me and so the twisted asshole fired me the next day. To make things even better my friend got laid off and eventually we were BOTH homeless.

We had about $1500 combined from our last checks to live off until we could figure something out. We found one of those donation stations where they set up a truck trailer and people dump off their junk they don't want that they think may be of value to someone else. We hung around there every single day waiting for people to drop stuff off. We got cloths, blankets, dinky stuff we could pawn off, and books to read so we wouldn't go insane and plenty of other misc stuff to help us live better. People would drop stuff off at night sometimes and as soon as we started digging through everything all these really strange people would just appear out of the surrounding bushes and swarm us like piranhas.

We would go to safeway and buy little pizzas they had for a dollar and would cook them in an oven at a nearby gas station and split it between us. When I see those little pizzas now I wanna puke. We ate those damn things almost every single day for months. Sometimes a friend of ours would let us sleep over occasionally on the coldest of nights but we were definitely not welcome there like we used to be. We befriended a lot of nutjobs and drug dealers just for the off chance they would invite us over. It sounds weird but many times these people would disappear from their house and just leave us there or would go to sleep almost like they forgot we were with them. Sometimes there would be a group of people at these places and we would just try to blend in so we could sleep in a warm spot for a night.

I hated having to associate with these scum. Many of them were extremely shady people and we often felt like we were be set up for something. But nothing too terrible every happened to us. Not having a place to sleep every night was also extremely depressing once it got dark and I started thinking about it more and more. I'm actually kind of glad the whole situation happened though, as it was one of the most interesting times of my life. I learned a lot about the world and gained a lot of street smarts which I had none of before that.

If we didn't have the money we did though I don't know what I would have done. I'm a germaphobe so dumpster diving for food would not fly with me. We used that money solely for food and occasionally for other things. I've never been able to stretch that much money so far and probably never will again I'm still in debt due to all the bills I had to abandon during that time, not to mention two contract cancellation charges I ate it on.