Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture

http://www.newsweek.com/homeless-millennials-are-transforming-hobo-culture-323151

by petethomas • 11 years ago

165 152 11 years ago

"If you want to say I chose to become homeless and sleep on the streets, really all I have to say is fuck you. You’ve never experienced it.”"

If this is a truthful statement, why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent out a cheap room? He seems like he is sane and with the ability to work a labor job or a job at a fast-food restaurant.

Even on minimum wage, you could rent out a room on craigslist or a hotel for a weekly rate (I did this before and the prices haven't changed much). There are options for physically and mentally able individuals to get a roof over their head.

From the bottom of the article: “I’ve become a professional vagabond, and this is the lifestyle that I love.”

I think many of these people (not all) choose not to get a job because it's very empowering to live without having to follow many rules. It's a similar freedom to working for yourself.

happytrails• 11 years ago

"FREEEEDOM" - William Wallace

dethstar• 11 years ago

Why doesnt he just get a job? Why dont a sick person just get healthy? Why dont addicts just quit?

muaddirac• 11 years ago

I also found the statements in the leading and final quotes almost absurdly contradictory. "Fuck you, I didn't choose this, but I love it."

Living in a city with a lot of visible homelessness and panhandling, I constantly struggle with what the right thing to do is. It seems like the only way to be sure you're helping is to only ever hand out food, or actually offer someone a place to stay. I used to hand out money when I had some on hand, but on reflection it seems irresponsible - what if that $5 is what ends their life by allowing them to OD or buy unsafe drugs? It could just as easily save their life by providing food or shelter, but by my reasoning it makes more sense to cut out the middleman.

Throwing into the mix that some people are choosing this lifestyle for reasons of "freedom" from society (while simultaneously depending heavily upon its existence and the generosity of others) just confuses the matter more for me.

If anyone has a good moral framework for this I'd be interested in hearing it.

rayiner2• 11 years ago

I always give cash if I have some on hand. Good odds they'll use it to buy a drink, which is fine because hell, I need a drink after a long day and I'm not even homeless. And there is a non-zero chance he or she really does need it to get food or get in from the cold for the night. Wouldn't want to risk not giving money when there was a genuine need because I'm worried about the case where there isn't.

sosuke2• 11 years ago

Don't give to a single person, give to a food bank, donate money or time to a shelter. If a single person asks you tell them where you give all your donations and they are welcome to go.

magnifyingglass• 11 years ago

"Fuck you, I didn't choose this, but I love it."

You'll find that most difficult experiences people endure in life don't make sense on a logical level. You'll also probably find it hard to empathize with. If you've heard of love hate relationships, it's sort of like that.

I wasn't homeless, but my father was as a child under 5-10 for some time (I am not exactly sure how long).

All I can really say is sometimes it feels like you've been born into a path that is predetermined by fate, you've tried as hard as you can to jump over that wall to get out of that path, and every time you try, someone kicks you out. So you wind up rationalizing your current circumstances, finding value where you can while you have to live it, and generally developing intolerance for people who do not tolerate you.

But most of the time, quick snaps of the tongue like this are exactly that. They are a flit of emotion, over a thing that is a tangled web of emotion.

These are complicated things. It is sad to me, but most of the time, instead of helping, all I can do is continue trying to survive, so I don't have to live the life my parents did.

IkmoIkmo5• 11 years ago

It's tricky. I've both personally visited homeless shelters where ex-homeless people lived and worked under guidance and coaching, and the general story from them was 'don't give money'. Maybe of them used drugs in the past and said the cliche is completely true.

In that case, if someone asks, best politely say no, direct them to places where they can get help (most advanced economies have some capacity in every city), and take the money and donate it to said places or another cause when you get home, pool it in a jar for a once a month or whatever donation if you want.

On the other hand, someone close to me in my own family was homeless for quite some time after a wrongful prison conviction. Despite him having enjoyed a great life, big social circle, never addicted, enjoyed higher education and a nice career etc, typical upper-middle class stuff, he struggled on the streets. His prison time carried stigma that he didn't deserve, but couldn't be proven innocent. He stayed on the streets partly because he was afraid to ask for help, to be seen. And partly because he was convicted on a holiday, outside of the country he knew well with a limited network.

Someone else in my family took him in, from the streets, gave him some money, a roof to stay under etc. And that's why this person is part of my family now. And I've spoken to numerous ex-homeless who had no addiction, and just didn't have any food or a roof to stay under. Or recently when we partially funded the first month rent for an illegal immigrant. He now has a painting job etc. It's an uncertain existence for him, but he's got an alright life and contributes his share to society and is financially independent. The issue is that cases like this require time to evaluate that you tend not to have passing someone by.

In short, I'm similarly conflicted and usually do give. When I have time I tend to have a chat and ask what they need. They'll say 'some change' or whatever and I'll just cheerfully say huh, why? And they'll say for some food or w/e, and I'll just hang out with them for 20min and buy them some food and eat with them. Best case he actually wanted money for food and had some social contact, worst case I fed someone who didn't starve and had a nice chat.

curun1r• 11 years ago

You could give out gift cards. Almost every grocery store sells them and there are reasonably-healthy fast food options (Subway) that have them as well. It's pretty easy to carry a bunch around in a wallet or purse. Pick whatever denomination you'd normally give in cash. It doesn't guarantee that it won't be traded for cash to buy drugs and alcohol, but it's certainly more of a hassle to do that than to spend it on food.

wcummings• 11 years ago

what if that $5 is what ends their life by allowing them to OD or buy unsafe drugs?

If they need liquor to stop withdrawals, the money is well spent as far as I'm concerned. Not everyone is in the position to get treatment.

ddingus• 11 years ago

There is one for addiction issues. Maybe it's more generally applicable, but it goes like this:

They are an addict, and somehow, each day, they are going to get whatever it is. And they are going to do it, because they have to do it.

And for some of these people who are homeless, they are going to do what they do, because they feel they have to do it...

In any case, getting that thing, whatever it is, can go the easy way, or the hard way. They could be giving blows in an alley, or pay with some money they got on the streets from kind people, or due to the property crime.

We can't make people do anything. Not really. They, themselves have got to resolve to improve, or do things differently, or they simply won't. We can put incentives out there, punishments, and all sorts of things, but in the end, they really do have to resolve to do things differently, or it really won't happen.

Every year, a few of these people get there. One day, they see something, experience something that brings that resolution about! And with that comes motivation, and with that motivation comes the doing of things differently.

Nobody but them knows when this is, and often they don't even know when this is.

And until they get there, it's the easy way, or the hard way.

If we look at the cost of this, those costs can be low, average, or high, depending on how often it's the easy way or the hard way.

And when they get there, how much potential remains? That too is determined by the easy way and the hard way.

So when we give, we are helping to pay down those costs. It's up to them to get there, and when they do, they will appreciate all of us who helped get them there at a much lower cost and risk to themselves as beings, and they will be capable of that much more too.

One of us, who gives that dollar, thinking they will just go buy another beer, will be that person who gave the dollar that got them there. They don't buy a beer, instead a razor, clean up and improve from there.

We can't make their choices for them, but we can continue to present the option of doing things differently, and that happens one gift, one less hard way at a time.

In general, we are helping out. And the help is in the form of harm reduction to preserve their options, health, and buy them time during their struggle.

If you think about it, real help, selfless type help, not controlling help that comes with strings and such, is a gift. It's a gift with the best of intent, and in this world intent is what matters.

When your intent is to help, you are doing the right thing --and it's the right thing even when it doesn't appear to have done much, or the bad outcome seems your doing.

It's not, and it can't be, because we can't make their choices. Only they can.

And if we don't give that help, so many more of them won't ever get there at all.

It's nothing to most of us. Every so often, it's all that ever did matter to them.

6d0debc0712• 11 years ago

If this is a truthful statement, why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent out a cheap room? He seems like he is sane and with the ability to work a labor job or a job at a fast-food restaurant.

Gonna be an interesting CV to write.

Squarel2• 11 years ago

I took it to mean that whilst they did not make a choice to become homeless initially, once in the situation, they have found a culture that works for them.

fwiw, there are homeless people who work, so it is not only people who do not work who are on the streets or in shelters. Renting a room on craigslist does not remove you from being homeless, a lack of a permanent residence is what defines homeless, hence living in a shelter is still classed as being homeless, as is temporary accomodation (hotel or week to week room rent, or week to week couch surfing)

astazangasta2• 11 years ago

why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent out a cheap room?

Maybe you missed the part where we had a huge recession that forced millions of people out of work and replaced high-paying jobs with low-paying part-time jobs.

adevine• 11 years ago

But he's not asking the man to get a high paying job. He's wondering why he can't get a low paying job and rent out a cheap room. This man is single, young, and otherwise healthy with no dependents. In that situation it is certainly possible to live off minimum wage.

olefoo• 11 years ago

Clearly you don't have any experience with people you know struggling with mental illness ( which by the is very prevalent amongst the homeless ). It's not a choice to be so depressed you can't show up for work; or so manic you can't deal with coworkers.

But if we're going to talk about choices and homelessness; let's talk about what we can do as a society to minimize it and it's harms. Utah has proven that a "housing-first" approach to dealing with the homeless works.

We are the richest and most powerful society that has ever been, yet we choose not solve this problem; and it does reflect badly on us.

ams61102• 11 years ago

My town tried something like this. Built apartments for the "chronically homeless" on the idea that, provided with decent homes, they could focus on getting jobs and putting other areas of their lives in order. What's happening? The tenants are trashing the apartments, selling the appliances, and not working. Enabling poor life choices generally doesn't stop those who are making them.

cauterized• 11 years ago

"Why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent out a cheap room? He seems like he is sane and with the ability to work a labor job or a job at a fast-food restaurant."

What does he have to gain by doing this?

acjohnson55• 11 years ago

I think it's a matter of cost-benefit. On one hand, you have a rat race of soul crushing minimum wage work, always one slip away from the investment in hard work evaporating and being dropped right back on your ass. On the other, you sacrifice any chance of advancement to live with few obligations other than what it takes to survive. It might be more accurate to say that the person didn't choose to have this dichotomy, but given it, they chose the latter option.

Our culture is rather obsessed with the idea of wage labor as morally imperative and necessary to provide life with self-meaning. I can sympathize with the idea that to some, wage labor might subtract meaning from life. Especially if it's working at a Burger King to pay for a room at a flophouse.

stegosaurus3• 11 years ago

"why doesn't he get some sort of job and rent out a cheap room?"

Other posts have explained why this is fallacious reasoning but I'll give it a shot anyway.

There's more to it than simply the physical, theoretical possibility of changing a situation.

I graduated fairly recently. Could I have worked in finance? Goldman, JPM, say? I don't think it's excessive hubris to say that it would have been theoretically possible. Then I'd be working towards owning the flat I'm currently renting.

But in reality, it didn't happen, and wasn't possible. I dislike finance, and to give 90+ hour weeks in a profession I have no faith in would have been unviable. There was no choice involved; after a fairly basic reasoning process it was excluded because it would have clearly led to failure.

I hope that it's easy to see how that can be generalised down the scale. I personally would rather be homeless than work FT for a fast food company, and I express disapproval at a society that makes that a 'choice' for some.

sosuke2• 11 years ago

Do we need a new word for homeless then? When I think homeless I think the inability to find work, maintain work, or earn a living. This feels like a choice. The same feeling I got when I saw an able bodied young homeless person asking for organic dog food. That does not look like what I've come to associate with homelessness.

Squarel2• 11 years ago

Able bodied != able to get work, or without mental health issues. You can be homeless, or living in your car, and putting on a uniform every day for work, or a suit.

astazangasta2• 11 years ago

Do you seriously think this is the first time in history that working people have been homeless? Travel around the world sometime; the continuum of poverty includes many different statuses. Why should homeless people not be as capable as other people of having desires, like wanting good food for their dog?

Living on the street is dangerous. You risk exposure, robbery, disease. The threat of rape is constant. If this "feels like a choice" to you, you're ignorant of what's involved. As the article itself says:

If you want to say I chose to become homeless and sleep on the streets, really all I have to say is fuck you. You’ve never experienced it.

raldi• 11 years ago

Wow, you're really going after a strawman here. The comment you're replying to didn't claim what you seem to think it claimed.

All it was calling for is a distinction between people living on the streets because it's fun versus people living on the streets because they must. It muddies the mind to lump them all together in one group called "the homeless".

clarky07• 11 years ago

Did you read TFA? it ends with: “I’ve become a professional vagabond, and this is the lifestyle that I love.”

buro9• 11 years ago

How is it a choice?

It's more that technology enables the homeless to cope better with the circumstances that they face.

I was homeless, for 2.5 years in the UK. I slept on the streets. I made myself homeless, I call it my choice... but you know what, it wasn't really. I grew up in social housing, it was damp and I was always ill. There was violence at home, sexual abuse, fear, my cousin did bank robberies, my brother did time for holding someone up with a knife.

Yes, I "chose" to be homeless, because somewhere in that choice it was a better alternative to staying where I was and living the life that would have delivered.

I would have loved to have some tech, for the internet to have existed. Just to find out opening times of sports centres (showers), or to find cheap places to crash, or dirt cheap deals to get from place to place (rather than hitch everywhere).

It would have been a blessing just to be able to have mobile phones widely in use, to call someone rather than face loneliness, solitude.

Fuck that it was a choice, fuck that it's a choice for these people. Good on them for using every damn thing available to aspire to not have to sleep under a bush, or to only get food from restaurant trash.

And perhaps with the ability to contact others, to talk, to share... they can fight to get off the street in a much better shape than I did, far more ready to deal with the world. I was a mess when I got off the streets, with no support network I was years behind everyone else, and I still feel it, a decade or two behind, living with nothing to catch me if I fall.

There was no choice, but I truly wish I could've had these tools available to me to make it scar my life and being a little less.

Enjoy your privilege. And yes, I will probably regret posting this, I paint a prettier picture of the past usually... don't we all, these people call it "professional vagabond" it's painting a prettier picture of their present.

sonoffett• 11 years ago

Thank you for sharing your experience.

ryukafalz• 11 years ago

"Homeless" means just that: without a home. Any additional meaning is just part of the mental model you've constructed over time, which isn't necessarily a full representation of reality.

You could add a qualifier to it. "Unwilling homeless" for example.

tomschlick• 11 years ago

If they are doing it by choice, and also mooching off of the system at the same time then I think the word "bum" applies.

sanoli3• 11 years ago

When I was in my 20's I knew and hung out with a bunch of hobos like these. They were all (yes, ALL) middle/lower middle class, white, fairly well educated (completed high school). They all lived this way by choice. They all could get a job if they wanted to, but thought normal life/capitalism/the system/wathever "sucked". And they all depended on the system/wathever for their basic needs, or when shit hit the fan (needing a hospital, or the police in extreme cases, which happened eventually). So yeah, they could get a job. But also, our society makes this lifestyle possible, and it does have its pros. They had lots of free time, lots of freedom to go anywhere they wanted to, no responsibility, no bills to match at the end of the month, etc. But they weren't there because "you don't know what it's like".

Also, the ones who developed alcoholism or serious drug problems didn't have the stuff before. They got it through the lifestyle.

verbin2172• 11 years ago

You apparently "don't know what it's like" to have something in your life that causes their state of mind. We shouldn't condemn them for choosing this lifestyle. Especially not when their alternative is likely minimum wage with no apparent escape. It does suck and they're expressing just how badly it sucks by choosing to be homeless. Good for them.

sanoli3• 11 years ago

No, you're not getting it. Most of the people I knew could go to college if they wanted to. Their families would have supported them, or at least helped them out quite a bit. To give you an example, two guys I knew wanted out of it. They got a job making minimum wage while they attended welding school. They make enough to live very comfortably these days.

Some, but only a minority, really had not much of a choice. Either their family was very fucked-up and had botched their upbringing pretty bad, or they had gone down too low on drugs/alcohol.

And I'm not condemning them for choosing this lifestyle. Like I said, it does have its pros. It can be a good, exciting life, especially since you're in the US, where you can get a lot of society's excesses for free, when they are discarded.

tsotha4• 11 years ago

We shouldn't condemn them for choosing this lifestyle.

Oh, I'll condemn the ones that choose it. If you're homeless because you have mental or physical problems that's one thing, but people who choose to be homeless because they're too lazy to work are parasites.

Rhapso• 11 years ago

The cold hard reality is that in most US states 10%+ of people ages 18-30 cannot get a job doing anything. High skill jobs are inaccessible to many people without extensive training and low skill jobs are highly competitive and people with more experience get them. We are in a crisis and will be looking at an unemployed generation soon.

I'm a lot luckier than most of the people my age in georgia. I've also dedicated my life and made a lot of sacrifices to get here that society told us as we grew up were unnecessary and irrational. The narrative we got was "go to college then it is easy to get a job" when the reality is that people are graduating college and facing unemployment. As somebody that teaches in a university setting it is soul crushing.

jokoon2• 11 years ago

Basically those guys just give up on how they're expected to live: work hard, pay a mortgage, get a job, consume, be polite, don't have too much fun, don't ask too many questions, be a good person.

They're not completely unable to avoid homelessness, but they don't see that what their country is offering them is a fair or interesting deal. The future is just depressing in terms of opportunity and economics, so to me, those guys just give up, and they're not to blame. It's their country who betrayed them, pure and simple.

I too feel that I'm often being blamed for my lack of motivation and discipline of work, but to be honest, I'm not seeing anything in society that makes sense at all, so living lifeby not adhering to the common capitalist pillars seems risky at first, but with the recession and the economical context, it makes totally sense, and if the country fails because of it, I don't think I could be accused for it.

iiiggglll• 11 years ago

This is the future that awaits millions more as automation marches forwards.

arrrg• 11 years ago

Rethinking capitalism seems like the only option, then. (Well, this shouldn’t be surprising … it’s been happening ever since the start of the industrial solution. Markets are pretty awesome and can be extremely useful, no doubt. However, I would transition to just seeing them as a useful tool that can be more effective than potential alternatives in certain situations. Just not the be all, end all, that’s it. Seems simple enough to me, and also already the accepted truth, more or less, pretty much everywhere anyway, if you look at practical implementations of economies.)

jokoon2• 11 years ago

Not necessarily. A tax increase for the largest corporation might create opportunity to create smaller businesses.

Automation doesn't mean people have to live by it, on the contrary, we could still try to live away from large cities, and thrive by improving life standards. There is so much more thing to do in more rural, less populated areas now that technology is there.

The current problem is the anti competitiveness, that's what ruining young people: most of them just stick to the cities, where it's easier to be poor.

Apocryphon• 11 years ago

Sounds like they're the American equivalent to Hikikomori.

dvanduzer• 11 years ago

That is a great analogy. The distinction between "giving up" and "making the best of what is around you" is easier to draw when it isn't wrapped up in the rhetoric of rugged individualism.

fsloth• 11 years ago

Wow, my respect of the utility of reddit just soared after reading this.

austenallred6• 11 years ago

Most of these comments are trying to determine why people are homeless, citing some anecdote of some person the poster met once. It bothers me that we are trying to determine why people are homeless so that next time we see a homeless person we can know why. That's simply not possible.

I was (voluntarily) homeless in San Francisco for a while (http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-vall...), only because I wanted to work on my company instead of get a job, and I had read enough Thoreau that I didn't care to give up the majority of my time in exchange for crap I don't need. So I could have gotten a job, but I deemed it not worth giving up my freedom for. Of course, that came with other sacrifices, but I considered it worth it at the time.

In doing so, I ended up hanging out with a wide, wide variety of homeless people. Some were punk kids who wanted to reject society/capitalism, many of whom were from broken homes. Some were mentally handicapped. Some had done enough of some sort of drug that they were completely fried. A few seemed very intelligent - one lost his job as a physics professor when he had sex with one of his students, and his family was so ashamed they wouldn't take him in.

Saying things like "homelessness is a choice" is true for some subset of people, but completely untrue for others. Most of the homeless I hung out with were very affluent and had iPhones and MacBooks (you don't find many forced homeless pitching VCs in Palo Alto), but when I was in the city it was a different story. More mental handicaps, more felons, and more people who had simply fallen upon difficult times.

The amount of willingness they had in the matter is a spectrum., as was the tech they used, the reason they were homeless, and their ages But they're all people, and most of them that I met were good people, with wants and dreams and desires mostly just like everybody else. Please don't try to say, "All homeless people are x."

tatterdemalion• 11 years ago

Thankyou, the judgment in a lot of these comments really bothered me.

To me, this is the pertinent question: if people are homeless "by choice" - meaning they had some other option - why is our society structured in such a way that being without shelter and security seems like a better option than the alternative? How could things be different so that no one would "choose" to be homeless?

austenallred6• 11 years ago

Structures cost money and we trade our time for money (and call it work).

To some, the value of doing what you want is greater than the value of the physical structure. That could be because they consider time extremely valuable, they don't value a home as highly, or because they hate the work. It's usually some combination of the three.

A lot of voluntarily homeless just see "society" as the entire list of rules of what you're supposed to do (go to college, get a job, buy a house, settle down, have kids) and reject the whole of it. It could be that you've seen enough to think that the entire system is flawed, so you just bail on all of it. It could be that those ideals just don't jive with you personally and are completely unappealing. That's how I felt when I dropped out of college and moved to China for no good reason. (Homelessness came after that). I was on track to be an investment banker or something, but hated the idea a little more each day until I finally said, "f this, I'm out" and started vagabonding around Asia.

Maybe there is an element of mental illness, I don't know. I had lunch with a psychologist once and he tried saying, "Seriously, listen to me, you are mentally ill." I guess he thought I was crazy - maybe I am - but I never went in to see him. I had no interest in altering my mind with drugs. I like who I am, even when it is difficult to interoperate with the rest of society.

When I was homeless, security was worthless. I still think it's largely an illusion, but that's a different topic. Freedom to do what I loved was well worth not having a home for. Working happened to be the thing that I loved, and I especially loved tech. I worked 16 hour days - I just wanted to work on my thing not someone else's thing. If I had enough runway to afford a House I would have done that, but I didn't. So living in a Honda civic it was. It didn't really bother me, to be honest. A bed is a bed.

Now I am married and have a baby on the way. I still don't care about security, but they need it, so ok I'm kind of reformed in that way. Luckily we're now funded so i still do exactly what I want all day. I don't know what would happen if the company failed. It's just not an option.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

There are compulsive travelers, who can't/won't stay in one place. Our society doesn't cater well to the always-on-the-move because it's both rare (most people stay put) and difficult to cater to (wanderers rarely earn much money)

There are also those that can't/won't accept responsibilities like maintaining a house, paying bills, etc. Our society caters poorly to these people because we are not full-on socialist; adults must accept responsibilities to function in our world.

Those are two rough groups that come to mind.

personlurking• 11 years ago

In Brazil, there's something called "mutirão" which loosely translates to "a bunch of people getting together to help build something for a specific person in need". For example, someone in the neighborhood needs a second story on their home (many homes are multi-generational) and so this person or family gets the needed supplies then rallies other people in the neighborhood to help build the second story. It works because at some point, those very others will likely need collective help with something of their own. In the case of a social project, the neighbors might informally crowdfund it, then build whatever it is together. Regardless, the one in need usually offers a BBQ and drinks in exchange for the work.

dmgbrn2• 11 years ago

This is so true. I meet a lot of homeless people through addiction recovery programs I'm part of, and there are as many reasons to be homeless as there are homeless people. If you want to improve your understanding of homelessness without actually being homeless, try sitting down and having a conversation with a homeless person. I'm sure you can find some wherever you live. Many of them are just so unbelievably lonely that you're really doing a lot by letting the tell you about their lives.

droopyEyelids2• 11 years ago

Man thanks for saying this. Nothing grinds my gears like people who talk about homeless people without actually talking to them.

Of course, there is the shitty thing where people are so disconnected that they attempt to talk 'to' someone but end up talking 'at' them instead... but at least then there is the chance for communication and understanding.

slowmotiony• 11 years ago

I'm happy that the homeless in San Francisco have iPhones and MacBooks, but surely you must realise this sounds ridiculous to people outside of the Silicon Valley, right?

I invite you to here to Eastern Europe, to see homeless people who are alcoholics and drug addicts, usually without any mental function except for thinking about how to get high and drunk again. They shit and piss over themselves, mumble, and harass people. They refuse to go to a shelter because then they'd have to stop drinking.

So yeah, I will say all homeless people are drunks and drug addicts who choose not to fix their life, and telling me that I'm wrong while living in Silicon Valley drinking your starbucks latte just makes you seem stupid.

austenallred6• 11 years ago

Of course. The homeless in Palo Alto aren't anything like the homeless you're thinking of - the point was that there are many, many varieties of homeless people.

And I've seen it. I lived in eastern Ukraine (Gorlovka, Kharkov, Donetsk, Makyevka) from 2008 to 2010. I was a Mormon missionary, meaning I literally walked around all day talking with anyone who would talk with me. And yes, you're absolutely right, there are an absurd amount of people who live only to drink, especially in eastern Ukrainian mining towns after the economic collapse when all of the mines are closed. They would follow us around and harass us, try to pick a fight (didn't work too well when they were drunk) beat up the other bums (бомж), steal their money, and drink. Mostly just drink until they pass out in the park. I gave a couple grievni to a homeless man once who was asking for bread, and watched him literally take my money, walk to the nearest store and buy a bottle of vodka. He didn't even care that I watched him do it. It was my last time giving money to beggars. When we'd serve the homeless food from the church it was pretty much гречка (buckwheat) loaded up with salt, because we knew they were all either drunk or on a hangover.

But I also met Pyotr, a man who was seemed to be in his fifties. He was obviously incredibly intelligent, and had times when he seemed perfectly normal, and he despised alcohol (for ruining his family, he said). If he were diagnosed he probably would have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; I'm no psychiatrist, but he would take bundles of sticks and obsessively clean out the walkways and stairways until they were spotless. If he saw somebody drop a bottle in the park he would literally sprint to pick it up and throw it away. He dressed in rubber boots usually worn by older women, and just went around cleaning stuff all day muttering to himself. All day, every day. I liked talking to Pyotr. He even recognized that he had gone a little bit crazy, and said he did so when he was studying higher math at a local university. He was working at a level of math that was very theoretical, and he just snapped, I guess.

When I first met him, I thought he was drunk or high or something. He had a little bit of a twitch and talked so quickly that his sentences slurred together (not like a drunk slur, just a way that was very difficult to understand as someone who had learned Russian as a second language). But as I talked with him, it became clear that there was just something mentally off.

So by and large, I'd say you're correct; it's pretty hard to be truly homeless in eastern Europe. Most are intolerable drunks. But some aren't.

The point I was trying to make is that there are many, many types of homeless people. Of course, the vast majority of homeless aren't like the voluntarily homeless in Palo Alto who could easily get a job if they cared to. Being homeless in a country that provides a pension and housing for all is especially interesting, but not all of them are drunk assholes either.

stegosaurus3• 11 years ago

It doesn't sound ridiculous to me.

Across the UK an iPhone is a trivially* cheap item.

1 months' rent in London would buy you a decent spec MacBook. 3-4 months' rent in a cheaper city would do the same.

Many people seem to have the viewpoint that it's some sort of irrational decision to not prioritise housing above everything else.

40 hour weeks making others obese so that I can barely make the rent whilst my boss buys his next car?

Trivial choice from where I'm standing. I do feel for those who have dependents, though.

* It is fairly common here for people to 'call out' welfare recipients as owning big TV's, iPhones, etcetera; as evidence as profligate spending. From my point of view, luxury electronics are for the poor and rich, and excluded from the middle classes. Why? Because the poor can never expect to build capital regardless, and the rich have capital already. Only the middle classes actually need to think about expenditure, because they may eventually be able to own property.

ChikkaChiChi3• 11 years ago

Serious question: In your experience, what services did you and the other "affluent" homeless take advantage of during your time without a home?

austenallred6• 11 years ago

Hmm, not much, really. Mostly just knowledge and connections. Some would move back home to friends/family, which not all have the opportunity to do. That's a big deal mentally. Credit is a big one; they can grab a credit card and float, some homeless people can't.

kaitai• 11 years ago

The article was interesting, and the title does say it's talking about hobo culture. As I watch the HN discussion unfold, though, I want to point out that 41% of the homeless in the US are families. These folks aren't usually hobos -- hard to get the 4-year-old to run fast enough to catch a freight train. It's a very different lifestyle since families aren't generally throwing off the strictures of society to live in freedom, but instead desperately trying to rejoin.

http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessnes...

giancarlostoro• 11 years ago

We used to feed the homeless for as long as we could afford to do so, we were our own non-profit, so feeding the homeless came out of pocket. In any regard, we would go out at night when they would be sleeping on the concrete in downtown Orlando (Florida), and downtown Kissimmee, some choose to be homeless, some don't even want to be homeless, they'll tell you their story with tears on their eyes. You can't just decide to judge whether a homeless man is there because they chose to be without actually talking to them. You really can't. We helped some of them find homes, others find their way back home. The homeless people are like your family, they need to be taken care of too, but not everyone is willing to put their heart out for someone else.

Everywhere I go, if I see a homeless person asking for money I offer them any food I have in my car. You don't have to give them money, food is valuable as well. If they don't want it, it's their loss.

sgustard• 11 years ago

In previous generations we had a draft to sweep up these kids and send them to fight in places like Vietnam. Today, with multiple overseas wars underway, our volunteer army is almost entirely populated with the rural poor, and society gives urban youth a free pass to lounge in the streets.

pw2• 11 years ago

Did any of you grow up in danger of homelessness?

spacemanmatt2• 11 years ago

A paycheck or few away.

sanoli3• 11 years ago

One thing I forgot to say on my post: I lived in the US, and I grew up and again now live in a third world country. The difference in homeless population is that in my shitty country the homeless are truly poor and most, really most of the time come from broken homes, substance abuse, physical abuse, etc. Apart from some hippies who live by selling their handcrafts, you're homeless because you had no choice. Living in the streets is so dangerous and such a shitty experience that no one really chooses it.

EvenThisAcronym• 11 years ago

I feel like internet news sites and comments sections have become bizarre parodies of themselves.

vdm• 11 years ago

Interesting that the scarce commodity is power, more so than the network, just like in the developing world. Perhaps USB-C will help.

exabrial• 11 years ago

I volunteer at a free diner to feed the homeless. It puts knots in my stomach to see someone intentionally freeload while other suffer with addiction, health problems, mental disease, childhood abuse/trauma... These people didn't choose this life.

If you can afford a $70 phone bill every month and post on reddit, you likely also could probably flip burgers. In that case, you're not homeless: you're lazy and a sleeze.

Hytosys• 11 years ago

How do you get to pass such judgement on people? There is empathy to be had for everyone, especially those who are commonly quickly dismissed. I understand that you interact with the very people you call "lazy" and "sleazy", but I'm in denial that you understand the intricacies of their hardships. It is documented that the overwhelming majority of homeless do indeed suffer from mental disorders and abusive pasts. It should not be a surprise that the people who can afford a phone bill greatly overlap with the "sufferers".

dghughes2• 11 years ago

In my small city for decades there were maybe two homeless people in their 50s or 60s who would ask for change they were alcoholics everyone knew them in my small city. Eventually they either died or got help.

Now within the last five years there has been a massive increase in street beggars all in their 20s. They get a milk crate and sit on it all day at a busy corner with a cardboard sign "need food".

There is a group of three who come here every year from somewhere? Two guys and a girl who go to the median at street intersections and put up a sign walk down the line of cars looking for money.

When fall came they would all leave but now it's a year round thing every day even in the winter.

I talked to a few of them one guy in particular was (?) a bit older my age, mid 40s, he said he had a bad back, a catheter, his guitar was smashed so he was asking for more money for that I think someone gave him one. Then he was on the news a few times and it seems he was fairly well-known guitar player. I'm not sure where he went but I know many people tried to help, I said I knew of some jobs, but it seems he disappeared when the police wanted him due to a warrant or something like that. Local news http://goo.gl/eBXSv6 His bio on CBC http://goo.gl/OxF9eu

This is all rather shocking for this small town it has been so sudden, and it's new faces from away not locals. It seems word is out that people are generous here and they are you often see people giving money.

I agree it seems to be 99% Millennials it's as if someone flipped a switch five years ago and suddenly homeless people at every second corner asking for money.

aaronchall2• 11 years ago

I chose to "live rough" for about a month before I found an affordable room to live in when I first got to NYC. But I was bootstrapping my move to NYC.

This past Saturday, I served homeless from a soup kitchen in Harlem. Most of the people we served were on their own, and a sizable minority were loopy. Some of them probably weren't homeless.

Anecdotally, I know a guy (who I tried to help again and again) whose bad decisions and self-sabotage screwed up all of his chances. He has lost job after job. And he has two kids he can't/won't support.

Whenever he gets a chance, i.e., someone hires him, he works a max of two weeks, then gets trashed on his first bit of money and gets immediately fired because he doesn't show up for work. And he'll live on the street, in a tent in the woods, or where-ever he can keep his head out of the rain.

It's hard for me to drum up much sympathy for him and others like him.

Then there's people who make poor educational decisions, family planning decisions, and financial decisions, who live paycheck to paycheck, then lose their jobs simply due to changes the economy - they may have made sub-optimal economic decisions. Or there could be health problems that destroy their finances, and but for the grace of God many others of us could be in their shoes. And they deserve to have some help, and I even give my own money (my after-tax income) to help people like that. They don't deserve to be thrown out of their house. What they need is a second chance and the help from those of us who could easily be in their situations.

We need to try to get the aid to those deserving, as opposed to the wastrels in the earlier example of my "friend," and similar lifestyle hobos, or in the case of those who are making a conscious bootstrapping decision like Austen and myself.

This is America (or perhaps, a civilized global society). We don't let people starve in the streets.

eigenvector• 11 years ago

We need to try to get the aid to those deserving, as opposed to the wastrels in the earlier example of my "friend," and similar lifestyle hobos, or in the case of those who are making a conscious bootstrapping decision like Austen and myself.

The easiest way to do that is to just help everybody. The money we already spend on welfare is enough to provide basic assistance to everybody, without wasting money on figuring out who doesn't deserve it and crafting elaborate schemes to keep them out. Not to mention that even when people are self-destructive like your acquaintance, helping them out can still be cheaper than dealing with the costs of their homelessness, like constant interactions with police and ER trips because they don't have a warm, sheltered place to sleep.

Our welfare systems are designed around a fear of free-riders, rather than to be simple and easy to administer.

Soup kitchens are a perfect example - sure, there's always a few people there who don't really NEED it, but trying to keep them out would be inefficient and use up more resources than the $2-3 of food they're getting.

aaronchall2• 11 years ago

Soup kitchens are on one end of the spectrum. You're right, there were people there who kept coming back for loaves of bread and more bananas, and more punch and lemonade, and we just gave it to them. They just had to stand in line again. And I don't begrudge giving more bread away, that is its purpose, and I hope it finds its way into the mouths of those who need it.

If people will abuse that system, they'll abuse them all, and I think the cost of preventing welfare abuse is worth it.

In welfare-state Britain of the 70's, they had multiple generations on public assistance and in public housing who were proud, as a culture, of their unproductivity, which led to the backlash that brought Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives into power.

Bottomline: if you want to ensure the deserving get your tax dollars consistently over time, you must guard against fraud, abuse, and overindulgence, or the public backlash may deprive even the deserving.

mkhpalm• 11 years ago

Weird, out of all their problems I would think charging a cell phone would be the easiest. Laptop, car, food, place to sleep, etc.. thats all seems like the hard stuff for me. I just have a super cheap solar panel that charges my phone.

ChikkaChiChi3• 11 years ago

Homelessness is a very real problem with people in dire, sometimes life threatening situations, that we all could do more to help. Addiction rehabilitation, mental health services, elder care, and other forms of welfare that allow society to remain civilized are important vectors that help us help each other.

Your very existence in this ecosystem as a tourist bears no fruit of goodwill. You are a bad person.

stegosaurus3• 11 years ago

Some have posted along the lines of asking 'wouldn't it be easy to just get a fast food job' - seemingly entirely missing the point.

Most minimum wage jobs in the UK are worse than nothing at all. A month or two's salary saved would get you a year of hiking around Europe and sleeping rough. Perhaps my neurochemistry is atypical but I see the latter as absolutely better.

The idea of low-paid work as a stepping stone is generally nonsense outside of a few select cases too. At large corporations management generally operate on a different 'tier' (e.g. graduate scheme, direct entry from university). Professionals are educated; going from McDonalds to surgeon requires going to school first; the minimum wage job will not help you save for those fees unless you have bank of Mum and Dad on your side.

Das Kapital covers this well. Labourers must be coerced into labouring; if they are able to provide for themselves they will, and this is a rational choice.

Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture

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