Homelessness: A Lifestyle Choice

No one truly chooses to be homeless. Certainly, the nearly 50 percent of homeless people who are women and children don’t choose homelessness over being housed.

Tweet #LoveTwitter

Further, the 25 percent to 40 percent of homeless people who are reportedly veterans would presumably prefer to re-establish the lives that they had before their military service rather than choose to become homeless.

Finally, we know that 35 percent to 45 percent of all homeless people suffer from some kind of mental illness. If some homeless people are mentally ill, do they really have the mental capacity and ability to choose being housed over being homeless? This morning my homeless friend, Jerry, asked me what I was up to today. When I told him that I intended to write an article about the myth that homeless people actually choose homelessness over being housed, he said, rather matter-of-factly, “I choose to be homeless.”

“Really,” I replied. Then I did something which upon reflection, I wish that I had not done. I asked Jerry to think about the life of the young person we saw getting out of his vehicle. Motioning toward the young person, I said to Jerry, “If right now I were to give you the choice to exchange your lifestyle for his lifestyle with an apartment, refrigerator, bathroom, TV and car, would you do it?”

Jerry was silent. He didn’t respond. He just kept looking down. I knew I had touched a nerve and possibly brought to his mind a lifestyle that is not an option for Jerry, not a choice for him. At this moment, there is no way that Jerry can have a housed lifestyle and he knows it.

Why?

Because there is no room in the homeless shelters for the numbers of people who need a bed. Because most, if not all, homeless shelters require that their clients be clean and sober before they can be admitted to their program. Because there are limited, if any, programs to help a homeless person get clean and sober while they are on the street. There are insufficient rehabilitative programs of any kind for the numbers of homeless people living on the street or in shelters.

Not long ago, a homeless friend, Nicky, said to me, “I choose to be homeless.” “Really,” I said. “Do you choose living in the cold, the trash food, the lack of a real bed or apartment?” “No, those are the bad things about being homeless. I don’t choose those.”

“You do realize that if you choose to be homeless that these things are a natural consequence of your choice?” “Yes, but those are not the things that I choose,” he said. In my opinion, one choice from two or more options is only a true choice when the consequences of the choices are equal or nearly equal. The choice between living in a home or living on the streets is an unequal choice because of their unequal consequences.

Homeless people living on the street have no bathroom facilities, limited clean food, and unconventional sleeping conditions. Often, the unsheltered homeless people eat “trash food” to stave off their hunger. Clothing appropriate for the weather is sometimes a luxury. Warm blankets, unsheltered people’s basic necessity, spread on the ground or on cement, even over cardboard, are no substitute for a real bed inside an apartment or shelter. And we have not even discussed the safety issue. When we housed people are indoors we lock the doors against possible intruders.

How can homeless people protect themselves from someone, housed or unhoused, who wishes them harm? Often, homeless people stay awake in the night, sleep in well-lit areas or sleep in hidden places so as to keep themselves safe. But, there are no locks outside. There are not even doors which can be locked. The answer: provide services for homeless people where they are. For example, create programs that are for unsheltered people who have not yet kicked drug or alcohol addictions. Have programs for people who live outside but who have mental illnesses. Meet the people where they are mentally and physically.

Why wait and demand that homeless people become clean and sober on their own so that they can get into a shelter, when they will come to find out that there is no available bed in any shelter? Help unsheltered homeless people become clean and sober through services and shelter programs designed for people recovering from additions.

I’m sorry that I raised the thought of a housed lifestyle for my friend, Jerry. I raised unreasonable expectations for my friend and for what purpose — just to make a point? I won’t do that again to Jerry or any other unhoused person.

I look forward to your comments.

Thank you,

Christine
Consultant, public educator, attorney

Homelessness: A Lifestyle Choice

'It's not a lifestyle choice': homelessness on the streets of Manchester ( .or. any other city, Manchester is chosen herein as an example )

The city’s homelessness problem jars with its self-projected image of glamour and prosperity. We spend the day with outreach worker Colin Morrison as he offers assistance to an increasingly visible and fast-growing population.

As camping spots go, the scrap of shrubland by the dual-lane ringway at the back of Manchester Arena is not the most serene. To reach the tents during the morning rush hour, Colin Morrison has to dart between impatient cars and then make his way gingerly through a bush. “Hello,” he shouts, above the traffic noise. He wanders around two big tents, picking his way through the detritus: a sanitary towel, toilet roll, a sodden deerstalker hat and a child’s buggy filled with rubbish.
One night on the street witnessing Britain's homeless crisis – as it happened Join us as we meet people sleeping rough across the UK and ask why the situation has become so bad Read more

There is no answer in the blue tent, so he tries the orange one next door. It is family-size and new. He has not seen it before on his regular rounds as an outreach worker for Manchester city council. “Is anyone in there? It’s the council,” he bellows, shaking the canvas. All the zips are fastened, including the flysheet.
“It’s only a matter of time before I find someone dead in one of these,” he says, matter-of-factly. In January fire officers made exactly that grim discovery, when the beaten and charred body of 23-year-old Daniel Smith was found in a tent near railway arches over the river Irwell in Salford.

Morrison decides to open the tent on Trinity Way, keeping his head as far from his hand as possible in case the occupants lash out. “Fuck off!” shouts a man within. A second slurred male voice tells Morrison to go away. Morrison decides to leave them be but warns them loudly that he will be back later to have a chat.
A short while later Morrison attempts to wake another pair. They are camping in a flimsy festival tent by the Roman ruins in the Castlefield heritage park, with a soggy welcome mat festering by the front porch. He doesn’t like what he sees or smells inside: he’s known the woman in the couple for more than a decade and she cheerfully admits she and her partner have been sterilising their needles with lemon juice rather than going to the needle exchange.

For more than 20 years, Morrison has been working with Manchester’s homeless, but “it’s worse than I’ve ever seen it”, he says. Most mornings he starts work at 7am and does a round of the city centre. He looks behind industrial bins at the back of upmarket shops and in the covered doorways of £1,000-a-month studios to see who has been sleeping where overnight.
Crouching behind a delivery van in an alley off St Ann’s Square, a grubby-faced man cheerily says hello but adds that he can’t talk. “I’m ’avin me breakfast,” he says, heating a scrap of foil for his morning heroin hit.

According to the council’s annual rough sleeper count, nearly twice as many people are sleeping on the streets of Manchester as last year. Seventy people were counted in one night in December, compared with 43 on the same evening in 2014. There were just 10 in 2011.
Walk around the city centre on a Friday or Saturday night and you’d think the problem was even worse than the reality. Morrison estimates that for the 20 or 30 beggars you may see on the Deansgate thoroughfare on the weekend, or in the Northern Quarter nightlife district, a maximum of 10 are homeless, with the others “sofa surfing” or in precarious accommodation.

They can easily earn £200 a night, he says, much of which is spent on drugs or alcohol. It’s not a lifestyle choice, he insists. “If you are sitting on the cold ground, begging, you are not going home to a nice house to live it up on the hundreds of pounds you have made that day,” he says.
The reasons for the rise are complex, says officer Jenny Osborne, the local authority’s strategic lead for adult public health: “There’s a number of factors coming in to play: we have an increase in EU nationals with no recourse to public funds, and we’re seeing the cumulative impact of welfare reform. For example, benefit sanctions and particularly how they are applied to young people, and the conditionality of the benefits system, which requires jobseekers to spend their days searching for jobs on the internet or face sanctions.”

The introduction of the bedroom tax has also played a role: 8,000 individuals in Manchester are classed as “under-occupying” their properties, Osborne says, and yet there is nowhere for them to downsize to, given a catastrophic shortage of one-bedroom flats.
Since 2012, anyone single under-35 receives only enough housing benefit for a room in house-share – not a realistic option for those with mental health and substance misuse problems. Osborne is braced for a rise in April 2017, when under-21s will be prevented from claiming housing benefit. Claimants will be entrusted with all their benefits when universal credit kicks in – another disaster waiting to happen, says Morrison.

The availability of cheap tents has exacerbated the problem, says Morrison. The biggest Manchester camp – of more than a dozen tents and washing lines hung between guy-ropes – is a minute’s walk from Piccadilly station. This miserable mini-shanty town provides an uncomfortable welcome to the city anointed the centre of the government’s shiny “northern powerhouse”.
Last April, the first really visible homeless camp was set up in the city centre, after a protest outside the town hall in Albert Square. For months right into the autumn, a ragtag of protesters, together with what the council calls “genuine” rough sleepers, played a grim game of cat and mouse with the authorities, setting up camp in various prominent locations, including outside the recently restored Central Library, where they made headlines after being stopped from using the loos.

The city’s homelessness crisis went global in October, when the former Manchester United star Gary Neville allowed a group of squatters, some homeless, to spend the winter inside the city’s old stock exchange building, which he was planning to develop into a luxury hotel.
The city’s visible homelessness problem jars with its self-projected image of prosperity: glitzy shops and nightclubs, ever more cranes building multimillion-pound penthouses on the horizon, supercars parked brazenly on double yellow lines outside restaurants by footballers and sheikhs who earn the fine in a minute.

On Morrison’s morning round, we pass a former squaddie sleeping in the main entrance to a department store. It is Billy Gage, who last year hit the local media after complaining about being urinated on and spat at while sleeping rough. Coronation Street stars offered their support but, three months on, Gage still does not have a roof over his head – unless you count the porch of Debenhams.
On the steps at the back of the cathedral is an Eritrean man caught in limbo after being refused asylum yet unable to return home. He sits quietly, surrounded by donations from the public: a pack of razors atop a six-pack of Tango, and a sausage and egg butty from Tescos for breakfast.

So many voluntary groups in the city are undertaking soup and curry runs that no homeless person in Manchester is expected to go hungry in 2016, according to experts. But while such acts of kindness are welcomed by Morrison and Osborne, they gently argue that the public’s generosity exacerbates the problem. They ask wellwishers not to donate food or money and instead give to the Big Change campaign.
“The street lifestyle is more sustainable than it used to be,” says Osborne. “Twenty years ago, when you think about cardboard cities etc, there weren’t tents, there weren’t high-quality sleeping bags that meant people had a chance of staying warm and dry, therefore it was perhaps easier to work with people to come inside.

“Members of the public are giving and trying to help, but it’s not necessarily helping people to move away from the streets. We know that’s ultimately the only way they are going to sort their issues out.”

Is Homelessness, a Free Choice?

It has long been assumed that homelessness is a personal choice. As a choice, homelessness is embedded within debates about deviant behaviours and problematic pathologies. The “homeless person” is either making calculated and immoral choices to be homeless, or they are perceived to be powerless agents who lack the capacity to exercise choices. Rarely has it been adequately explained, however, what choosing homelessness means and how people who are homeless make sense of their choices. The structural and individual circumstances that situate and make choices meaningful require robust consideration. Drawing on ethnographic research with people sleeping rough, this article unpacks and illuminates some of the hidden complexities that underpin choices to be homeless. With an objective of retaining people’s sense for autonomy, the article contributes to the field by arguing that choice can be understood as an expression of agency and a commitment to a “normal” identity.

Describing homelessness as a choice helps gain a sense of control over not only the circumstances, but the identity of the homeless.

In 2012, we set out to unpack some of the contexts and circumstances that situate and make meaningful the espoused choices to be homeless that people make. To this end, we developed a model of homelessness that respected the capacity of people who are homeless to exercise choices, to see their choices as imbued with their life experiences as well as reflecting their sense of place in society. The model was an attempt to move beyond the unfortunately common characterization of people experiencing homelessness as passive victims.

Such characterizations are not merely disempowering, but are ethically and empirically objectionable. Perhaps the most offensive cases involve bureaucratic definitions of homelessness that deny a priori the very possibility that homelessness can be a chosen state.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ definition, which is itself based on the European typology of homelessness, “homelessness is not a choice.” This implies that homelessness is always a result of structural problems, that homeless people are always homeless due to circumstance beyond their control, rather than internal factors over which they have control.

This may actually be true most or even all of the time, but it is an empirical question; it cannot be true by definition. Significantly, it is an empirical position that is in direct conflict with the expressed position of some people who are homeless.

Personal Choice

Some homeless people claim to have actively chosen homelessness. To claim to understand another person’s choices and actions better than that other person is arrogant at best and incoherent at worst. The claim is indicative of an unfortunately dominant paradigm in the social sciences of explaining people’s actions with theories removed from the accounts of the people we study, particularly marginalized people such as those who are homeless.
A consistent theme identified among nearly all interviewees centered on homelessness being explained as a personal choice. Importantly, each person who articulated homelessness as a choice did so with reference to addiction. Homelessness as a choice was described as subordinate to the primary aim of using illicit substances.

In conversations held over a six-month period, people were asked to explain what accounted for their homelessness. The following remarks are representative of how this was rationalized in terms of choices:
“What money I get, it’s not enough for me to indulge how I want, and pay rent. So I’ve decided to skip rent, so I can indulge myself more – that’s why … I know people by accident, and by misfortune do become homeless, but those that do, that are wanting a place, get it very quickly. It’s only those that want their money for other reasons. They’re the ones that stay homeless … And once you work out that, shit I can stay down here for nothing, and go up there and get fed for nothing, and people come here and, all of a sudden, it’s too easy to stay out.”

“Yeah well down here – the reason I’m on the riverbank is because of my drug habit. I can’t afford to go out and pay rent, because every cent I get goes to drugs when I’m here. So whatever’s left after visiting the kids, goes up my arm.”

“But no, I’ve cocked up my life. But in a nutshell, we’re here because of our own fault: when it comes down to it. And you know people say no, no, no, but we are because if we hadn’t chosen that side of life we wouldn’t be here. We’ve got no one to blame but ourselves … Um I definitely do blame the drugs for that, but I blame me for the drugs.”

These participants frame their experiences as resulting from conscious or deliberate actions. Moreover, these individuals are aware of other potential choices and consequences. One described this with reference to it being too easy to stay homeless due to external support, namely: the accessibility of services.
In fact, all participants expressed a sound awareness of the services and resources available, and the costs and consequences of accessing them. Their choices often explicitly compared the costs and value of the services to the costs and value of illicit substance use to arrive at their preferred choice. Such weighing of cost and benefits are indicative of rational choices.

Human Agency

Our participants presented their continued homelessness as a free choice. Obviously, this choice was made against a background of illicit substance addiction. This may imply their choices are in fact highly constrained. There is a body of work to suggest that those seeking illicit substances have at best a diminished capacity to actually make free choices.

Neurobiologists have long shown the power of substance addiction to control behavior toward craving and drug seeking. Thus it may be illegitimate to characterize these as free choices. However, if the choice is seen as problematic or being made by an individual with diminished capacity to make free choices, the individuals are clearly conscious of their choices. Using or abstaining from illicit substances is a choice that people actively make, but there are structural factors that contribute to the context in which those choices operate.
At the center of our model of homelessness is human agency. Our participants did not want to be seen as passive and deficient “homeless people” who had been made homeless by others. By constructing homelessness as a choice, they were highlighting their autonomy and normality: “I fell into this situation. It was my own choice to do it.” “It’s my own fault. When I got out of jail I stuffed up big time. I made the choices to end up homeless.”

Many spoke comfortably about the profound negative aspects of living on the streets, and the powerlessness and danger that went with it. They did not try to explain their homelessness in terms of freedom or having escaped a conventional and problematic way of living. Unlike people living on the streets of San Francisco, these expressions of agency were not a means to illustrate their ability to survive on the “jungle-like” streets.
At first, the comfortableness with which those interviewed spoke about their problematic homelessness experience may lead to an expectation that they would be similarly at ease to explain how homelessness was not their choice: that homelessness was not a reflection of their responsibilities or failings. This was not the case. When they spoke about their problematic experiences of homelessness and how their choices accounted for it, they invariably tied their choices to enter and then continue to be homeless to their sense of agency and sense of self.

By describing homelessness as a choice, people were able to gain a sense of control over not only their circumstances, but their very identity. This self-efficiency and associated control of identity is obtainable even though the outcomes of the critical choices were themselves constructed as problematic.
In fact, some participants used the negative aspects of homelessness as a means of deflecting some of their other everyday actions from their notion of self: They used the hardships faced on the streets as a means of explaining actions as resulting from urgent and serious but, nevertheless, contingent circumstances. In this way, they were able distance their notion of self from some of their actions. But this insulating strategy was never used in relation to the choice to become homeless.

“There’s a lot of things I’ve done that I’m not proud of. Um, but I’d like to be seen for the caring thoughtful person I am you know. I love my son dearly.

People actively described how these problematic choices and subsequent ways of living did not reflect their “true” selves. By closely engaging with people sleeping rough over the long-term, a space was created where they distinguished their choices to enter and stay homeless from the types of people they actually saw themselves as and with whom they strongly identified.
Admittedly, people understood their choices as atypical and indeed problematic. Nevertheless, their problematic choices provide only a limited perspective to understanding who they are, and how they want to be seen. This is not to claim that people ignored undesirable aspects of their lives or denied their problems. Each person was acutely aware of stigmatized public perceptions of their homelessness and illicit substance and alcohol use. Once trusting relationships were developed, people comfortably spoke about how their choices led to substance and alcohol dependence and homelessness. But they argued that this way of living did not accurately reflect who they were.

Sense of Self

Examining the manner in which people sleeping rough articulated and understood their choices to enter and stay homeless poses tension with existing notions of choice. People explained that responding to their addictions belies their homelessness choices, and an account of their immediate day-to-day experiences and life histories provides a context to make these choices analytically meaningful.

Examining these contexts and choices ethnographically allowed something about people’s sense of self to become evident. Framing homelessness as a choice can be a way to reject passive depictions of the poor homeless. Similarly, choosing homelessness was consistent with an emphasis of their alignment with the “mainstream” society that valued autonomy and self-responsibility. Even though their choices and lives as homeless were described in negative terms, choosing it represented their normality – not simply an exercise in agency.
The explanatory nature of people’s choices to be homeless and the lifestyle that went with it needs to be understood cautiously. Choosing homelessness and making other problematic decisions, despite being an exercise of agency, were not indicative of how they saw themselves to be.

Always Feeling Out of Place

Interview participants not only spoke about trauma and hardship throughout their lives, but many also described their life-long feelings of alienation and disconnection. Comments about “always feeling out of place” or being different or not physically included in the “mainstream” were characteristic of the narratives presented.
The narratives and the very presentation of homelessness as a choice can be interpreted as a commitment to the norms and expectations of the “mainstream” that values autonomy and self-responsibility. But notice it is in the context of their own biographies as alienated and “the other” that meant taking ownership over their current situation: Their choices represented a powerful assertion of agency and personal individuality.

During initial encounters, many expressed a sense of pride in their homelessness. Homelessness was presented and often explicitly described as their free choice and they claimed to be “at home” on the streets. But once a rapport was established, it was apparent that these types of comments were an expression of bravado. They constructed their identities by unpacking what choosing homelessness meant for them:

“I would say I believe, and I have been told by other people that, I’m a good person at heart, but I make a lot of silly decisions … Yeah I’m a drug addict; I’m an anomaly I suppose. I see myself as a good person, I just do bad things, but not bad to people.”

Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture

On Reddit, he’s /u/huckstah, an administrator on /r/vagabond, a subreddit with nearly 10,000 members—many of them identify as “homeless”—who trade skills and stories. On “the road and the rails,” he’s Huck, and even after we speak twice by cellphone, he tells me he’d prefer I don’t print his real name. “People say, ‘Well, you chose to become homeless.’ But that’s wrong,” he says. Huck says he’s been a hobo for upward of 11 years and started hopping trains and hitching rides at 18. “I did not choose to become homeless. 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.”

Or maybe you have experienced it, thanks to the recent Great Recession that caused a spike in homelessness—especially for families—with its tidal wave of foreclosures. And if you have, there’s a good chance you were probably one of the many homeless with a mobile device, a sight that has become increasingly common. The ubiquity of cheap phones and even cheaper data has prompted even longtime homeless to join the growing ranks of people with a cell connection but no house. “The day I started on the road, I had a flip phone, an iPod, a TomTom GPS, an atlas, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi wasn't very easy to find,” says a medic who’s been a hobo for four years and asks me to identify him as “Nuke.” (“I have a pretty decent amount of training and experience in treating combat trauma.”) He now lives out of a ’91 Ford pickup and says, “I have a smartphone, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi is everywhere.”

The rise of the mobile Internet has made a hobo’s life easier, Nuke says. But when I ask Huck about how he and fellow travelers use their smartphones, I get the sense that even for the digitally connected homeless, life is far from easy. “I keep my phone off a lot, or in airplane mode,” he says, “because we can only charge up for a short time—maybe once a day, or sometimes it will be two to three days between charges, maybe an hour of charge.” For Huck and his fellow itinerants, smartphone usage is measured in instants. “We check Google Maps and then we turn it off, or we make a quick phone call and then we turn it off.”

That’s a pity because a smartphone can be even more useful for a homeless person than it is for those with a regular roof over their heads. Case in point: Smartphones provide on-the-go weather forecasts, convenient for an everyday life but essential for a homeless one. “You have to keep an eye on the weather when you're living outside,” says Mike Quain, a 22-year-old busker and percussionist. “If it's too cold somewhere, we'll get south any way we can. And no one likes to be surprised by rain. Rain isn't nearly as fun when you don't have a dry place to go.”

Piecemeal job-hunting sites like Craigslist are also required browsing if you’re trying to make a living with no permanent place to call home. “For the past 100 years of this lifestyle in America, we found our jobs by following seasonal schedules and asking around for jobs at farmers' markets and farming supply stores, looking at job ads in newspapers, asking door-to-door,” says Huck, adding that things are done very differently today. “I know thousands of hobos, and I don't know a single one that doesn't use Craigslist. It has completely changed how we find work.”

The uses don’t end there. Quain lists Google Maps, Couchsurfing.org and HitchWiki as “indispensable for vagabonds,” while Nuke is still in awe of his smartphone’s power. “I can fit an entire Radioshack from the ’90s and then some in my pocket now.”

Do a Google search for hobo culture and you’ll find a lot about decline: the death of the working-class itinerant, the fall of the Depression-era drifter who never stopped drifting and the end of the heroic hobo celebrated by the likes of the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa. Vice released a documentary in 2012 called Death of the American Hobo. Those “graybeards,” Nuke will tell you, are on the way out, but there isn’t a dearth of culture left in their wake. Itinerants under the age of 35, he says, are forming their own kind of hobo society, one that overwhelmingly keeps up with technology and the times.

Where there used to be “jungles” and “hobohemias,” now the Internet is the place present-day hobos—many of them millennials—go to connect and build a community. Sites little-known among the safely homed—DumpsterMap.com (a map of dumpsters ripe for diving), WiFiFreeSpot.com (a list of free Wi-Fi hot spots), On-Track-On-Line.com (railroad digital scanner frequencies)—are common resources, says Huck, for the vast majority of the digitally connected homeless community. “Prior to 2005 or so, all of this was simply done word-of-mouth, which is how it was done for over 100 years.”

Huck is developing a new hobo code. In terms of the mythology surrounding the homeless, this is a big deal. Read about the romance of hobo culture and you’ll find tons of talk about hobo symbols: a face on the side of a barn means the building’s safe to sleep in; a caduceus on a doctor’s door means the doctor will treat homeless. But for hobos nowadays, that’s all outdated. Huck is part of a project to revamp the code completely and make it more useful for the digitally connected hobo by creating a new set of symbols for things such as “Wi-Fi networks and free outlets.” When I ask if I can publish any of the symbols, though, Huck balks: When hobo codes become commonly known by regulars, it’s a problem. “The codes are for us,” he says, “and if other people see it, they could have clues to our secrets, and the next thing you know, that outlet that was accessible to hobos is now locked up or completely gone.”

Conventional wisdom says the Internet and mobile technology keep us in our own little bubbles, isolated and insular. And while perhaps that’s true for those with homes, Quain says it’s the opposite for hobos. For the itinerant homeless, traveling in groups makes sense for a bevy of reasons: safety, company and economies of scale, especially when it comes to digital devices. “Lots of us travel in groups and share the expense of one phone,” Quain says.

Luckily for Quain and his ilk, the ubiquity of the Internet is making finding fellow “travelers” easier than ever. The curious can head to SquatThePlanet.com and TravelersHQ.org to find vagabonds forming groups, swapping stories and arranging meetings.

Squatters have also enthusiastically embraced the mobile Internet as a means of sharing knowledge—often as a way to fight for their place amid urban real estate development. Frank Morales is a former priest, former squatter and current activist with C-Squat, a squatter advocacy organization in New York. The group works with New York’s homeless men and women who park themselves in unused, often crumbling buildings and fix up the structures in an attempt to turn them into permanent homes.

To do this successfully, squatters need to learn how to bring amenities like electricity and running water into long-neglected buildings—and that, says Morales, is where the Internet becomes indispensable. Where before these skills needed to be shared in person (often at day-long squatter “skillshares”), now they can be digitally transmitted to anyone with a smartphone. “Technology has really bridged the gap for a lot people around the world who are struggling for housing,” says Morales. Nowadays, activist movements use mass-texting platforms to coordinate occupations of neglected buildings for squatters to use. They also keep email lists that track what squats are in danger and distribute information about new laws that affect squatting. Activist homeless have used digital connections to form a movement that believes, in Morales’s words, “we have a moral obligation as individuals and as a society to support the occupation of spaces that are deteriorating and would otherwise just be rotting away to create housing.”

While no comprehensive survey of homelessness and mobile ownership has been done in the United States, small surveys provide a glimpse of how the trends have grown. A study by the University of Sydney found that 95 percent of Australia’s homeless own a mobile device, while Keith McInnes of the Boston School of Public Health’s study of homeless veterans in Massachusetts found that 89 percent own at least one device. (In Australia, mobile penetration in the general population is 92 percent; in the U.S., it’s 90.) However, “it’s hard to do truly representative studies of homeless persons,” says McInnes. For example, mentally ill homeless living under bridges, or in the woods, are probably less likely to have a cellphone and “less likely to be included in survey, because they are hard to find.”

But as McInnes points out, those who do possess a cellphone have a tool both for survival—and for restoring their sense of humanity. While settled people are usually able to meet the wider world head-on and feel no shame, homelessness carries with it a pervasive, ugly stigma. “Having a mobile phone provides homeless persons with an outward-facing identity that can mask their homelessness,” explains McInnes. “With a cellphone, people you call or who call you don’t know you’re homeless.”

Some, like Huck, have taken this one step further, using their connectivity to promote their lives without a roof and walls as a source of pride. Near the end of our interview, Huck lets me know that he and several others on /r/vagabond have just been featured on an episode of Upvoted, Reddit’s weekly podcast, where they’re celebrated, not stigmatized.

“I’ve found a way to be homeless without starving or begging or sleeping in ditches,” he says. “I’ve become a professional vagabond, and this is the lifestyle that I love.”

Fear of the Unknown – Why Homeless People Avoid Shelters

So often, I am asked the question, “Why do homeless people stay on the streets instead of going to a shelter?” I thought I had a quick answer, “they don’t like the rules at shelters!” "it's like living in a Prison, with open bunk dormitories for example." But I think there’s more to it than that.

What if they’re more afraid of shelters than the elements? After all, you can know what to expect from the weather. It’s going to get hot, it’s going to rain, it will be windy, and it will get freezing. A statistic published by the National Coalition for the Homeless stated that “Each year, about 700 homeless people die from hypothermia,” and tons more are suffering from frostbite. If people on the streets are aware of this risk, why are they still sleeping in the cold?

Because they can live with the fear of not waking up, but can’t handle the fear of the unknown.

We’re all that way. We stay in jobs we don’t like, live in towns just because that’s where we live. Sometimes, like this example of staying in the freezing cold, we allow ourselves to stay in a dangerous situation because in some strange way, it’s more comfortable than the unknown. You know you have made decisions based on this paradigm.

When you add substance abuse, mental illness and the heavy emotional strife that comes with homelessness, the likelihood of making a comfortable decision instead of a good one shoots up. Previous experience can also inhibit good decisions. We all have fears built from past experiences. PTSD can cause a person to be easily overwhelmed, easily frightened and in this case, afraid of living in an enclosed place with people they don’t know. In an interview conducted by Boise State Public Radio, a gentleman shared his story of being homeless.

In his words, “All I can say is that my fear of the unknown, of what might be waiting for me at that shelter, was worse than my fear of the known risk, you know, of staying out on the street. That was where I was comfortable. And I think people, we’re creatures of habit. We get comfortable in the most uncomfortable positions, and that just becomes home.”

So many have heard horror stories about shelters being unsafe, bug infested and filled with drugs. If they can stay on the streets, at least they are in control, right?

I want to challenge you by first repeating myself.

700 homeless people died here in America, just from the cold weather. Imagine the lives claimed by heat and exposure, too! There is something you can do about it. Become truly educated on the shelters in your area. Visit City Light shelter for women and children, visit Lighthouse Men’s Shelter, and when you do invite someone in from the streets to go to a shelter, you can tell them with confidence that it’s a safe, welcoming place to stay. I recently visited City Light, and I can’t tell you how safe and welcome I felt. From the moment I walked in the door, there was peace, joy, and comfort, whether I was in the warm sitting area, or the sunny study room upstairs.

For some homeless individuals, they truly have chosen their lifestyle and don’t desire change. But for others, it is a matter of fear. Fear of the unknown, and that’s a fear we can all empathize with.

As you see homeless people on the street, avoid assuming they’re there because of laziness or because they simply won’t follow rules. Remember your compassion, and remember that everyone has a unique story.

I would never have come here on my own, but it’s changed my life. I’m not afraid anymore.

This winter, this summer, any day of the year, please kindly invite homeless men, women, and children into the local shelters, and give them the encouragement they need to feel safe doing so. This isn’t an easy transition for anyone, so if you have the opportunity to build a friendship with a homeless person, go with them to the shelter, further alleviating the apprehension they hold. It is individuals like you who bring about individual change, and that person’s transformation could go on to change Boise for the better.

Misconceptions

I'll leave you with misconception about the homeless...

When you spend any amount of time working or volunteering at the Rescue Mission, you start to see that some common myths about the homeless men, women, and children in our community are quickly debunked. I’d like to share these with you, and hopefully shed some light on 7 of these common misconceptions.

“These people eat better than I do!

Your generosity allows the Mission to provide meals for homeless individuals. Our cooks may get a donation of 30 cans of green beans, spaghetti sauce, and some onions. You bet they’re up for the challenge of making a meal from what they have – just like you do at home when you want to use up what’s left from your last trip to the grocery store.

They Are Unemployed

So many of the guests and programmers at our shelters are employed, and they are striving to save money in pursuit of their own apartment and other personal goals. Staying in a shelter allows them to sleep well and have a good meal in preparation for the next workday.

They are Lazy

Laziness: the quality of being unwilling to work or use energy; idleness.

Homeless individuals are a lot of things, but lazy is not one of them. Whether they have fallen on hard times or choose to be homeless, they are on their feet all day, sleeping is nearly impossible due to weather, disturbances and the fear of having their belongings stolen at any moment, and nothing is ‘easy.’

They are Uneducated

Once I walked into one of our Nampa shelters, and there was one homeless gentleman eating lunch. I began talking to one of the staff, and suddenly I heard someone playing jazz piano. After talking with him, I found that the gentleman, who was homeless, not only had a beautiful talent on the piano, but also had a Masters degree in Marketing.

There Aren’t Homeless Children in America

It is heartbreaking to tell you, but this simply isn’t true. Mothers and fathers become homeless, and along with them, their children. These children are of all ages, and some parents make the decision to live on the streets or in areas like Tent City, rather than stay in a shelter and recover from homelessness.

There is No Room for Them

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and she told me she always drives past places like Tent City and wonders, “is there really no room in shelters for those individuals?” “Surely there’s room somewhere in Boise!” There is room! Quite a bit, in fact. The disconnect is that some homeless individuals do choose to stay out in the weather, often due to a disliking of rules that accompany staying in a shelter.

They are Not Valuable Members of Our Community

This is a tough one. If someone lives on the street and only has the ability to take, not give, how do they contribute to the community? They don’t. Not yet. But they have so much potential to do so. They might even have more potential than most. Should they overcome homelessness, maybe at the same time overcoming a life-controlling issue, they have experience and a testimony that can change lives.

Hopefully, you learned as much from reading this blog as I did from writing it, and I hope it has inspired a new way of thinking about the homeless individuals in our community.

Tweet #LoveTwitter