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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:19:15 PM EDT
[#1]
Absolutely agree.
In fact, the same applies to all levels of people. Supposedly, if guys like Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, Donald Trump and those billionaires lost it all, they would most likely be back to THAT level within a few years. It's all about the drive to succeed and make yourself better. Many people have it, some don't have it at all. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:20:35 PM EDT
[#2]
I agree with you 99%, but I did think of something. Do you also have some skill set or inate talent to go along with your hard work and personal drive? 
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:21:57 PM EDT
[#3]
I think you have to make some seriously bad decisions to end up ass out. Can you not find a job, or can you not find a job "that you want". If my ass was in trouble, I be down at the WalMart stocking returns in the big and bigger ladies skivy dept. if that's what I had to do to make a buck.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:22:54 PM EDT
[#4]
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:25:09 PM EDT
[#5]
I agree with the lib.
ANy of us *could* end up homeless. The key factor between us and them is we are willing to go work our ass off doing something, anything, to have an income to keep that from happening or to make sure our homeless stint is as short as possible. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:27:58 PM EDT
[#6]
i didn't when i was broke. i got them on my own. i looked for oportunities in the local community and took anything and everything i could get for work. changed jobs frequently as better opportunites came along. I had nothing more than a high school education and motivation to not be broke anymore. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:28:44 PM EDT
[#7]
her definition is permanantly homeless. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:30:58 PM EDT
[#8]
"Homeless" and "looking for a handout" are 2 different things. I woke up one day 15 years ago and found myself homeless. It was no fun. I was in college at the time, engaged to this girl, and we lived together. I took my financial aid money and paid 6 months worth of rent in advance. Rather, I handed her the money and she paid it. I was not working at the time, as I was busy trying to pass 18 credit hours worth of upper level classes with a halfway respectable GPA. Two days after I gave her the money, she broke up with me and kicked me out. I was stupid. Her name only was on the lease, and I gave her cash, and the receipt was in her name. I had no job, no money, and a half a tank of gas. For over 2 months I lived in my car. I sold my drums, my PA gear, my guitars and amplifiers, and most of my guns in order to continue to live for the next 2 months in the depressed town in which I lived. I had to have clean clothes and gas in my car in order to interview for jobs. I also was forced to drop out of college, as my job became finding a job. So I don't want to hear your condescending, patronizing, stereotypical, uninformed attitude regarding homeless people being too f***ing lazy. Unless you've been there, STFU. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:48:33 PM EDT
[#9]
Well i have been there. the question is did you stay there. if so... then yes my opinion stands. if not, then you obvioulsy do not qualify as homeless. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:50:08 PM EDT
[#10]
jbombelli ... you said it better than I could. In this day and age its surprising how little it would take for a LOT of folks to end up homeless. You're willing/able to work your ass off ? Good. Now mix in an unexpected stroke/tumor/mental illness ... you fill in the blanks. All your "intentions" might not mean shit. Lighten up people. Be thankful for what you've got ... especially if it wasn't given to you.
Stay safe |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:53:45 PM EDT
[#11]
this is where i draw a distinction. if you are medically unable to work then there are programs to assist you. mental illness is a definant issue as well. Those are things that are above and beyond control of your life. That is not the question here. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:55:38 PM EDT
[#12]
As long as we're barring things like hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, etc.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:57:52 PM EDT
[#13]
.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 4:58:56 PM EDT
[#14]
NO kidding. All it would take is one serious illness. Go beyond your insurance coverage, if they cover it at all, and bingo-bango. You are homeless. It is SO easy to get deeply in debt when there is a serious illness in the family. You will never own a house as long as that debt is open.... efxguy |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:00:13 PM EDT
[#15]
Substance abuse is often the culprit. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:04:16 PM EDT
[#16]
 That's the silliest thing I've read all night! |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:08:23 PM EDT
[#17]
Dont these people have friends?
I would be homeless for about an hour. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:10:05 PM EDT
[#18]
The fact of the matter is you will never own your house or your land PERIOD, you can rent it from the government but that is about it. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:10:33 PM EDT
[#19]
See? Only stupid, mentally ill people could become instantly "homeless". |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:11:34 PM EDT
[#20]
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:24:33 PM EDT
[#21]
I lived in my car for 2 months, after my previous living arragment became untenable. I had to save up enough money to put a deposit on an apartment. The hardest part was finding a place to shower. My bosses father was kind enough to let me stay with him for a month and a half until I found a place.
Sure anyone can become homeless, but it takes real effort to stay homeless. You have to make some seriously bad life choices to be permanently homeless. Lots of people have setbacks, but most people pick themselves up and get back on their feet. If everything I had was wiped out tomorrow, I would do what I had to in order to build a life for myself again. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:31:44 PM EDT
[#22]
Well said. Everyone has hard times, and most people have had a time or two or three when they couldn't make ends meet. But I have a hard time swallowing the fact that every single homeless person on the streets can't find a single way to pull themselves back up somehow. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:34:03 PM EDT
[#23]
"Homeless". I hate this term. It completely distorts the "problem".
They are not "unfortunate" or "unlucky". They are NOT "homeless". Their problem is not that they are "homeless". Their problems are they cannot hold jobs because they are junkies, winos, or just plain stupid. Or they have no marketable job skills because they refused to take advantage of free education. There are a few in there that are mentally ill. But for the most part, all who are "homeless" have put themselves in that position. I just don't give a damn about "the poor" or "the homeless" anymore. They are in that condition, for the most part, by lifestyle choices. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:34:32 PM EDT
[#24]
I was homeless for about twenty years drifting from city-to-city seeming never holding a job long enough, always changing what I was doing every time I moved. Sometimes I would stay for 16-18 months and other cities as long as 36 months. For ten of those years everything I owned I could carry on my back - not more than a handful of changes of clothes and some small items. For those twenty years I was lucky to get eight hours of sleep working 17-18 hour days for months on end without a break. When I did get to sleep in was on a thin mattress pad which was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. I didn't go hungry but I'd have to wait in seemingly endless lines of fellow gypsys like myself in the soup line ...
Join the Navy, see the world, live like a gypsy, and get paid like crap (until you make serious rank).
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:35:08 PM EDT
[#25]
Please dont call it homelessness. I call it extreme urban camping.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:35:37 PM EDT
[#26]
Downtown in EVERY city is a "work today-paid today" labor hall type temp agency.
Funny, they call shit jobs what we used to call opportunities. You do jobs like that just long enough to find a better job, and then become a foreman because no one else wants to work. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:35:45 PM EDT
[#27]
I strongly dislike the term homeless because of this. Using it implies that bums on the street are simply ordinary people without homes, and if someone would just give them a home, the would be normal people again. Bull. They only end up on the street by having severe mental, social, or behavioral disorders. A bum is a bum, and we're only hurting our society by pretending that they aren't what they are.
The thought process that says we are just a "crisis away from homelessness" is a load of crap too. Sure, you can take however much money you have in the bank against your rent/mortgage and other expenses and say that you are X paychecks away from homelessness. But no normal person gets fired and then sits on their ass until they go completely broke. You find another job, in your line of work, or in something lower-paying for a while if you have to. You adjust your lifestyle to fit whatever your new income (or lack thereof) is. In the worst possible case scenario, you sell most of your stuff and live with a friend or family member for a little while, or even in a shelter of some kind if you're really, really bad off. That goes to a more fundamental problem with Liberalism/Socialism - it assumes that the world is a static place. If you lose your job, you will continue to do the same things until you go broke. Likewise, if you raise taxes, people won't stop doing some kinds of business because the higher tax made it no longer profitable. If you make all the guns go away, the criminals who committed crimes with them will simply stop. But the world doesn't work like that - all people constantly adapt their behavior to their environment. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:36:06 PM EDT
[#28]
Permanently homeless is completely controllable in all but .001% of cases. Yes, I too have been there. It sucks in a major fucking way to have no house to come home to, no bed to climb into. No TV to watch, no beer to drink. No phone to pick up and cal dad just to chat, no g/f to cuddle up to in bed.... That shit sucks man. Been there, lost my shirt (Har har). I'll eat shit for change in the circus freakshow before I go back to that. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:38:43 PM EDT
[#29]
if you believe it could never happen to you, you have either lived a sheltered life...or you haven't lived long enough to know the deal. rain falls on the good and the bad brother.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:39:22 PM EDT
[#30]
I believe that substance abuse, family violence and mental illness are the biggest causes of homelessness.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:39:32 PM EDT
[#31]
You could become homeless...but you have the power to keep yourself from becoming so.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:47:19 PM EDT
[#32]
Ok, anyone can become homeless, if ANYONE CAN BE SUCCESSFUL.
As Bob Dylan said, I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 5:47:39 PM EDT
[#33]
A lot of the people that are homeless have other issues- primarily addiction and/or mental issues. I've met an interesting assortment of homeless in my years working the streets and they have varied stories as to how they got there. Many of the older ones were institutionalized up into the eighties when it became unpopular to do so as well as cost cutting for mental health under Reagan (there's some irony, eh?).
We used to have one guy that had been a college English professor who had schizophrenia- actually very intelligent and interesting to talk to when he was doing well, always had a bag full of books including classical literature. Seems his family was embarrassed by him and disowned him- he always got upset thinking about how he shamed them and didn't get to see his grandchildren. He refused to stay in the shelters and consequently it made it difficult to get his meds, etc. Some are women who have been disowned by their family for their choice of relationship and then they get beaten or pimped and they flee with nothing to their name. Some are too embarrassed about what they have done to ask their family or former friends for help. Think about how much debt you are carrying at any given time vs. your liquid assets. I had a friend who was doing very well as a mortgage broker show up for work one morning to find the business closed and his boss in jail for fraud; luckily he didn’t have much personal debt, he had a good savings and he had a good reputation which helped him land another job pretty quickly- the point is he had no idea what his boss had been up to with the company money. Had he been like so many Americans who carry huge amounts of debt he could have easily found himself in a tight place. People end up homeless for a variety of reasons, many of them are oxygen thieves, but some of them are genuinely ill or downtrodden to the point that they have given up. I could write a lot about this as I always found it pretty interesting, but I doubt it would change any minds. Edited for spelling |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 6:09:49 PM EDT
[#34]
Was about to say you're pretty far off base..... But that right there, IS absurd. By definition, I'M currently 'homeless'  Be glad you don't have to deal with debilitating medical issues... Doesn't mean I'm gonna accept that I'll be like this forever though. I refuse to..... No way in hell....... Really shouldn't be so judgemental. Not every situation is so clean cut...... |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 6:18:21 PM EDT
[#35]
Living in poverty has almost nothing to do with lack of money. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 6:27:15 PM EDT
[#36]
Not likely, If everything goes to shit I still have my truck (paid off) and my 19' camping trailer (paid off). I can put it in the hills and live of a McDonalds salary if need be - OR - live off the land if REALLY need be.....
Even if my home was a tent under the stars, I would have a home. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 6:29:56 PM EDT
[#37]
It is possible to be homeless, but it depends on how well you manage your income (Do you spend more than you make? Are your credit cards maxed out and you're paying only minimum on the interest? Do you have a zero principal loan?) as well as your luck. I met a former magazine editor who probably spent too much and then the magazine folded. She depleted her savings, then sold her chattel and finally wound up homeless.
I met another fellow who worked all his life and retired. Then the beotch of a wife divorces him and they split the house with her getting custody. He's homeless as she's got a good chunk of his pension and his share went towards paying the mortgage. Ain't that a beotch? Anyhow, after a couple of years, kharma catches up and I don't see him anymore. I asked around and it turns out he went "home." No, he didn't die. The betoch died first  and he got to go back to the house.  Cut your expenditures now. Save up for a rainy day. Be prepared to swallow your pride and flip burgers if it pays your bills and even if it doesn't, flip those burgers just to have some income that'll allow you to get shelter and find a better job. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 6:31:38 PM EDT
[#38]
I've lived in a canvas tent, but I've never been homeless. I've lived in an 8' x 10' metal storage shed, but I've never been homeless. You assess the situation, make adjustments and move forward.
Either that, or you're a loser that wants to play victim. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:10:45 PM EDT
[#39]
I was homeless for about three months after I was medically discharged and STUPIDLY went back to Michigan. This was when GM closed the plant in Flint, and there were a lot of people looking for work.
I was living under the I-94/US-12 overpass in Ypsilanti, MI until I got a job as a security officer at the University of Michigan. I had been living with friends in the dorm at EMU until I got caught (I had lived there the year before in the honors program dorm), then had to scoot before being arrested.). Within 6 months I was a supervisor over 50 people. Grab your damn bootstraps and get the hell out of the situation. I am now making good money in Thailand, and am at the leading edge of my profession. It took some luck, some friends, and some perseverance, but I'm here. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:32:07 PM EDT
[#40]
Lots of people ARE one crisi away from disaster. Most Americans have little or no savings or retirement planning. They live check to check. lets say you have a car repair bill thats in the thousand dollar range. No thousand dollars, no car.Lots of people who live marginally are driving old, old cars, so thats not impossible to visualize. No car, no job. Lose the job, lose the ability to pay bills. It snowballs.Next thing you know, they are behind on the mortgage, the utilities, the credit card bills. Or they have a medical emergency and wind up thousands of dollars in debt with no means to pay. Pick your scenario. Its all very possible. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:39:00 PM EDT
[#41]
As long as Uncle Sam comes through on the 1st of the month I guess I should be good to go.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:41:57 PM EDT
[#42]
Even if we do agree that we are "one crisis away from total disaster", it doesn't matter. Total disaster does not mean we are helpless or that there is no support available. You just have to ASK. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:44:41 PM EDT
[#43]
What I hear from the working poor is that they fall between the cracks for many of the programs; they work, they make enough to get by, but they make too much to qualify for the programs when they DO have a downturn and need the help. They are being doubly screwed because they care enough to work, but the guy who never works gets the help THEY could use when they actually need it the most. Understand? And some of them are simply too proud to ask for help. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:46:13 PM EDT
[#44]
Warning: He snores like a lumberjack. Disability could easily render any of us homeless. Able-bodied, and of sound mind, there is no excuse for it. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:47:24 PM EDT
[#45]
If they fail to qualify for one program, there is another they do qualify for. You will have to show me these working poor who do not qualify for ANY help from anybody. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:49:19 PM EDT
[#46]
IM me your number and I'll refer these folks to you in the future so you may share your information with them. Maybe you can write a book about proper use of relief programs and make a mint like that guy on late night TV. |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 8:53:31 PM EDT
[#47]
Why is it so hard to believe that there ARE programs available? |
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Posted: 12/27/2005 9:10:01 PM EDT
[#48]
I remember when money got real tight and I was starving. My diet consisted of a packet of ramen noodles every few days, but eventually some cash came in. I went to kroger, bought a package of 8 FMV hot dogs for .79 cents, a 6 pack of kroger buns for .99 cents and a .59 cent 2liter bottle of generic soda. Got some condiments to kill the nasty taste of the FMV and cooked em up. It was the best fucking meal ever. Moneys still tight these days, but at least I can afford to eat on a daily basic.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 9:29:10 PM EDT
[#49]
If the power go's out and the Yellowstone Caldera blows most of the world will be up shit creek with out a paddle or a house. Nothing is perfect even under ground, we're all pretty much fk'd.
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Posted: 12/27/2005 9:45:42 PM EDT
[#50]
I disagree with the statement that "everyone is one catastrohie away from becoming permenantly homeless", however I also disagree with the statement that everyone who is homeless is homeless because they are too lazy to work.
A perfect example is Michigan. When Governor Engler was elected, the first thing he did was cut spending on nut houses and halfway houses and such. The state closed a bunch of them down and turned the kooks and retarded who were living in these places out on the street where most of the still are today. Are there people living on the street who are there because they don't want to work? Absolutely. Is it the vast majority? Could be. But there are also people on the street who are either too crazy or mentally handicapped to fend for themselves. |
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