From september 2009-January 2010. I lived here

I had come across being homeless in the past, but never for this long a time period without shelter. In your early 20's you may think it's cool to be couch surfing at your buddies house, getting drunk and fucked up...everything is all cool as long as you clean up from the house show the night before. When you get into your late 20's it's a bit different because all of your "hardcore" friends have calmed the fuck down. People get married, have kids, get a cat or dog, house...can't be having uncle das büt sleeping on the couch nursing a hangover from the night before with junior running around the house and wifey barking at hubby about the "filthy transient" that they had recently adopted.



This is all Orlando, fl... in March 2008, I became unemployed, unable to find a job and only pulling $400 a month in unemployment. to rent a studio apartment in Orlando starts at $500...absolutely no jobs, I repeat, no jobs were available! I remember the worst of it when I had to do a 3 step interview for taco bell amongst a line of other potential employees.
Through it all, I had managed to survive and continue dragging my knuckles through this world, unfortunately...so I thought I would share some tips for the homeless or homeless enthusiast.

*extra money goes beyond scrap metal. The more you look for scrap metal, the more likely you are to have a dispute with a homeless man who will indeed cut you with the box cutter he is threatening you with. The plasma clinics in Orlando give $25-$50 per "donation" and provide you with free bottles of water. You are allowed 2 donations a week and they are hip to those who jump from clinic to clinic and will reject you from ever donating again. Play by the rules, donate twice a week and try not to get drunk the night before. Also if you smoke a cigarette after, you get a free high and may even pass out! If you do get drunk the night before, the ordeal will be slightly more discomforting, especially if you hate needles!

* Sundays mean sample day at your local grocer! Walk around with a carriage and eat until you are full. Einsteins bagels and Panera bread throw away the best food for vegetarians. You can fill up your bookbag with bagels and other breads if need to make it through the night.

*Dress nice and be a nice homeless man. Otherwise people will treat you like shit, duh! So everybody hates or pities homeless people, keep your self respect by staying as clean as possible. Everything from washing your balls in a public bathroom to changing into not as stinky clothes will keep the security guards from following you everywhere you go.

*Bookbags! Most important, when carrying bookbag, never keep drugs or open hooch on you. Cops are more than most likely to stop a pedestrian with a bookbag late at night than an average pedestrian just walking around. Things that were always in my bookbag: cheap laptop (would use at wifi hotspots for job hunting), paper, pen, change of clothes, water, emergency food in case I get stuck out somewhere past the time the buses don't run. Deodorants, etc...

*Even though this was Orlando, it still does get cold as fuck during winter. In december-January, the temp would drop to 35degrees, which sucks to sleep in. I made the mistake at first of drinking brandy, but all that would do is get me drunk enough to pass out. The real solution is Tonic water, which has quinine in it. QUinine keeps the body from shivering at cold temperatures which can be a bitch if you are trying to go to sleep. 1cup of tonic with a shot of brandy should be enough to keep you from shivering and get you to sleep. This useful wikipedia article contains the history of using quinine to prevent the shivers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine

...that's all for now. It really doesn't take much more than missing one or two paychecks for anyone to be homeless. Thought I would share this, if there are any questions let me know.

In the pic, was my tent, a part time sleep place for me at a foreclosed house in Orlando. I had my camp set up on the back porch, but never went inside the house. All the boxes and crap you see were already there when I found the place. I was scoping it out before I had lost my apartment, sometimes I would get paranoid and not sleep there, instead would find a gazeebo or a secluded park bench between 3-6am. Most importantly for anybody really homeless, keep moving, keep walking, keep your bag on you at all times and try to stay clean.

Later
-db

 

Yes, and this was the best I could do for shelter at the time, a lot of other businesses and residences were a bit obvious and this one was out of reach from the eyes.

I did however have a friend in Tampa, not a bum like me or an activist squatter like others here...to actually term him, would be "freegan" but he never went by that either. He found a foreclosed home on the beach, set up electric and cable there...introduced himself to the neighbors as the new renter and actually stayed there very comforatably for 6 months I believe. When I speak to him again, i will ask him for the list he referred to for foreclosed homes, or I suppose you can google it for your area. The kid was versed in telecommunications and was able to hook me up with 2 months free phone service through metro PCS. Metro PCS is a no contract, pay by the month cell provider for Florida. The deal was for me to score a Metro PCS phone and after I did, he walked me through setting it up...sure as shit, it was good from September to November.

A short side story on that one was, for me to get the phone, I took a job from a Gypsy lady from south Spain. She had a few Metro PCS cell phones that she were not using. I painted her house and in exchange scored the phone and she cooked me a meal.

 

ahh...Dubrovnik is much like Orlando. Lots of tourists, but dangerous and not shit for work. Up in the northeaster part of USA, you can also trade in cans and bottles for money, but they do not have this program in Florida. Best they have is to collect scrap metal like copper and aluminum, sell to a scrapyard for .80cents...to $1.20 a pound.

10 weeks is still a very long time to go homeless. I don't ever want to do even one day ever again. The plus side is, having learned from trial and error, what works, what is most convenient and etc... it is like money in the bank. Now I can do a week of homelessness standing on my head, but I would much rather live in comfort.

 

HcDancing-

If yuo're a pack rat, it means that you have loyalties to certain materials. Not that it's a bad thing, in fact it's what makes most humans human. I grew up, poor as dirt...my father was a construction worker and raised me as a single father on shit for income, but did his best! My big material obsession was always things I've created. I've got boxes of drawings and writings spread between here and a thousand miles...stored at safe houses. As far as anything like video games, teevee, keepsakes, etc... I never had too much use for them. I am not an anarchist by politics, but by default. I personally don't like politics, I don't get into them and I can't understand them...it's not a subject of interest. I'm all for an individual living on their own and being self sufficient, unfortunately I do not think it is a good idea for the people as a whole to do so. Not yet anyways...it would take a nuclear war to force us to become self sufficient and even then the comfort junkies would not survive.

Like you, I knew some gutter punk style squatters, especially as a teen, and they would rag on me for living in a house or whatever. The funny part was, I would see all these bums downtown "spanging" and bothering individuals. Later some of them would get in their cars, drive home to their suburbs and go to sleep in their comfortable beds. Of course this is not anarchy...this is fashion. Personally, I never bothered anybody for change. I'd rather work for money, I do not believe that just because someone has more than I do, that I am entitled to it. Again, this is also not anarchy, but communist ideology and I do not like people bothering me for things that I work hard to get. In my opinion, it is hard to hold strong and true to anarchist beliefs while being homeless. I don't like people looking down on me...I don't necessarily care what others think, but I tend to get confrontational if people (I.E. rent-a-cops, store owners, cops, etc...) follow me around or hassle me. It's best for both parties to just take a bit of pride in your appearance so they don't have to worry about you and so that you don't have to get mad at them. You always need money, can't always steal...a couple of days eating bagels out of dumpsters and sleeping on park benches, you're most likely to work a day job at the labor pool, just so you can score a shitty hotel room for one night...which is like a palace during this time.

It's a shitty life, to be honest. All this shit about train hopping and hitchhiking and squatting for squatters rights...for fuck sakes, if you have a home, live in it. Nothing wrong with that. There are adventures in being without a home but it doesn't equal out to the misery involved with it. Your diet sucks, your hygiene sucks your life sucks, your body has to constantly adapt to the outside living conditions as opposed to having something to control a temp that you are comfortable in, like an airconditioner or heater. You have to worry about getting sick, bugs, fights with other homeless individuals over shitty things like dumpster rights and etc... In Orlando, the bums are very very territorial.

But if it does ever happen to you, it sucks to say, but you have to drop everything. EVERYTHING! Whatever you own that is worth money, sell it as fast as you can or throw it in the trash. Keeping expensive shit on you all the time will make you nervous at night. For example, I had a laptop...this is the first time being homeless that I had a laptop and it most certainly helped pass time and boredom. Helped me stay connected to friends and family I would charge it at a restaurant or whatever hotspot usually had outlets. But at night or walking around with it, I'd always get nervous that someone was going to try and steal it and I would have to fight them, probably get cut up, go to the hospital and maybe even lose my laptop!

So there you have it, it's far from romantic and this is the reason why I had made this thread, because I wanted to help any others out there who may be squatting or just plain homeless or warn people of the potential physical and emotional stress that somtehing like squatting for squatters rights can have on a person. Some people cannot live any other way, more power to them...personally I would rather live in a house and work a job for money. Call me a sell out if you must, but I never had anything to sell out anyways. Working a min. wage job after being broke, homeless and unemployed for 5 months or so is a fucking blessing in my opinion. And I had to travel a thousand miles just to work a shit slave wage job, so money must be important in some way or another.

Edit: my fondest living experience was at a punk house. I wont name drop right now because somewhat popular bands have played and partied there. It was a great sense of community, we all worked kitchen jobs and traded foods...get drunk off of each others dime, and pull some crazy shit just to get fucked up that night. Lots of great memories attached, cops getting called, drawing guns on us, I almost died one night, drunk friend sliced his back open and whipped his dick out on the stretcher, started jerking off...good times! Also, credit don't matter right now. They pretend like it does, but depending where you are at, any renter may be willing to up and rent a home to anybody out of desperation!

 

When I first became homeless, I was 20. My pops died and didn't have anything to leave behind for me except a van. I made stupid decisions like stay in Orlando instead of moving out of state where other family was. I had a girlfriend who couldn't give a fuck less about my dangerous situation. So I handled it very stupidly, very amateur if you will. I had a dog and thought I would be able to keep my dog with me in my van.

Don't know if you have been homeless before, but best thing to do is the most basic and common sense thing to do. Dump everything, focus on yourself and save every dollar you have.

The housing situation is the same as in Orlando...of course, like I may have previously stated, Orlando is not all Mickey mouse disney shit. Orlando is full of transplants, people form NY, NJ and Cali. It's expensive for just a 1br+utilities, etc... If you want to live on your own, you need to work 2 jobs at least. If you live with a roommate, 1 job is enough, but you're probably broke a lot. So yeah, definitely Oregon would be a good choice, especially to snag some joint out in the sticks, get a rural farmboy style job, get food stamps, all that.

most of all, good luck.