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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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".
For that matter... I'm working for a consulting firm right now with a job that is up to 100% travel. Some of my coworkers are "homeless", in that they don't have any fixed abode: travel and hotel rooms for 5-6 nights a week can be expensed to the client, so they just go to the beach, go skiing, or visit family on the weekend.
Of course, this is hardly the traditional state of deprivation you hear associated with "homelessness". I mention it not just to add a data point and widen the spectrum of "homeless", but also to point out that it's still a bit of a challenge to maintain formal relationships with institutions like banks, insurance companies, and the government when you don't have a permanent address -- even for someone with plentiful resources, in the email era, with readily available Internet.
Perhaps this will continue to improve in years to come, and the (traditionally deprived) homeless will also benefit.
