I really appreciate the level of detail in this post. Not too little. Not too much.
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
I have my account set to show flagged comments. A lot of flagged comments are simply some form of "wrongthink" but not violating any guidelines. So I've used the function often to "save" a flagged thing but it seemed to have stopped working for me at some point. I can only speculate why, but I think I saw some other commenters saying that happens if you unflag too much.. wrongthink. I want to give the site admin the benefit of the doubt though. Maybe it's simply an automated process that notices you unflagged too many things that were flagged by others too much?
100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I have been here for years. Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable or touch a political nerve.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
I want to be able to upvote this comment just to show everyone how rules like "don't change the headline as originally given by website" or "let randos (with unpredictable emotional structure) flag stuff" lead to suboptimal outcomes
That was surely a great experiment. But it's very different from actual homelessness. I would have appreciated if the author had acknowledged that more. It's closer to a backpacker-in-a-tent-in-the-mountains experience than homelessness. In the latter, the living-in-a-tent is just a comparatively minor aspect of the experience.
This was a choice (essentially to save money) and the author had multiple fallback plans. Real homelessness is born out of desperation and lack of alternatives. Tragedies of mental health issues, abuse, severe financial distress, no savings, debt, warrants. No nice shower at the gym, no locker to keep a laptop and two suits. The constant fear of not just the police but also of getting robbed by another homeless, likely after something to sell for drugs. That's very different from anytime being able to crash on somebody's sofa to save on rent so you can earlier "afford to build companies".
We can even see it in one of the later paragraphs where potential spots in the bay area are evaluated. The local homeless should not be close. Oh, they shouldn't? That gives you an idea of the conditions actual homeless folks need to live under.
Author here. I get this view, I just think it's worth underlining how biased it is to the SF Bay area dystopian situation.
I've actually gone out of my way to meet homeless in the Bay. You'd be surprised how much of a continuum homelessness is. Most are definitely living hell on earth, but many I personally met have both fallbacks and money. Could be they're too attached to their family's image of them. Or that they weirdly enough have a better life now - I met a guy who led a small community and made quite some money from crime, he could have afforded to live anywhere, but this would mean taking a menial job like he had in the past, and he didn't want that.
Of course, the disclaimer is that many homeless care a lot about their self-image and will create stories to justify their current situation so it's hard to judge. But the point still stands that, even in hell of earth for the homeless, you'll find it's a continuum. And the world is much broader than SF - I've met people at every point of the spectrum, the most extreme being a multi-millionaire who lived Swiss forests for fun!
To summarize, there is no "actual homelessness", it's not a boolean but a spectrum, and I fail to see how gatekeeping the use of the most adequate word in this situation helps anyone.
If the problem is that it using the word comes across as disrespectful to people who mainly know homelessness through the prism of the Bay Area, maybe another avenue could be to add a link at the end of the article to promote a relevant NGO, which I'm definitely open to adding if people suggest a good one.
Jeez, our fellow eggheads are nit picking your story to the extreme. I loved your story because it's about problem solving. Your listing of the pros and cons is some of the best parts. Well done!
> If something isn't important to know, there's no answer to the question of why people don't know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you're going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don't already know them. Is it because they're smart but inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?
So you can claim to have been homeless, or have experience having been homeless, but then you will be judged as having that experience. That isn't how you presented the story, but as a successful experiment where living in a dorm for $450 a month was also a good option. The redeeming lesson from such an experiment is that "being homeless isn't that bad" because "you weren't really homeless" not because "others also could have somewhere to live". The two has completely different implications.
You aren't being "gatekept" out of bad faith, but because it is nicer to believe that you are mistaken than the alternative. Because if you claim to actually have been homeless the story reads more like you put yourself above the rules, didn't consider your friends and don't understand the difference.
I'm not sure where all your mentions of the Bay Area come from. I'm writing from a European perspective, and in all major European cities you find homelessness prevalent. And it's not pretty.
A millionaire in the Swiss forest is not homeless. Choosing to live in a tent is not homelessness. To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives. As soon as it's a choice, to see romantic sunrises or fall asleep to ocean waves or whatever, that is, if calles "homeless", to me, a misuse of the term. It's a nice life, I've done it too and loved it, but I'd not start to call it "homelessness" and place myself into the same category as the poor souls sleeping under a bridge.
Of course it's a spectrum. Some folks have been forced out of their home and are living out of a car while finding a new place. That's homelessness. For some of those, it's temporary. For others, it's a spiral into misery, next is to lose the job, having a mental health issue, soon the car breaks down, and eventually they are sleeping under a bridge. Insubstantial of whether it's in SF, Berlin, Sao Paulo or Tokyo. Similarities to a concious choice are only superficial. Once it's a choice, it's outside the spectrum and is doing the fight against homelessness a disservice.
You have no idea what is going on in the bay area homeless situation. I am not discounting your experiment, which was very interesting, but you cannot apply your experiences to the bay area homeless situation.
I find it useful that terms have meaning and one can distinguish between what belongs to it and what doesn't.
A pork steak is a piece of meat taken from a pig. Once it's made of beans or some mushroom it may still be tasty (and I love good veggie food), but it's not a pork steak.
Similarly, the term "homeless" also has a certain meaning, and using it for something else muddies communication waters. And at worst, it makes the fight against actual homelessness harder: Next time some tax dollar is planned to be used for relief, somebody will point to those cases and say "well some homeless enjoy the sunrise and love the outdoors and have two suits in locker, and ain't none of my tax dollars go to that!!"
If you want to call that "gatekeeping", then sure. What's the purpose of your comment then? Gatekeeping me and telling me I should not call out the misuse of the term?
Are you saying it's not actual homelessness because it was a choice?
Wikipedia says homelessness is "the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing". It doesn't say anything about it having to be a choice. I know people who say they're homeless by choice. Would you say that's an oxymoron?
In the US, you can live in campgrounds year round in a tent. Usually a nominal fee with access to amenities. Similarly, author of the article chose to live in a tent right next door to the University where he had access to amenities. I can totally see the analogous situation here. It was a way to save money not a necessity. Both situations don’t make you homeless.
That’s my takeaway and others on the difference here. Homelessness driven by choices then turn into necessity to live. I don’t think responding to the sentiment with technical definitions from Wikipedia is the right discourse either (as done in other comments not yours). You can see the problem with this story without having to cite your comment to try to bring some strength to it.
By the definition you have provided though, someone that has access to stable, safe or functional housing but then chooses to not to use it (eg opting to camp instead), is not homeless.
Edit: the word “lack” really is the key word. This implies no choice, right?
Words have connotations. The word "homeless" has very strong connotations of poverty and the associated lack of options, i.e. lack of choices.
So yes, considering it not to be actual homelessness if it's a choice is perfectly reasonable. You can't wikipedia-lawyer your way to a functional understanding of natural language.
> I know people who say they're homeless by choice.
To me, that's a blatant misnomer. Elon Musk also calls himself "homeless". (By choice, quite obviously.) There is not much to discuss once the term is assigned that meaning.
Homelessness is a somewhat broad category though. There's lots of people couch-surfing between friends and their car. They're also in a very different position from people who are sleeping rough.
I only experienced traditional rough sleeping homelessness once when my "house" (my van) was towed and I had to sleep in an hostile architecture bus stop bench that had ridges between each "seat" area. Otherwise, I was technically "homeless"/vanliving in SV from about 2010-2019.
Stuff that we consider abnormal (homelessness, migration/seeking asylum, etc.) is at some point personal decision („I'm going to try to move to the next country, whatever it takes”), even if usually are not perceived as real choices, e.g. when the alternative is a lack of food or to sustain persecution. But a decision nonetheless, and one that will be taken by resourceful people, those who can spend a night or a fortnight in a tent.
If you know how to survive in a forest, you're a good candidate for a homeless or a migrant. Such decision point might be closer than you think.
Calling it a "choice" to seek asylum in another country because of war or threat of death in someone's home country for e.g. sexual orientation reasons is beyond cynical and cruel.
I truly hope you will never be in such a situation and then meeting somebody telling you that you are a refugee because of a choice you made.
I did this in Toronto and SF for a few summers in my 30s, well into my "real life" and beyond college. It was transformative, like creating my own UBI. Found all the same benefits: mundane daily moments become magical. Unexpected hospitality of strangers when I [on rare occasion] needed it. Admiration of friends and strangers. Etc etc
The main thing I did different was using a hammock tent (10min setup, 10min teardown each day). So I stayed in very public places (right off major foot traffic routes) and just went to bed early and got up at sunrise.
Also, I told everyone. No authority cared that i was doing it. In fact, i was organizing weekly events for government employees (some quite high level), and they all thought it was hilarious and were supportive.
Sounds similar to backpacking through {India | Camino de Santiago}.
I think it's important for every young adult who becomes a well-rounded adult to have experienced a short term of deprivation so they have a frame-of-reference what others in less fortunate situations experience. <my-two-centidollars>The problem today is that there are too many mean, spoiled individuals with way too much power lacking theory of mind, a sense of community, and basic human compassion.</my-two-centidollars>
That's about the 2 week drug and alcohol budget for an average homeless person. Homeless means no permanent shelter, not "forbidden to acquire and use money"
The ROI calculation is way too short sighted to be meaningful. To start you are already paying college tuition, and the expectation is to get an education that will help you pay off the loans (and then some). Going a few hundred deeper in the hole every month to have a roof over your head (you know, the most basic requirment for humans after water and food) is a no brainer and will massively increase your education ROI. A couple months of "homeless man" cosplay is probably fun and games but start to face the heat, cold, humidity, animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
Doesn't living in a tent also make you less vulnerable to smartphone and laptop addictions?
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
Better grades: could've spent more time in the library while paying rent anyway.
Learned a lot living at people's places: you could plan a month of no accomodation and couch surf, don't think that's such a stretch. More fundamentally, the tent piece was just a "social opener" to learn more about others. Many other things can be this social opener.
Material freedom: I buy that the experiment showed you that and that's awesome, but I also think some solid therapy around one's understanding of material reality could play a similar role.
> but start to face the ... animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
These are the real dangers that a roof and walls offer you protection from. If you happen to find a benign niche where you don't face these threats, it's likely because there is an invisible layer of defense being provided to you by the societal structures around you.
Why put this experience along some pseudo-objective yardstick? Just read the article, the author tells you already how he experienced it and why he decided to do this. If you would not do this yourself, that's okay, but don't take away from the author like this.
This is not homelessness. This is "bandit camping". Not a value judgment on the act - when I was young climbing bum I did me a fair bit of it. But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless, who aren't doing it by choice to optimize their time for a relative luxury.
There's a place for policing language, but you're not doing anyone any favors by gatekeeping homelessness. This is not involuntary homelessness, but then a large number of unhoused people could live under a roof if they were willing to accept certain tradeoffs, whether that be living with an abusive spouse, with an estranged parent, in a sober house, or far away from a community of friends. There are unhoused people who could scrape by in menial, arduous--and possibly dangerous--jobs who instead choose to live life on their own terms.
Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
No but it definitely normalizes the issues around homelessness as no big deal when you write something where you’re intentionally homeless for financial gain.
I'm not sure this is entirely correct. Many have studied homelessness in an attempt to remedy it, and found that it is largely a choice* and thus near impossible to solve with resources from the outside.
*Sure, not a 'Hey, this looks fun' choice, more a conscious understanding of a tradeoff where homelessness is not choosing the alternative life.
Oh get over yourself with this contrived bit of supposed offense. Aside from it being nonsense, are you yourself homeless, a representative of a group of homeless people, someone who interviewed a number of them and asked if they're "offended" by anyone who doesn't absolutely have to live outside also using the phrase "i'm living homelessly"?
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
Actually the ETHOS classification system for homeless focuses more on where a person is living as opposed to why they're living like that. OP would alternate between two categories.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
Cripplingly Expensive healthcare is only an issue in one country in the world.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
I went to the ER in Canada (BC) a couple years ago, and they charged $950 to my credit card just to walk in the door. Everything else was extra, and charged at rates not wildly different from what I’ve seen in the US. And I’m a Canadian citizen! (I had temporarily lost my free healthcare eligibility because I lived outside the country for a few years.)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
It seems unlikely that there is not a single other country with “cripplingly expensive healthcare” besides the USA. I’m also of the opinion that there are more than 6 countries total.
An "ER visit" can be a completely benign and simple thing that happens after-hours but really you just needed a nurse/doct, OR it could be a life-changing set of multiple surgeries and tests and treatments and and and. Let's not dismiss how very-real emergency costs can be, just because we don't like the messed-up american healthcare billing mess. I've been to an emergency room in South Africa, as an example, and off the bat it cost about $100. That's almost monthly average salary of a huge portion of the population here!
Lucky that you happened to be in need in countries with a low cost of living. I needed an ambulance, stitches, and an MRI in Germany and it cost me $2000 USD. I wish I had travel insurance then.
Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.
Then again having an extra $2k in the bank might prove beneficial - perhaps preventing a personal catastrophe in a the near future. Or open doors that might make a significant difference down the road.
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
Agreed, but, say, a 20yo who's never had anything go significantly wrong for them, might not even consider that something bad could happen.
In that case, the appetite for risk versus reward is only appetite for reward.
If risks pointed out, at least that's closer to an informed choice they're making, and maybe they'll do the same risky thing but now be more careful about mitigating risk as they do.
(Source: Person who's bet it all at least a few times, and about to do so again, but finding ways to avoid stupid decisions and mitigate risks along the way.)
True in many places, but in Hong Kong, the cost of an A&E visit or hospital admission for the author (presumably on a student visa) at that time was about USD15/day.
> This turns into a surprisingly intense experience. I get to meet people in their most intimate space and bond over late-night conversations in ways that never would have happened otherwise.
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
Readit News
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
Flagging seems to be one of the big vulnerabilities of HN.
Maybe flaggers should be required to state the reason for flagging, and this reason should be exposed.
Flagging means "no one should even see this on HN", and random people shouldn't get arrogant or cavalier about swinging around that power.
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100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
This was a choice (essentially to save money) and the author had multiple fallback plans. Real homelessness is born out of desperation and lack of alternatives. Tragedies of mental health issues, abuse, severe financial distress, no savings, debt, warrants. No nice shower at the gym, no locker to keep a laptop and two suits. The constant fear of not just the police but also of getting robbed by another homeless, likely after something to sell for drugs. That's very different from anytime being able to crash on somebody's sofa to save on rent so you can earlier "afford to build companies".
We can even see it in one of the later paragraphs where potential spots in the bay area are evaluated. The local homeless should not be close. Oh, they shouldn't? That gives you an idea of the conditions actual homeless folks need to live under.
I've actually gone out of my way to meet homeless in the Bay. You'd be surprised how much of a continuum homelessness is. Most are definitely living hell on earth, but many I personally met have both fallbacks and money. Could be they're too attached to their family's image of them. Or that they weirdly enough have a better life now - I met a guy who led a small community and made quite some money from crime, he could have afforded to live anywhere, but this would mean taking a menial job like he had in the past, and he didn't want that.
Of course, the disclaimer is that many homeless care a lot about their self-image and will create stories to justify their current situation so it's hard to judge. But the point still stands that, even in hell of earth for the homeless, you'll find it's a continuum. And the world is much broader than SF - I've met people at every point of the spectrum, the most extreme being a multi-millionaire who lived Swiss forests for fun!
To summarize, there is no "actual homelessness", it's not a boolean but a spectrum, and I fail to see how gatekeeping the use of the most adequate word in this situation helps anyone.
If the problem is that it using the word comes across as disrespectful to people who mainly know homelessness through the prism of the Bay Area, maybe another avenue could be to add a link at the end of the article to promote a relevant NGO, which I'm definitely open to adding if people suggest a good one.
> If something isn't important to know, there's no answer to the question of why people don't know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you're going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don't already know them. Is it because they're smart but inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?
So you can claim to have been homeless, or have experience having been homeless, but then you will be judged as having that experience. That isn't how you presented the story, but as a successful experiment where living in a dorm for $450 a month was also a good option. The redeeming lesson from such an experiment is that "being homeless isn't that bad" because "you weren't really homeless" not because "others also could have somewhere to live". The two has completely different implications.
You aren't being "gatekept" out of bad faith, but because it is nicer to believe that you are mistaken than the alternative. Because if you claim to actually have been homeless the story reads more like you put yourself above the rules, didn't consider your friends and don't understand the difference.
A millionaire in the Swiss forest is not homeless. Choosing to live in a tent is not homelessness. To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives. As soon as it's a choice, to see romantic sunrises or fall asleep to ocean waves or whatever, that is, if calles "homeless", to me, a misuse of the term. It's a nice life, I've done it too and loved it, but I'd not start to call it "homelessness" and place myself into the same category as the poor souls sleeping under a bridge.
Of course it's a spectrum. Some folks have been forced out of their home and are living out of a car while finding a new place. That's homelessness. For some of those, it's temporary. For others, it's a spiral into misery, next is to lose the job, having a mental health issue, soon the car breaks down, and eventually they are sleeping under a bridge. Insubstantial of whether it's in SF, Berlin, Sao Paulo or Tokyo. Similarities to a concious choice are only superficial. Once it's a choice, it's outside the spectrum and is doing the fight against homelessness a disservice.
A pork steak is a piece of meat taken from a pig. Once it's made of beans or some mushroom it may still be tasty (and I love good veggie food), but it's not a pork steak.
Similarly, the term "homeless" also has a certain meaning, and using it for something else muddies communication waters. And at worst, it makes the fight against actual homelessness harder: Next time some tax dollar is planned to be used for relief, somebody will point to those cases and say "well some homeless enjoy the sunrise and love the outdoors and have two suits in locker, and ain't none of my tax dollars go to that!!"
If you want to call that "gatekeeping", then sure. What's the purpose of your comment then? Gatekeeping me and telling me I should not call out the misuse of the term?
Wikipedia says homelessness is "the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing". It doesn't say anything about it having to be a choice. I know people who say they're homeless by choice. Would you say that's an oxymoron?
That’s my takeaway and others on the difference here. Homelessness driven by choices then turn into necessity to live. I don’t think responding to the sentiment with technical definitions from Wikipedia is the right discourse either (as done in other comments not yours). You can see the problem with this story without having to cite your comment to try to bring some strength to it.
Edit: the word “lack” really is the key word. This implies no choice, right?
So yes, considering it not to be actual homelessness if it's a choice is perfectly reasonable. You can't wikipedia-lawyer your way to a functional understanding of natural language.
To me, that's a blatant misnomer. Elon Musk also calls himself "homeless". (By choice, quite obviously.) There is not much to discuss once the term is assigned that meaning.
There's no single cause or experience for being homeless. There's no "real homelessness" either.
You might be interested to read "20-25% of all 'homeless' actually have housing" by Kevin Dahlgren.
https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/20-25-of-all-homele...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kevin-dahlgren-former-gresham-emp...
also this seems a really entitled take to say, "there is no homelessness" when there clearly is.
If you know how to survive in a forest, you're a good candidate for a homeless or a migrant. Such decision point might be closer than you think.
I truly hope you will never be in such a situation and then meeting somebody telling you that you are a refugee because of a choice you made.
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The main thing I did different was using a hammock tent (10min setup, 10min teardown each day). So I stayed in very public places (right off major foot traffic routes) and just went to bed early and got up at sunrise.
Also, I told everyone. No authority cared that i was doing it. In fact, i was organizing weekly events for government employees (some quite high level), and they all thought it was hilarious and were supportive.
Here's my learnings: https://github.com/patcon/urban-camping
EDIT: Ah, and these were my notes from living in rented shipping containers with a friend: https://github.com/patcon/container-city/wiki/Notes
I think it's important for every young adult who becomes a well-rounded adult to have experienced a short term of deprivation so they have a frame-of-reference what others in less fortunate situations experience. <my-two-centidollars>The problem today is that there are too many mean, spoiled individuals with way too much power lacking theory of mind, a sense of community, and basic human compassion.</my-two-centidollars>
"I'm currently tenting in the backyard of a friend's place."
"Tenting in a park is not something I'm comfortable advising right now :)"
Any solutions other than a friend's backyard?
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
Learned a lot living at people's places: you could plan a month of no accomodation and couch surf, don't think that's such a stretch. More fundamentally, the tent piece was just a "social opener" to learn more about others. Many other things can be this social opener.
Material freedom: I buy that the experiment showed you that and that's awesome, but I also think some solid therapy around one's understanding of material reality could play a similar role.
These are the real dangers that a roof and walls offer you protection from. If you happen to find a benign niche where you don't face these threats, it's likely because there is an invisible layer of defense being provided to you by the societal structures around you.
The “Community Support” section was my favorite. I would love to hear you elaborate on experiences and lessons you learned while staying with others.
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Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
I'm sure homeless people have more pressing thoughts than what words nerds on the internet use to describe outdoor living
*Sure, not a 'Hey, this looks fun' choice, more a conscious understanding of a tradeoff where homelessness is not choosing the alternative life.
Edit: I've taken a crack at it. If there's a better way, we can change it again.
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
Edit: added! thanks for the feedback again
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All Hong Kong residents are eligible (anyone with an HKID and permission to remain >= 180 days).
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
In that case, the appetite for risk versus reward is only appetite for reward.
If risks pointed out, at least that's closer to an informed choice they're making, and maybe they'll do the same risky thing but now be more careful about mitigating risk as they do.
(Source: Person who's bet it all at least a few times, and about to do so again, but finding ways to avoid stupid decisions and mitigate risks along the way.)
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
This was in between two stints living and working in a mobile RV hacker lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT1gPmQQkxI
I'm in SF now and we'd probably be best friends.