Homeless Experiment | Hacker News Reader

Homeless Experiment

nevblog.com

104 pointsorganicgrant50 comments

Unfortunately, no one can be told what homelessness is. You have to feel it for yourself.

It's like putting on heavy weights and thick glasses because you want to know how it is to be old.

The worst part is the psychological one, imho. He can go home. All bills paid, cosy warm room, roof over his head. But to know that you "failed in life", can't provide for yourself like so many others, have nowhere to go... I guess that's the real homelessness.

I recently experienced not getting paid for several months. It's quite interesting what this does to your head.

I would have shived him for his 4g iphone while he slept on his makeshift cardboard bed under the bridge.

I'd make the shiv from a melted 3g iphone.

Poverty is a state of mind.

Pithy aphorisms are the state of a thoughtless mind.

I thought it was a concise was of stating that constricting environmental factors have a way damaging one's self-esteem to the point of preventing him from clearly thinking to improve his circumstances.

That is much better put. Your original formulation did not convey that connotation.

If you've down-voted me, why not articulate why you disagree?

"But still you'll never get it right, cos when you're laid in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your Dad he could stop it all."

However, I guess it's not either or but a spectrum - although never completely homeless, I'm sure he felt more homeless than usual.

> more homeless than usual.

This is what going on vacation is, or camping out.

Pulp got it spot on, a very fine choice of lyric there... it hit the mark and hit it hard.

I've been homeless. It's an integral part of my identity that during my youth my life led me onto the streets for almost 2 years (inc 2 winters).

When I put myself on the street I had options. It was an escape route from a family environment I wish on no-one. But I had options. I could've still called people up, I could've still gone to another family member somewhere else.

Over time though, the options narrow. You've already lost possessions, wealth, means, but then you lose even the view that you could reach out to anyone.

There really is a trip-wire beyond which hopelessness exists.

If you think you're experiencing homelessness just by sleeping in a cheap sleeping bag and not carrying your debit card, think again.

Get rid of the phone, burn your bridges, discard your possessions... dig a hole so cavernous that getting out is to climb a mountain, and don't leave yourself with an escape ladder or means to call for help.

Only when your options are so few and so tenuous that they barely exist, only when you are so focused on your next meal and where you'll be warm and safe that night, only then with nothing at all to help you will you feel what the homeless feel.

And as for Pulp, Common People captured something that exists in that desolate state. The fact that with everything gone, so too are the cares and caution. It is possible to be happy on the street, it is possible for it to be liberating to not have any options... in my view options were also constraints, things that prevent you from doing something else. You don't get the courage to attack new things if there's an easier option, without options attacking the hard things is all that is left.

So if you lost the idea that you could reach out to someone, what got you out of homelessness?

Tenacity and creating opportunities out of little and slowly growing self-belief. The latter part is really important and isn't really something anyone gives you.

I don't want to repeat myself so you can check the longer post I made on it through the link here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1201098

Great post. I appreciate your honesty in how the fear of ending up back there dominates your thinking. I don't think there is such a thing as security; we all could end up there, given the right situation, no matter how much money, property, etc. we have. And not taking risks isn't so bad; if one is content to not be I-don't-have-to-work wealthy, it reduces the amount of risks one needs to take. And if it's any encouragement, you sound mighty resourceful, so I think you'll thrive in any environment.

I did want to ask a followup about being homeless. You clearly did not want to be homeless. In my (U.S.) city, there are a lot of options for people who don't want to be homeless, and most of them are not out on the streets. The ones who are, are mostly there because they are happy with the lifestyle and have no desire to stop being homeless. At least, that's my understanding, based on articles like this one and people I've talked to. Would you say this is a correct view based on your experiences?

Of the people I met on the streets, only the very long-term homeless who did not have major mental health problems preferred to stay homeless.

For those, they appreciated the simplicity of life and had acclimatised to it and also understood that to get out of it is several mountains of effort (1 to get off the street, 1 to get to the same standard as the average person in poverty, and finally another to have a good life in a lower-income bracket). Those people were able to consider all of this and actually would choose to have a good life with nothing at all and just to be at peace with their situation.

Those people are rare.

The short-term homeless (< 6 months - seasonal variation means that there are vastly more of them in the summer) I felt made up a greater proportion of those currently homeless certainly would not ever choose to stay on the streets. They had real difficulty surviving. They're also a lot less visible, the short-term homeless are very fearful and will hide away from everyone and not interact with the long-term homeless and would mostly refuse services to help them as they lived in a state of denial. These are the people most likely to end up in the most horrific circumstances, they are the most vulnerable.

The other significant tribe is the one I disclaimed in the first paragraph... those with mental health problems. You cannot underestimate the effect of being alone all the time, living in some degree of fear and being hungry and unkempt. It rots your sanity slowly, it leaves you unable to do what seem externally to be simple things. You could not give these people homes, they couldn't cope with them, but likewise they're not coping with being homeless either and their hygiene reflects this.

So to the original question, are the homeless made up of mostly people who have no desire to stop being homeless? No, not at all. It's certainly true of some, but others simply do not have the ability to make those choices, nor the courage to accept help or the mental wit to comprehend and then deal with it. Whilst there are some that will never leave the streets through choice, there are far more who will never leave the streets through lack of choice, and then a large mass who will leave and for whom being homeless is the darkest part of their life.

It's just really important to not judge the whole by those who have the confidence to engage with others, that they are doing so probably means that they are already an exception and not the norm. I clearly don't reflect the vast majority as I never let go of the smallest sliver of hope, but most have and cannot imagine tomorrow being different from today. They really need hope given to them, and the support to help them help themselves.

As much as this does dominate part of my past, I actually don't think it's one of the biggest social issues. I once met an ex-drug dealer on the street who had been in jail and raped in there. He told me of the great respect he had for real victims (of which he didn't include himself), and that he respected those able to deal with childhood sexual abuse far more than anyone else he ever encountered and found their ability to respect themselves to be overwhelming.

Me, I find the homelessness in my past a source of motivation and some shame, yet the people I have the greatest respect for aren't those who are in that situation still or break free from it, but those a notch higher. I have the greatest empathy for those not living on the streets but who instead are confined to live in poverty. Poverty is a far more widespread problem that deeply affects far more of society. Homelessness is such a small extreme, and there are outs... but there are few outs to poverty for the vast majority. If homelessness is the frying pan (small), then poverty is the bush/forest fire (enormous) and it's effects on the people goes very deep and gets passed from generation to generation.

Even without things, if you have the right attitude you know you will not be homeless for long.

I knew a guy, came to silicon valley with wife and new baby, lived in a park in a pup tent while he interviewed for jobs. We hired him. He's rich now. He always expected he would be.

His attitude meant he was never really homeless, even though his situation was pretty desperate.

I thought of Common People whilst reading that blog entry too, specifically the "everybody hates a tourist..." verse

Am I the only person deeply shocked by this guy’s significant level of ignorance? The first 70 to 80% of his article could essentially be surmised as ‘Hey, homelessness is easy as long as you put some thought into it.’

There is a reason homelessness is a vicious cycle and he didn’t even come close to discovering that. Fine, he met some truly decent, capable people living on the streets but the vast majority are there purely because they are stuck in said cycle. Be it alcohol, drugs, criminal convictions or a combination of the aforementioned, most people on the streets are there for a reason beyond their immediate control and not because they were simply the victim of bad luck.

Most "real" homeless people who have temporarily fallen on hard times rarely ask for money in any of these ways.

This summed it up for me. ‘real’ homeless people…that attitude actually hurts my brain.

I’ll give the guy credit for giving it a go but he has seriously missed the point.

SOURCE: 1st hand experience for just under a year of my life. Unquestionably the hardest year of my life.

So "bad luck" would be a reason within their immediate control?

It sounds like you and the blogger are both saying that most people asking for money on the street need a lot more than money to change their situation. I often think about this myself when I pass one; what if I gave them $100? $1000? Would it get them off the street?

What's your take on this?

The fact is, money won't get the majority of people off the street. That being said, when I give money to homeless people I don't give it with the hope that they may take the first step towards assimilating with regular society, I give it with the hope that it may pay for their next meal or even help towards putting a roof over their head for the night.

I can personally guarantee you that if someone handed me £100k it would change my life exponentially and allow me to turn things around because I have the drive and determination to do so. If the same person handed me £1k it wouldn't change my life but it would relieve a lot of pressure when it comes to bills and so on.

Be it £100,000 or £1,000, either donation would be hugely appreciated and help me enormously. For someone who has no money & doesn't know where their next meal is coming from then I guarantee they will have the same attitude if you took a couple of zero's off those amounts.

george orwell (who also wrote 1984) conducted a similar experiment in the late 1920s and wrote a book about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Londo...

So did Tyra Banks - http://www.wwtdd.com/2008/02/tyra-banks-knows-what-its-like/

When I first saw the title of this post, I immediately thought of Seneca (the Roman Stoic writer) playing at slavery and poverty. I haven't read the Seneca in a long time, but my strong impression when I read it was that he trivialized the whole thing by dressing in rags for a day once a year and proving to himself he could handle it. I'm guessing that your comment is implying something like that about Banks, Orwell and this blogger.

I don't know (and don't much care) what Tyra Banks did and I need to read the blogger more fully (I've only skimmed it), but Orwell spent years of his life (at different times) investigating poverty. The simulated or forced poverty he underwent in England was measured in months, not days or weeks (in 1927 and 1928). He also explicitly discussed (and agonized over) how "real" his poverty was given that he could wire home for money (and sometimes did, as I recall). I think that simulation can only go so far, but not all simulations are equal.

I was making a tongue cheek comment about Tyra. It had no reflection on Orwell.

My misunderstanding then: apparently I feel more strongly about George Orwell than I knew.

If you want to get a sense of Orwell's writings about poverty, but you're not sure you want a whole book, try his essay "The Spike." It's available in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, as well as in many other collections or selections of his essays. You can also find it online:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WREtVBBT9lEC&lpg=PA1... (changed link to Google books; removed short link)

Don't use URL shorteners here. http://books.google.com/books?id=WREtVBBT9lEC&lpg=PA1...

I'm curious: is that a personal preference or a convention of the site? I don't think I've noticed it one way or the other.

Ah, sorry for being brusque. It's a convention here. http://searchyc.com/comments/use+URL+shorteners

No worries about the tone, which was fine. I just wanted to know. Thanks for the link.

Was going to mention that myself. I just finished both Down and Out in Paris and London and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Orwell's commentary on money is definitely worth checking out. A very different glimpse of capitalism than that often seen on HN.

> So should you give money to bums on the street? > In short, my answer is: NO.

Ignoring the tacky epithet "bums on the street" I disagree with this conclusion. Giving someone money demonstrates respect for them as a fellow human being: "I trust you to use this as you see fit."

How would you feel if instead of getting paid for your work, you were told where to live, what and how much to eat, and so on? And now you want a beer? Sorry!

Nev wonders why Black Mike isn't more grateful for his gifts. Maybe instead of deciding for him, "Here's what you can do, and here's the tools to do it," he could give him the money and take him on a shopping spree, advising but not dictating.

Interesting point about homelessness especially for people around this site, if you can use your skills to make money online without relying on any single source you are at a much lower risk of becoming homeless through a set of bad circumstances than someone who can only really convert their skills to a decent income through a more permanent employer.

I up voted this article because it is a constant reminder of the difference between acting and doing.

Also, i loved the part where he was "planning to be homeless" and mentioned that in the case of an emergency, he carried instructions in his wallet to take him to a private hospital, not a public one. Classy.

The sad thing about homelessness is that some of them are mentally ill - which is why there are homeless. My friend tells me about the regular homeless men and woman who camp out near the Hospital ER where she works...hoping to be admitted, but never being taken in for treatment.

Agree or disagree with the author's methods, I like anyone who pushes the boundaries of their current existence.

Call it "Getting out of your comfort zone", "Thinking outside the box", or any other bullshit buzzphrase - Pushing beyond previous experience is the only thing that matters in life.

This reminds me of the book "Scratch Beginnings" except that the guy in the book was gone for a year and had the goal of getting a stable job, car etc. It's a good read.

mainly i feel sorry for this guy because of how out of touch he is. he packs more to be homeless than i pack to go camping and basically tries to emulate whatever he finds to be a stereotypical homeless person. maybe he never worked in food service and thus didn't know american dumpsters are goldmines of safe, edible food?

more than anything, this seems like a feeble attempt at a rich person to do something they consider "crazy" so they can have a cool story to tell their friends over caviar. "oh wow, look how dirty i was! ha ha!" this guy needs to get over himself.

there's lots of reasons why people become homeless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness#Contributing_cause...) and most well-off people simply don't think about the kind of problems people have to deal with just to survive. homelessness is a multi-faceted and complex issue which encompasses millions of people in different situations. there is no way to "see how they live", unless maybe you got some head trauma, a broken leg, asthma and were dumped somewhere you didn't know with no support system and no job skills (compounded perhaps by a self-medicating drug or alcohol habit).

do you want to help the homeless? tell your congressmen to pass laws that help them with their real life problems they need to overcome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness#Problems_faced_by_...) before they can try to sustain themselves with a job and housing. donate to organizations which provide food and shelter to many instead of handing out money to individuals. give old clothes and supplies (like the backpack & sleeping bag he tossed) to goodwill or a local shelter. mainly the way people can help the homeless is by putting forth resources to help people learn how to elevate themselves above simply surviving, which most people eventually settle for compared to what seems like the immense difficulty of getting a stable job.

According to the article, most of the homeless he encountered didn't have the problems you describe. Black Mike, for instance, was fit enough to defeat Nev in a slap-boxing match. The author also never called upon his support system or job skills, so I'm not sure how they are relevant.

Also, according to his experience at various shelters, he seems to have a backpack full of stuff comparable to other homeless people. Some of the items (e.g., toothbrush) were given out free at the homeless shelter. According to you, various organizations will give out other items "like the backpack & sleeping bag he tossed".

The only item that seems out of place is the laptop/phone, but according to the article: "There are two guys openly playing on their laptops here [a shelter] and one guy with a portable DVD player watching a movie. Many people have cell phones and MP3 players. "

Why do you feel his attempt is "feeble"?

most of the homeless he encountered isn't most of the homeless. it's a small subsection of homeless in two parts of his town. different parts of different towns have different kinds of homeless. the wikipedia article i linked to explains how a surge of homeless came about, many of them having mental or medical issues. many times those coming back from war have both and end up homeless. and sure, eating what little you can, living outside and a stay in prison may give you better reflexes than a rich computer geek who blogs about being homeless for a week.

i don't think many people anticipate being homeless and then go and buy homeless gear. they aren't going to pack themselves a homeless kit. i imagine one would acquire things as they wander, pick up other people's junk, get what they can in handouts, etc. by just buying this stuff you're giving yourself an advantage over the penniless. perhaps it was his interest in only doing this for a week that prompted this "self-donation", i dunno. i refer to this same point regarding phone/laptop/etc.

it's feeble because he didn't really appear homeless. he only did it for a week. he just tried to get into places that were more comfortable vs living like the people who were unfortunate enough not to win the lottery. in other words, he was basically trying to game the system and see how good life could be as a homeless person vs how life really is. he's intelligent, well prepared, aware of his surroundings. he doesn't have any particular handicap which could prevent him from eventually just finding stable work. he makes a good point that there are good resources for people who fall on hard times temporarily, but this doesn't account for the majority of homeless who stay homeless for an extended time (or indefinitely). and i found it feeble because he spent more time taking pictures of himself than getting to understand "the freaks" or anyone else but black mike.

i don't think many people anticipate being homeless and then go and buy homeless gear.

Neither did he. The items he packed into the backpack he had since middle school were a $5 sleeping bag he happened to have in the closet, a few clothes, eyeglasses, a toothbrush, toilet paper and brown sign paper. (I'm ignoring the laptop, phone, camera and notebook, which didn't seem to help him much and were there mainly for documentation purposes).

If I were facing a surprise eviction in 10 minutes, I'd be able to pack far more than that. And as you say, even if I didn't, such things would be available from "help the homeless" organizations.

he just tried to get into places that were more comfortable vs living like the people who were unfortunate enough not to win the lottery.

I missed the part of the story where winning a lottery was necessary to in the park and under a bridge.

I will grant you that his experience is not statistically representative of homelessness as a whole. It's also a poor simulation of mental illness (did he claim to be simulating mental illness?).

But I don't see why you conclude he didn't reasonably experience homelessness.

he experienced homelessness. but through a crystal glass, behind a pompous facade, with the armor of reserves of cash and helpful, resourceful friends. based on the conclusions of his blog, i don't think he learned anything.

mainly i don't think you can compare one homeless situation to another and so this kind of "see what its like" scenario is not useful.

maybe you are right but isn't it good that some rich out-of-touch people are at least attempting to try to understand the situation, instead of pretending the homeless don't exist like so many of us do?

> more than anything, this seems like a feeble attempt at a rich person to do something they consider "crazy" so they can have a cool story to tell their friends over caviar. "oh wow, look how dirty i was! ha ha!" this guy needs to get over himself.

Actually if you read the other entries of this guy's blog, you'll see that he is genuinely curious guy

Sure, he wasn't truly homeless. But he slept under a bridge and in a homeless shelter together with truly homeless people. How many people go to that length to try to learn something?

So even if his approach might have been flawed, I think his attempt should be applauded. Personally, I never even talk to homeless people, even if I pack all sorts of non-homeless gear.

Agreed. How can you not have a flawed approach to this experiment? At some level you know you are not truly homeless, and have a safety net.

This guy needs to watch Preston Sturges's "Sullivan's Travels."

If you rub coffee grounds on your face, it will look like dirt.

There was an experiment like this in the City paper in DC, many years ago.

That's good advice for when you can't find any dirt and there are a bunch of coffee grounds lying around.

Quick, you're trapped in a Starbucks, you need to look homeless, what do you do?.

Not sure if you read the article but he talks about not looking homeless enough.

Even after attempting to grow a unibrow, not shaving, and not showering for an extended period of time, he says:

"There is a liquor store RIGHT across the street from the homeless shelter. I'm talking maybe 25 steps away max. As I was buying the bourbon I asked the clerk if, "He gets many of us homeless people in here." He responded, "Nope, I don't get many of them in here." Puzzled why he classified them as "Them" instead of "You" I asked if he thought I was homeless. He immediately replied, "Nope, you don't have the tell-tale signs of a homeless person." I was a bit relieved and disappointed by this.

Relieved because I didn't REALLLLYY look homeless (despite entering his store with a beard, ripped/dirty shirt, carrying a garbage bag and asking for only bottles made out of plastic). Disappointed because perhaps I didn't do a good enough job of disguising myself...."

He aslo mentions that while sleeping under the bridge, he has to worry about where to go to the bathroom.

By this logical conclusion, you can assume he has a fairly good chance of finding urine tainted dirt.

The coffee grinds are good because they are clean.

Go back to your Clouds, sir.

Having dirt on your face does not make you look homeless. Just one example: http://steampunkworkshop.com/yr-doin-it-right-3-sweep

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