Hacker News Reader

(FWIW, I was homeless for about four and a half years. Thank God I'm good at computers or I probably still would be. "Don't let the turkeys get you down." There's a lot of injustice in the world and things do suck, but you're not licked yet DoreenMichele! (I hope this helps!))

Anyway, TFA doesn't get to the point until 2/3 of the way through:

> Once upon a time, mass homelessness did not exist in the United States. The population of people without stable living situations periodically surged, but these waves were temporary, subsiding as the economy improved. The phenomenon we now know as homelessness—pervasive, unremarkable, seemingly intractable—arose only in the 1980s. What had been anomalous suddenly became “the common misery of millions,” observed the writer and activist Jonathan Kozol in his 1988 book Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. Set in a towering New York shelter that Kozol likened to an urban refugee camp, the book sought to excavate the causes of this great displacement. Kozol refused the dominant explanations, all of which emphasized some mix of individual and group pathology: teenage pregnancy, mental illness, drugs, a “culture of poverty.” He offered a different view. In 1970, the United States had a surplus of 300,000 affordable rental homes; under President Reagan, federal spending on low-income housing plummeted from $32 billion to $7 billion. (“We’re getting out of the housing business. Period,” said a top HUD official at the time.) Affordable units evaporated, and with them many of the legal safeguards allowing poor tenants to stay in the relative few that remained. Kozol condensed his findings into a single italicized sentence: “The cause of homelessness,” he wrote, “is lack of housing.”

> I'm quite tired of the entire thing. I increasingly want desperately to just be free of this shit and maybe that means I should just care less about injustice in the world and worry more about covering my own ass. "The World" certainly doesn't give a rat's ass about me or remedying any of the actual injustice in my life.

A level of this is absolutely necessary because there's too much wrong in the world.

I used to think a lot about how to solve the issues in my community growing up. I often wonder - could I go back there and help? I have more money now, I know more, etc.

But realistically, I'm one person, and too small, and I don't _really_ know what's going on. All I can do is try not to exacerbate the issues.

And yeah, the world doesn't care about you, or me. You're a chicken in a farm and someone's about to lop your head off for a sandwich. So it goes.

But realistically, I'm one person, and too small, and I don't _really_ know what's going on.

I'm just one person. I've researched this problem space for many years. I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy well before I ended up homeless.

I think I have some good ideas, but I can't get traction because people with money and power don't actually take me seriously, either online or in meat space.

I wrote this recently and submitted it to HN.

https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-small-tow...

I think it got one upvote. So I'm pretty fed up and feeling like it won't get fixed precisely because people actively want it to not be fixed, not because it can't be fixed.

I'm a subject matter expert. It doesn't matter. People just want to keep justifying the status quo and calling homeless people junkies and crazies.

Having been homeless, obviously, I'm crazy. No need to listen to fuck all I say, clearly.

Doreen, I've always found your contributions to be both insightful and refreshing, especially in a monoculture like HN. As someone who comes from a similar background, I have a deep respect for your willingness to openly talk about your experiences despite the prejudice and discrimination you face because of it.

Please keep submitting your work. The increasing reality for many working people is that they are one or a few misfortunate events away from losing their livelihood. While many HN have believe that they won't ever have to face that fate, their friends, family and neighbors increasingly will.

Vilifying the poor is part of the divide and conquer strategy of the ultra wealthy. They rely on us having a enemy other than them.

Although I am extremely frustrated with a number of things, I do not think this is true in most cases. Of course, you find awful people at all levels of society, but I think most rich people genuinely don't understand the needs of the poor, don't have good opportunities to really get a clue and a lot of what they do falls much more under the idea of "Never attribute to malice what can be readily explained by stupidity" -- only substitute ignorance for stupidity.

One of the reasons I run my big fat mouth on the topic is because I do have a much more privileged background than I understood for most of my life, so I have the opportunity to bridge that gap to some degree.

I wish to hell and back that it wasn't such a slog of an endless uphill battle. I'm tired of my life being such a drag and of feeling so burdened, etc.

But I'm really not down with simply vilifying "rich people" in a broad-brush fashion. I see that as a lazy answer and a counterproductive answer.

I'm fine with calling out specific instances, commenting on known track records of individuals, etc. I'm not fine with "those people" are "just bad people."

If nothing else, it's a pot calling the kettle black kind thing and I abhor hypocrisy.

Eh, sometimes you need to submit stuff on HN multiple times for it to get traction. Don’t get discouraged.

> I often wonder - could I go back there and help? I have more money now, I know more, etc.

I'm originally from a small rural community in southeastern Ohio. I've often had the same thought. I think I could help, genuinely, but I think there's a problem of acceptance there that I don't know if I could break through at this point. I've been gone for nearly 20 years. I don't really know that community any more. I wonder sometimes if I ever did. Maybe it's just my own ignorance or arrogance or naivety. Because I also don't know my adopted community of SoCal, either.

> the world doesn't care about you, or me.

Indeed. TFA and this comment thread reminds me of the Bukowski poem, "The Crunch." "...people are just not good to each other."

> people would ooh and aah that I worked at Aflac, having no idea what I did. I had an entry level job I couldn't get promoted out of, but locals acted like I was clearly part or the privileged few to work there at all.

this is my experience telling people you are merely interviewing at Google

Yes, it was exactly that. It was the Columbus, Georgia version of "I work at Google (let's not mention I'm actually a janitor)."

I deal with a version of this. I never finished my degree. Yet, I've worked my way up to Senior Software Engineer. I don't lie about it, but I don't offer it up, either, because it has cost me promotions and pay my entire career.

I haven't seen this in the tech hubs of NYC or SF, well I've seen enough exceptions to this to conclude that degrees are not necessary to command competitive salaries in a software engineering track.

Get a third party recruiter and game them employers.