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Internet Giving Homeless a Home
Wired is reporting that many individuals currently without permanent housing still manage to stay connected via a cellphone, laptop, or some other gadget. Many homeless have email addresses and find that it offers them a way to get their foot back in the door of 'normal' society. From the article: "Hellerich slept on benches but she frequented a women's shelter with a cluster of internet-connected computers used mostly by the children who arrived at the safe house with their mothers. She started blogging and conducting a business. As an independent internet marketer, she was able to maintain bank accounts, nurse existing client connections and forge new business relationships. The business brought in only about $100 a month, but that was enough to help get her life back on track."
Wake up scuttle, you can't run a story like this without linking to thinkgeek!
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
In all seriousness, there are many homeless folks in this world not all of them have the opportunity to get back on their feet.
Most homeless people aren't there by choice and there are lots of folks who are just 1 pay check away from joining them, spare a thought when your walking around town and if you have some change give generously.
liqbase
independent internet marketer? Spammer?
Mod point free since 2001
Instead of cell phones and laptops... couldn't that money be put towards better things, like... I dunno... food
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
"And it's appearently the library."
Apparently it has dictionaries.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The woman in the TFA wasn't exactly homeless homeless. She was staying in a shelter and so able to keep clean and not smell of pee, have clean clothes and so on. I don't imagine anyone going off to 'forge new business relationships' if they hadn't brushed their teeth for a week so I'd say the general 'technology is so great it evens rescues the homeless' message is hype. Even charging up your cell isn't going to be easy when you're sleeping under a bridge.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
People living in coffin 'hotels', doing micro-scale low-revenue high-thoughput business and paying half of what they earn to stay connected to whatever net is hip at the moment. If they're 'richer' they have a container storage somewhere where they keep their stuff. Most of the money won't be payed to own stuff but to have access to things. Homeless will get a new kind of definition. We're seeing societies like this building allready - in Japan for instance, where the cost of living is so high you're a dropout almost as soon as you lose a job. Without the last straw called 'Hartz 4' we'd have the very same situation in germany aswell. In the future it will be very much like in the Novels Neuromancer and Snow Crash in some places.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
As we all know, poor people are a huge problem in our great nation, therefore, they must be eliminated.
Maybe you're even worse than a Democ-rat - you might even be a Euro-hippy. Stop polluting our minds with your socialist nonsense like science or worse, "Linux" - we all know the true history.
Fortunately, I have an idea to solve these problems. I call it A Modest Proposal:
What do we have an excess of in the USA? That's right - LIBERALS. These tend to be exactly the poor homeless people who can't afford to buy Operating Systems like Microsoft Genuine Advantage Windows, and must make do with the inferior communist alternatives. Remember, these are the people who actually OPPOSE the war on terror in Iraq, even after September 11 showed how evil Saddam Hussein was!
Also, we import much of our oil from disgusting foreigners (like Venezualans, who we must liberate soon BTW). Why don't we grind up the liberal hobos who lower valuable property prices in our neighborhoods, and use the oil from their bodies to power up our SUVs?
This way everyone wins.
What do you think, slashdot.org?
Well, that's the thing. Extreme capitalism is just another form of extreme opression: work like a dog and do what you're told, or be homeless. That's the biggest problem with not having a liveable minimum wage... everyone lives in fear of losing their paycheck.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Oh NO, even the homeless have Beowulf clusters! Am I the ONLY ONE left on the planet who doesn't run a cluster??
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The group we lump together as homeless are really at least 2 distinct groups. Group 1 are individuals and families who lack a support network such as family or friends, or may just be too proud to impose upon them. These people can be given a helping hand and can re-integrate into society. Group 2 are the chronic homeless. They are the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the mentally insane. Their only goal in life is their next drink. You can institutionalize them or let them be on the street, but you can't help them. And for every yuppie do-gooder out there who wants to help them, please don't ever give a homeless person money. There are extensive networks run by churches and non-profit groups to distribute food to the hungry. There are no programs to distribute cheap vodka. That requires do-gooders to give them money to purchase the liquor. Give the homeless guy in a park a sandwhich, he's liable to throw it back at you. He'll never say no to the quarter though. Funny huh?
What does "many" mean? Is it even a dozen? Out of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people living on the streets across the US & Europe? Many of these people have barely 2 cents to rub together for food, they ain't blogging, they ain't emailing and they ain't staying connected via cellphone ... Some of them have alcohol problems, some of them drug problems, some suffer from depression or other such problems, and their first concern is living to tomorrow.
As someone mentioned it's a hype story, stuff like this shouldn't be published. Fair dues to anybody who can get off the streets, but any story focussing on homeless should be looking at the majourity (99.9%) who are STILL on the streets and need help.
Rant over.
Maybe I can give a little first hand background. I was in a relationship with a homeless man for a year 1999 - 2000. We had met and I liked him very much, went on a few dates, was surprised to find out he was homeless because he had a phone number and we emailed each other all the time. He had lost his house a few years prior, and had lived on the streets, shelters on occasion (not so easy for men to get access to shelters actually) and on occasion in churches that were sympathetic. His cellphone and internet access were very important for a few reasons, first of all they allowed him to keep in touch with a support network that could help when necessary. If he absolutely had to get off the streets because the weather was too bad for street sleeping and no shelter room, he could often find a place to crash because he could easily contact friends who could put him up for the night, people he knew before he became homeless and also other homeless people who had gotten into SROs (single room occupancy) and would let him crash on their floor. The cell phone and email also was a great aid in navigating the world of social services... organizations to help him find housing, his caseworkers, his doctor and find work here and there. It is very hard to get a job without a phone number you can be reached at, and without a home you don't have a landline... cellphone might be your only chance at getting the job that will help put you back on your feet.
If someone he knew and knew of his situation had an odd job that needed doing he could be contacted by cellphone so that he could make some money. He made good money this way, fixing people's computers. All it takes is a cellphone, a little knowledge of computers, and some flyers reading "need help with your computer, affordable computer help, call peter at 555-5555" is all it takes to make a few bucks. Later on he became unable to walk more than a few steps and was confined to a wheelchair, cellphone and email helped him get the info he needed to get a wheelchair which was paid for by his ssi or adap or something, i forget. It also helped out the day his brand new wheelchair wheel fell off while he was going down a hill... he wasn't too badly hurt, but with the cellphone he could reach a friend in the area who could help him get back to his place. I mean this is putting technology to good use, I think... a little different from texting your friends mindless banter and what not.
Something that a lot of people don't realize is that there are a lot of programs out there for people with these sorts of problems and guess what, most case workers, people at shelters have no idea what is out there in terms of services. Its not their fault, its a lot of stuff to be on top of. Using the internet many people are able to be their own caseworkers, learn about the system, how to find what they need and get the services they need to get back on their feet. They can be more proactive and not just hope that their caseworkers know what they're doing... many do not. you know what else you can find on the internet, housesitting opportunities...
Peter finally managed to navigate the system and managed to get himself a room at a pretty nice sro, shared kitchen... but private rooms and baths. He wouldn't have been able to get it if there was no way for his caseworker to get in touch with him. nobody is going to go find you on the street if your benefits have been approved... people need to get in touch with you.
When peter moved into the place, I met a lot of other people and learned about how they ended up in their situation, and how they were dealing. One of the things that I found striking was that a lot of families are broken up by this, women are granted housing along with daughters but men aren't... the idea is that you give to the people who most need the services... but it builds into the system absentee father'ism... eliminates one of the means of support, the family unit. Many places will not allow men in at all. Fathers and sons left to fend for themselves. Fath
To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt:
"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously."
With the enormous power we have with the Internet, we could help bring together those people looking for work and those who need their services. It seems to me that the sticking point is usually that neither of them has any money. But, if they could trade some sort of on-line IOUs, and try to honor them, perhaps there is some solution.
I'm baffled as to how to go about it, but so many people simply looking for work is wrong. If a man is willing to offer his labor, there are needs out there to be filled. To leave him idle wastes his talents and damages his pride.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I haven't RTFA, but I've been a fan of the Homeless Guy blog for a while now (he mentions being included in the Wired article). His site is at http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/, he's living in Nashville, TN right now. He has many enlightening comments on who makes up the homeless population, how politics and "aid" affect them, and the impact of stereotypes. A good read.
-mix
"an independent internet marketer
[...]
But she lives in fear that at any point, circumstances could throw her back into the urban wilderness."
Like if she gets busted for spamming?
Homeless spammers. Blade Runner arrives ahead of schedule.
--
make install -not war
The poor bugger's homeless and you just slashdotted him!
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
How about if the US government spent some of the $1 TRILLION we're going to spend on the Iraq War on giving war veterans a home?
--
make install -not war
I dropped out of high school in 11th grade, and began learning computer graphics and digital audio engineering in a vocational community college program, which I also never completed.
The reason I could not complete these classes, was due to the fact that I couldn't afford to goto school AND support myself AMD my mother. I literally had to support myself and my mother from the time I was 17, until I was 25. It was horrible! Luckily, I was able to use my PEL grant from community college to get myself a decent computer (celeron 300a) back then, and was able to acquire a great amount of skills and experience, thanks to some really smart and talented friends on IRC.
I call it: Better learning through IRC.
When I wanted to learn a new programming language, I could easily find someone on IRC to help get me pointed in the right direction, until I eventually learned enough to walk on my own. I have to thank those IRC characters for helping push me into a job, where as everyone else around me was pushing me into the gutter.
There is a lot to be said about Open Source Learning, and internet-based home/self education, and I owe it (and them) a lot of thanks.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
There is a very strong tendency to persecute the masses of homeless / desperate people in our cities based upon a few (often unsubstantiated) stories of malfeasance.
That said, there is also an important principal which should not be overlooked here; there are good and bad ways to deal with institutional failures of society.
In the case of homeless persons, there are really only a few things one can do which truly help people. Here's what you can do to help:
1. Don't give anyone on the street anything directly. This is the hard one to accept, because you feel obligated to help people in need. The reasons for this are simple. Giving directly is tremendously inefficient. Would you rather pay for one person to maybe eat one meal at a restaurant they will feel uncomfortable in or potentially even contribute to a substance addiction, or would you like to feed 10 people at a soup kitchen where they will also have access to other services?
2. Do give to the soup kitchen / homeless shelters. It's simple and effective. Most shelters have structured giving plans and disclose their policies on religious indoctrination which should be kept to a minimum to encourage participation. I personally won't give to any shelter which requires any religious participation for services, but there are options in my city, so I'd probably change that policy if that was not the case.
3. Seek political changes. This is the only long term solution to the problem. Big cities need to act like small towns when helping those who fall through the cracks. Make the system diverse, distributed, and attractive to those who need help. LA is a counter example; they have spent 30 years learning that centralizing their system and ignoring people makes their city core a terrible place for everyone, not just the homeless. It costs an amazing amount to keep people in jail and fight crime caused by destitution, much more than providing transitional housing and services in the actual communities people live in to begin with.
So really all I'm saying here is we shouldn't focus on the people who somehow "work the system"; instead focus on giving people the tools they need to leave that lifestyle and either get the mental and substance abuse treatment they need or move back into the workforce and better themselves. No doubt there are people who won't / can't do this, but that's no excuse not to help those who are in desperation and willing to work for a better life.
In India, there are people stuck in a position known as debt bondage. Basically, you provide shelter and food for someone in exchange for debt and pay them so little that they can never work it off. It's not a system any sane and humane person would wish for our culture to emulate.
We used to do so something similar in the US in company towns where everything was owned by the company you worked for and you were only paid in money good at the company store. Deductions were made from your paycheck before you received it such that you never actually saw any money. If you wanted to leave a company town, you had to do so penniless and homeles.
The Pullman strike happened over these conditions. At the time, many people pointed out that the housing Lake Calumet was nicer than average and would say that these people were helped by entering into debt bondage. However, the lack of freedom to anywhere else without becoming a vagrant was oppressive and wrong.
The argument that someone, somewhere is more desperate than your current workers is never an excuse for stringing people along for the absolute minimum that you can give them while demanding that they be grateful for it. That's called the race to the bottom, and its the sport of plutocrats everywhere. A fair minimum wage only eliminates the worst kind of menial jobs and gives people the purchasing power to buy the goods that help generate jobs elsewhere.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I live in Calgary Alberta... I carry a Toshiba portege 3440CT in my backpack and troll parking garages for wireless signals... because my battery dosnt work so the power outlets are also a necessity... I have no addictions like drinking or drugs.. but I also have no friends or family...
A bad month for `me means living on the streets. tho this is not the first time. I dont go to homeless shelters, nor do I ask people for money. People often stop and offer me money tho... and most tTimes I decline... but as for your money feeding the addictions of the homeless... well... i have to disagree... the majority of panhandlers drink not drugs... druggies have no patience to panhandle.
For myself, I collect pop/beer cans for a living... and do quite well... $50 - $100 dollars a day...
plus stuff like cell phones and stuff that people throw out that are easily resellable.
I dont think many on here know what its like to be homeless and I dont think you should be judging people until you ven been there.. people judge me and assume im homeless so i must be a thief alcoholic or crackhead... im neither.. im just a guy trying to survive... and finish developing my website.