| I have never been homeless, but ran a street paper for a long time and have a lot of anti-poverty experience. As a consequence, I know some people who have gotten off the homelessness hamster wheel and many who have not. Successful people usually take it slow. Your goals are (in order): 1.) Any housing. 2.) ??? 3.) Average housing for the developed world. If we take your situation and do a SWOT analysis, your biggest weaknesses are a lack of housing and the fact that nobody cares. The fact that nobody cares is also your biggest strength and represents your biggest opportunity. However, all of that is balanced out by the biggest threat - the longer you are homeless the greater the chances that you will be victimized. If you become a victim, the fact that nobody cares will only be a weakness. As a consequence and since your goal is any housing, you’re going to have to change your career goals. Uber/Lyft are too expensive for you right now. Freelance tech will not be an option because you won’t be an attractive candidate until you secure housing. Your goal right now is any job so that you can secure housing. Once you have any job, the fact that nobody cares becomes an advantage. Here’s a nasty fact of post-homelessness - it’s really hard to rent anything without an existing address. But, if you have an easily verifiable job and are willing to accept questionable housing, you can secure some housing. It might not be great because the landlords don’t care. But the system is designed to err on the side of the housed, so they’re stepping stones. Once you have housing, you have three readily available options - a fixed address, easy cleanliness and a place to set up your desktop. You can start dreaming then. The size of the dream/leap though depends on income so for the first few years, you may find that your career/housing goals scale with where you are financially at the moment. Once you secure housing, you’ll get to deal with all sorts of magical issues. Anecdotally, you’ll have a bit of trouble adapting to becoming housed after being unhoused for about six months per year that you were unhoused. The most common one that I hear is that you’ll mourn homelessness while simultaneously feeling like a real fucking loser for mourning homelessness. That sounds fun, said no reasonable person ever. The most important thing right now is to remember that you have got this. Asking this question here means that you have all the skill you need. You’re going to go through the darkest of humanity for a spell, but I’d bet all I have in you. You’ve got this homie. |