This is awesome, babe.... I love hearing success stories, and yours sounds like one of them. It's great that you get along with them and don't dwell on it, it doesn't do anyone any good. Mine didn't ever want to let anything go, their hatred for one another has caused serious damage for them and for their kids........ very lasting damage. I love it when that can all be turned around and everything works out, I am so happy for you. :thumbsup

In my honest opinion, the ones that know what it is like to have to fight for everything they have, are the ones I respect the most. The ones with silver spoons in their mouths, in MOST cases, never know what it's like to have to fight for what they want or anything. On some levels, I feel more sorry for them. In most cases, the ones that fight thru the hell are the ones with a backbone and know how to survive in times of such hell.

In late 92, I heard from my girlfriend in LA that things were going badly for her.....and she was on the verge of suicide. I begged and pleaded and cajoled my way into an early discharge from the army in Feb 93. When I got back, she perked right up, got a job, etc.....

Unfortunately.... I couldn't stay with her for longer than two weeks because of rules on her lease and her landlady lived next door. I had no money because I had been sending it to her. Part of the money had been meant to pay my storage fees, but was not used for that, so everything I had owned before the army was gone. Unemployment was 14%, so there were no jobs.

I lived in the park, made a deal with the guy that ran the local community pool to take showers in there every day, and used the soap that I would find lying around to clean myself and my clothes. I would hang my clothes on the fence to dry. I would go to local churches to get food, or wait for the hand out trucks each night on certain street corners. I never ONCE begged for money to eat.

I would dig through the trash for the want ads.... walk miles to go to apply for jobs. (I would hide my duffel bag in the dumpster behind a building before going up for the interview).

After 2 months I finally got a job, then got into a center, then a crappy weekly hotel in Hollywood, then worked my way up and out.

2 months after that, I became supervisor, and had the power to hire people, I went back to the park to offer jobs to all the guys that I knew there. All they had to do was show up. Out of the 20 or 25 guys that I offered jobs too, not ONE SINGLE PERSON SHOWED UP.



I've never given money to the homeless after that.

kind of dumb :2 cents:

I don't know if you could call it homeless, technically, but in my early 20's my one apartment lease expired from the place I was moving from and my lease on a condo wasn't starting for 2 weeks later, so I had to move all my stuff into a storage facility and live in a hotel for 2 weeks.

I guess that's not homeless homeless, but nonetheless it was a weird feeling to not have a real home for 14 days.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

i may aswell be homeless i live with my parents i get kicked out almost once every fortnight

Why is it Dumb? I watched those guys get their assistance checks, spend them all on drugs, then steal booze from the supermarkets. Then they would sit around for the rest of the month and scam people out of money for food that they didn't need, because they used to same churches,and hand-out trucks that I did. One of them would get a hold of a wheelchair or some crutches, and they would take turns using them....make $100 in one day, and have a big party in the park that night.

And not ONE showed up for a job that was just being handed to them.

They considered people that gave them money to be suckers. I would watch some of those guys put on the most pathetic preformances, looking so weak and hungry, when I would know that they had stolen a steak and cooked it up an hour and a haof earlier.

Try actually being homeless and then you tell me what you think.

Nope thankfullly not,

Although I have a friend that recently has broken upi with his girlfriend and lost hos job, It has been 3 months now and it's reaaly hard to get yourself together if you dont have a house, becasue that is your primary need........where can you start wiithout a house? He stays at my place sometimes ,and with other friends, still looking for a job and drinking abit to much........... And jst 6 monthss ago everythign went well, sometimes eveerything comes at the same time, adn its hard to get out of the cirlcle..

and all Black people are gangbangers.....

I went down to Melbourne and couldnt be fucked staying in a house or a hotel.

Picked the lock of a bridge, we ported in power from the street lights, and water from the local pipes and lived very comfortably.

Two guys I know have squtted for most of their life - with their own chickens, and everything :D

I think it'd suck to do it if you didn't know how, but there are so many place in the city to do it 'comfortably' and well.

I refer again to my last sentence. Have you ever been homeless? Do you know the many different ways that you can get food WITHOUT begging for it?

Do you have a clue? Or are you just relying on some propoganda that you have read?

I was there..... try it yourself and then come back and tell me about it.

50 homeless GFYers:)

This thread makes me realize just how blessed I've been.
:drinkup Kudos to all of the survivors!

Yes tho id ratrher not discuss it. Part of the reason I have no toes now is due to a period of homelessness in 1990. Im better now :thumbsup

Nope, nada ... NEVER.

Left my parents home when i was 17, never went back and always had a roof over my head.

I have played homeless kid when i was younger and we went out to beg in the streets of montreal but after a couple of days we had to return home to mommy and some regular food ;-)

When I turned 18 my parents "asked me to leave" do to religious diffrences. Spent 3 months living in my car and staying at various friends houses when possible.

Luckely I studied hard and became the youngest stock broker at my firm by 19 and now work for one of the best Adult companies on the net :)

I grew up very poor and I lived in a car in a parking garage for about 8 months when I was 10.

Really makes you grow up fast and lean things with a different prespective.

I havent had a proper home for 4 years. I had the forsight to invest what little I had after being laid off to buy a nice 24ft RV. I have been living out oif it ever since and I really rather quite like it.

I can go anywhere I want I have cell phones and multiple maildops and I travel the USA constantly for adult work. SO I have no home, bu tI'm not sleeping on a bench either.
I really dont know if I want a brick and mortar house again.
I had a 5 bedroom but afte my divorce in 90 I never got it back, but damm do I have some stories.

my only angst is showering and gas mileage. you learn to be very resourcful about all that you do when your "onboard" living.

I have a freind here I work with who lets me park it stationary and I have power hookups. and I can park the Lexus there as well.

So yes and no, but there are times a really loved it when I would go to malibu on wekends and park it and be able to look out at the surf all day an do what i want and still work when I needed to.

I love RV life so much my "goal" is to make enoughh to by one of those custom bus coaches.
I knew a true homless gal in woodland hills and I offered her time indoors to relax and be "normal" but she never accepted and slept in the sprinklers every nite. I still see her 2 years later there. hasnt changes a bit.

Oh, I have a office to work out of, a car to drive and portable laptops to use. Heck the rv even has been used for Bang bus like sites too... I get 50.00 a nite for it plus gas.
I consider money gotten like that to be crazy money and I spend that unlike my income from site work that I horde like a mother fucker.

so do I have it rough? to some yes. to others its a dream its all relative to what your expectiing.

I still make more than enough to live Ok. And even if my latest Idea pans out and I make a bundle, I really wont have a desire to get a house at all.

possesions end up owning you, I have less than 75 dollars a month in expenses, I pay cash for everything. If I dont have the cash I wait till I do. the RVs 100% paid for and so is everything else. its the only way to live, debt free.

youd be suprised how fast money adds up when you owe nothing to anyone. :) the only bumme ris my bank branch doesnt extend into the boston/mass area. I got up there this summer for a shooting job and found I could nt get cash out. so i had to use my cards.

anyways... be resourcful.

never been homeless, thanks to myself and my parents

i've never been on the streets, been damn close a few times, but when it gets to that point, i make something work, and do whatever the hell i need to to keep a roof over my head

Thanks GOD I I've always had house, food and friends.

Briefly, and it fuckin sucked balls! However, unlike most homeless people, I had no desire to be there and pulled myself up PDQ.

I'm happy to say I've never been homeless.

Nope. Never. Don't plan on being homeless either. I have too many friends for that to happen. I could always just move to another country. I know people in at least 5 different countries who would take me in.

I was a hellion as a teenager :angel

When I was 16 , I refused to break up with the boyfriend that my parents hated and they kicked me out( that whole tough love idea) .

I lived/slept in my car for 3 1/2 weeks before I saved enough money to move into an apartment and share rent and expenses with a roommate.

It was no fun..... Middle of winter and my car at that point in time was a piece of shit with no heat or air.

But I made it through it and was on my own ever since then, makes you grow up really fast and learn responsibility in a way others your age never imagine .

Most people who know me would never imagine some of the things I've been through in my life, but I have no regrets. It's all of those things that makeup up who I am today.

:2 cents:


Ivy

never been homeless, thank God.

I always took you for some kind of bum, thank you for confirming my suspicions.

75 bucks a month. does that include food?

i know this one doesn't really count,
i sold one of my condos last march with the intentions of buying property in the US. I couldn't live in the other condo in the city. Then I decided I didn't want property in the US and started looking in BC again, for about 5 months I stayed @ a couple of ppls place in vancouver while searching BC. I didn't end up buying a house til Sept. so i slept on airmatresses and couches, using ppls high speed lines and being confused about where I wanted to be...

i was for a while, still am kinda, more like houseless, i stay with a friend right now, but dont have a place of my own

Move in with me

Had I not had family that cares I could have been in the past. However I've always had somewhere to go if shit ever got that bad.