To my shock, a post on What Helps the Homeless titled Hotel Stays, Especially in Inclement Weather made the front page of Hacker News. But there were a lot of comments there that cast light on things I hadn't said and which don't really fit on that site. So, this post is basically a follow-up to that.
I started off in Georgia and crossed the country on foot and accepting rides, arriving in San Diego County not quite three months after being evicted from my apartment. I have spent the vast majority of my time as a homeless person in California. Most of the hotel stays that I have enjoyed while homeless have occurred in the time since I left San Diego.
While people reading my writings may be thinking about weather where they are at -- and that is totally legitimate -- I was writing that piece with California weather in mind. The places I have been homeless in California get in the neighborhood of 10 or so inches of rain a year during the winter. That means that 1 to 3 nights a month can get them out of the worst rains and make a huge difference in their life.
Though for homeless individuals elsewhere, even though their weather is different, I imagine they also would appreciate emergency relief of this sort during what is "especially bad weather" for their locale. The shelter system is pretty horrifying.
The shelter system represents a far worse concentration of poverty than any ghetto. It piles together a bunch of strangers who have one thing in common: A boatload of terrible personal problems that no one knows how to solve, resulting in extreme poverty. Most people on the street have some kind of health issue and many have mental health problems. They often have behavioral problems and if they didn't before they were on the street, time on the street can erode your social skills by denying you the opportunity to exercise normal social skills in normal social environments.
Furthermore, the shelters often have mold problems and other health hazards. So, the combination of bad physical environment plus the concentration of sick people with big personal problems is a recipe for fights, theft, emotional trauma and so forth. It is a very stressful environment and it is practically guaranteed to worsen any health issues you have. This is not a recipe for solving one's problems and getting off the street.
I left San Diego County in May of 2015 and I spent a night in a hotel in Victorville on my way up here. I got my first shower in more than two years at that time. It had been even longer for my sons because homeless services for single adult men are even more abominable than for single adult women.
I had been showering regularly in downtown San Diego. I initially showered at Neil Good Day Center. There was a two hour window, no means to secure my possessions and I showered in an open bay with 6 or 8 shower heads surrounded by naked strangers.
This would not be acceptable to the vast majority of middle and upper class people. It was not acceptable to my sons and after being forced by staff to endure this once, they informed me they were never going back to Neil Good, period.
I soon found Rachel's and went there regularly. We left downtown just before the showers there were shut down due to a serious mold problem. I was bussing back once a month to get mail. Initially, the signs said it would be reopened in a month. In the six months I bussed back, it never was. The sign was changed to something like "Showers closed indefinitely" or "To be reopened: TBD."
At Neil Good, you stood in line to get a shower. At Rachel's, you made an appointment. If you missed your 15 minute appointment with the shower, you didn't get a shower that day. There was a two hour window in the afternoon for a woman a to shower at Neil Good. There were showers available for 2 to 3 hours in the morning and afternoon at Rachel's, assuming you could get signed up for an appointment before the slots all disappeared.
When I check into a hotel during inclement weather, I am in out of the weather. I can take a shower -- or even a bath, something homeless services do not offer -- when I damn well get ready to during the hours that I have the room. I get to watch TV, have access to a fridge and microwave and coffee pot and the Wi-Fi is typically dramatically faster than library Wi-Fi.
It means for a few hours, I have a place to be without being worried that the cops will be called on me for "loitering" and I don't have to walk all over the place like I usually do. I have some privacy and I can attend to various hygiene needs, like tweezing my chin, that are usually neglected when I am sleeping in a tent and dealing with my hygiene in public bathrooms.
It means I can watch a good movie on a normal TV and I can revisit middle class for a few hours and remember what it is like. It means people treat me more like a human being for a few hours and it means I don't need to struggle to stay warm and dry, or at least not get dangerously hypothermic, on a stormy night.
It means I get a little dignity and other things that most people take very much for granted. I have found that getting a proper private shower at a hotel once a month -- instead of a moldy 15 minute shower regularly -- makes it vastly easier for me to stay clean enough to look and feel "normal" and middle class for the entire rest of the month.
I am on the street to get myself well. I have trouble not calling a hotel a "hospital" when talking to my sons. I stay in a hotel once in a while to take care of myself physically when I am particularly ill.
A lot of the health problems that homeless people suffer and which result in high medical bills when they do finally go see a doctor (and wind up hospitalized) can be easily cleared up if they have a little time in housing -- or a hotel -- during a particularly vulnerable time. The cost of one to three nights in a hotel is a drop in the bucket compared to one to three nights in a hospital.
I am -- as an internet friend once described me -- "perma-camping for health reasons." Access to actually clean, middle class style bathing facilities plays a critical role in my ability to resolve the problems that landed me on the street.
My problems are not so different from that of other homeless individuals. Most people on the street have serious personal problems -- including health issues -- that made their lives fall apart. Being able to effectively address those issues by getting access to things like showers -- and not the crappy showers offered by homeless services, but a middle class level of quality, like a hotel offers -- is a cheap, effective means to start resolving some of those problems instead of letting them just fester and get worse and become unsolvable.
Many homeless individuals in America are basically living in Third World conditions and, unsurprisingly, suffering the horrible health consequences you can expect of such conditions. It is completely unnecessary. The facilities exist to get them cleaned up.
They are called hotels -- and, no, I do not mean some dive that a respectable middle class person would not stay at. I was middle class for 46 1/2 years. I expect to be so again. I have never slept at a horrifying dive, not even while homeless.
I started off in Georgia and crossed the country on foot and accepting rides, arriving in San Diego County not quite three months after being evicted from my apartment. I have spent the vast majority of my time as a homeless person in California. Most of the hotel stays that I have enjoyed while homeless have occurred in the time since I left San Diego.
While people reading my writings may be thinking about weather where they are at -- and that is totally legitimate -- I was writing that piece with California weather in mind. The places I have been homeless in California get in the neighborhood of 10 or so inches of rain a year during the winter. That means that 1 to 3 nights a month can get them out of the worst rains and make a huge difference in their life.
Though for homeless individuals elsewhere, even though their weather is different, I imagine they also would appreciate emergency relief of this sort during what is "especially bad weather" for their locale. The shelter system is pretty horrifying.
The shelter system represents a far worse concentration of poverty than any ghetto. It piles together a bunch of strangers who have one thing in common: A boatload of terrible personal problems that no one knows how to solve, resulting in extreme poverty. Most people on the street have some kind of health issue and many have mental health problems. They often have behavioral problems and if they didn't before they were on the street, time on the street can erode your social skills by denying you the opportunity to exercise normal social skills in normal social environments.
Furthermore, the shelters often have mold problems and other health hazards. So, the combination of bad physical environment plus the concentration of sick people with big personal problems is a recipe for fights, theft, emotional trauma and so forth. It is a very stressful environment and it is practically guaranteed to worsen any health issues you have. This is not a recipe for solving one's problems and getting off the street.
I left San Diego County in May of 2015 and I spent a night in a hotel in Victorville on my way up here. I got my first shower in more than two years at that time. It had been even longer for my sons because homeless services for single adult men are even more abominable than for single adult women.
I had been showering regularly in downtown San Diego. I initially showered at Neil Good Day Center. There was a two hour window, no means to secure my possessions and I showered in an open bay with 6 or 8 shower heads surrounded by naked strangers.
This would not be acceptable to the vast majority of middle and upper class people. It was not acceptable to my sons and after being forced by staff to endure this once, they informed me they were never going back to Neil Good, period.
I soon found Rachel's and went there regularly. We left downtown just before the showers there were shut down due to a serious mold problem. I was bussing back once a month to get mail. Initially, the signs said it would be reopened in a month. In the six months I bussed back, it never was. The sign was changed to something like "Showers closed indefinitely" or "To be reopened: TBD."
At Neil Good, you stood in line to get a shower. At Rachel's, you made an appointment. If you missed your 15 minute appointment with the shower, you didn't get a shower that day. There was a two hour window in the afternoon for a woman a to shower at Neil Good. There were showers available for 2 to 3 hours in the morning and afternoon at Rachel's, assuming you could get signed up for an appointment before the slots all disappeared.
When I check into a hotel during inclement weather, I am in out of the weather. I can take a shower -- or even a bath, something homeless services do not offer -- when I damn well get ready to during the hours that I have the room. I get to watch TV, have access to a fridge and microwave and coffee pot and the Wi-Fi is typically dramatically faster than library Wi-Fi.
It means for a few hours, I have a place to be without being worried that the cops will be called on me for "loitering" and I don't have to walk all over the place like I usually do. I have some privacy and I can attend to various hygiene needs, like tweezing my chin, that are usually neglected when I am sleeping in a tent and dealing with my hygiene in public bathrooms.
It means I can watch a good movie on a normal TV and I can revisit middle class for a few hours and remember what it is like. It means people treat me more like a human being for a few hours and it means I don't need to struggle to stay warm and dry, or at least not get dangerously hypothermic, on a stormy night.
It means I get a little dignity and other things that most people take very much for granted. I have found that getting a proper private shower at a hotel once a month -- instead of a moldy 15 minute shower regularly -- makes it vastly easier for me to stay clean enough to look and feel "normal" and middle class for the entire rest of the month.
I am on the street to get myself well. I have trouble not calling a hotel a "hospital" when talking to my sons. I stay in a hotel once in a while to take care of myself physically when I am particularly ill.
A lot of the health problems that homeless people suffer and which result in high medical bills when they do finally go see a doctor (and wind up hospitalized) can be easily cleared up if they have a little time in housing -- or a hotel -- during a particularly vulnerable time. The cost of one to three nights in a hotel is a drop in the bucket compared to one to three nights in a hospital.
I am -- as an internet friend once described me -- "perma-camping for health reasons." Access to actually clean, middle class style bathing facilities plays a critical role in my ability to resolve the problems that landed me on the street.
My problems are not so different from that of other homeless individuals. Most people on the street have serious personal problems -- including health issues -- that made their lives fall apart. Being able to effectively address those issues by getting access to things like showers -- and not the crappy showers offered by homeless services, but a middle class level of quality, like a hotel offers -- is a cheap, effective means to start resolving some of those problems instead of letting them just fester and get worse and become unsolvable.
Many homeless individuals in America are basically living in Third World conditions and, unsurprisingly, suffering the horrible health consequences you can expect of such conditions. It is completely unnecessary. The facilities exist to get them cleaned up.
They are called hotels -- and, no, I do not mean some dive that a respectable middle class person would not stay at. I was middle class for 46 1/2 years. I expect to be so again. I have never slept at a horrifying dive, not even while homeless.