Finding the Services You Need

It is really hard to Google the information you need with regards to homeless services. I have had a college class in online search, and I spend a bunch of time online regularly and have for years. I still have trouble trying to Google up information I need when I am in a pickle or trying to find information for someone else who is homeless when I am answering questions in various online forums.

Websites for charities and homeless services tend to be donor-facing. In other words, the website exists to tell well-off people "We do good work. Please support our mission. Here is how to give money or volunteer here, etc."

Such websites tend to NOT be a very good source of information about services available on the ground that you, as a homeless individual, need to access. Even if they do say "We do X," they very often have a phone number and that's it.

You then have to call to find out when and where you need to go. When you do physically show up, they may not have the thing you thought they had based on what you read online or heard over the phone.

When I was homeless in downtown San Diego, the state of the art for getting information into the hands of actual homeless individuals was word of mouth and paper handouts. The handouts were full of errors and it was problematic for many reasons, starting with the fact that they can get wet and then you can't read it.

It is all kinds of terrible. This is why I ended up starting this website: To keep track of the information I needed for myself. Then, to my surprise, it attracted organic traffic.

That is the entire reason this site exists at all: Because it is so hard to find the information you need online if you are homeless. In fact, it can be hard to find it even by phone or by going there in person.

But, my point is that what you need to do is find out where there are homeless services, physically go there and talk to someone and tell them what you need and get their paper handout with information about what is locally available.

You may be able to start by asking another homeless person. They are sometimes the best source of information on what services exist in the city in question.

There may be a service that can help you. But you probably can't find out the name and address of it and the hours that they do this on the internet. Generally speaking, the way that you get that info is you physically go to some place with services and you talk to people and pick up handouts and follow the bread crumb trail until you find the right agency that does the thing that you need done.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Generally speaking, you will have better luck finding services in big cities. This is part of why you see high rates of homelessness in big cities: Because that is where the soup kitchens and services are. So, some homeless individuals travel to the big city in order to access services, then they stay because they don't have resources for commuting and they may not have anyplace in particular that they need to be.