Homelessness, The Law and Pragmatic Personal Choices


I have been homeless for 5.5 years. I have seen online comments where people justify theft by homeless people as the only option available to them. In 5.5 years, I have not taken to stealing to feed myself. I have always sought out legitimate resources of some sort, such as soup kitchens, food stamps and earned income.

I am not some Paladin-like figure and I draw boundaries a little differently than I used to. For example, I am a bit more "finders, keepers" than I used to be. In my youth, I tended to go to ridiculous lengths to return found items to their "rightful owner."

I still will turn over wallets, debit cards and ID cards to a librarian or cop in hopes that those items make it home. But I also will just toss items into the trash or step over them, not my problem, if it is no use to me and also not something along the lines of a wallet.

I want a legitimate income because I want to eventually return to a more conventional life. I did once have someone imply that they had shoeboxes of ill gotten cash and hint that they might be willing to give me some as a means to launder it. I thought it over and decided to end the friendship.

My thinking is that if I want to continue sleeping in a tent and living outside the bounds of normal society, then a shoebox full of dirty money might make some kind of sense to give me food security. But I wouldn't be able to use such funds for a down payment on a house.

Since my desire is to buy a house and return to a more conventional life, I decided taking dirty money made no sense and would be actively counterproductive. I have seen TV shows about bank robbers who camped in a swamp or lived in a trailer because they were on the run. I am already camping, without also being on the run from the law. I am trying to figure out how to stop camping. Laundering money seems to not fit with that goal.

Now, if they had simply PayPal-ed me the money without telling me it was dirty and then asked me to not tell anyone who gave it to me for privacy reasons, that would have been different. But with telling me upfront that the money was dirty, taking that money and hiding the origins would make me complicit.

So, I have lived for a long time in circumstances that other people openly state would be justification for illegal activities, like theft or money laundering. I have not concluded that makes sense. In fact, I have concluded that falling into a life of crime would help keep me trapped in homelessness. It would actively serve as an obstacle to getting my life back.


Highlander Episode: The Lamb -- Feminist Slacking

The long quote, above, is from a different blog of mine (which is no longer online). So, yeah, I wrote that. And I decided to post it here and add a few remarks because after writing it, I thought, you know, that's a good line of thinking. It is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about and maybe it will help someone else on the street think through a few things about their own life and the choices available to them.

I get it, life on the street is hard and it is nigh impossible to get through the day without breaking some law. I no doubt commit petty offenses on a regular basis, if only by sleeping someplace I am not supposed to be.

But a lot of the things I do are things routinely done by non-homeless individuals and no one really cares. If you are homeless, jay walking can become a good excuse for a cop to cite you, but they very often don't bother to cite non-homeless people.

In many cases, it is a form of anti-homeless policy. Some jurisdictions figure if they can get you to move on, that is in their best interest.

It is lost on them that if that is everyone's policy, a homeless person winds up with no place to go and then things become truly desperate. If there is no place you can even walk down the street without being hassled, that is a point at which simply existing is illegal and you no longer have any reason whatsoever to try to cooperate and be a law abiding citizen.

So, I get it, the odds are stacked against you and no one cares and society is pretty shitty about how it treats homeless people. But I feel okay about sharing my thoughts on this aspect of homelessness in part because the whole purpose of this blog is to try to help people on the street get better access to legitimate resources.

I am not trying to lecture you and make your life harder. I am trying to help you make a distinction that can be lost when you are homeless a long time.

That distinction is this: While it may be impossible to not commit petty offenses on a routine basis while homeless, you should resist the temptation to let that become a slippery slope to greater crimes because those greater crimes can interfere with your ability to get your life back. Going to jail can make it even harder to get a job, rent a place to live, etc. Once you go that route, it gets really hard to escape from being either a career criminal or permanently homeless.

So, okay, go ahead and jay walk because it is shorter and so much of the world is not designed to work well for pedestrians. But don't let that convince you that "You are already breaking the law on a routine basis, so what's a little petty thievery?" or similar.

I do all I can to seek out legitimate resources not due to some abstract ideology and sense of morality, but for very practical reasons.

Jay walking or other petty offenses like that may not interfere with your ability to get your life back (assuming some cop doesn't use it as an excuse to bust you, so maybe try to not jay walk when the cops are around). But if you decide that a life of crime is justified because you are homeless, well now you are a criminal. And that can be a huge obstacle to returning to a normal middle class lifestyle.

That's part of why this blog exists. My hope is that I can help you find legitimate resources so you can start solving your problems and eventually get your life back.

Make your peace with whatever petty offenses are impossible to avoid given your circumstances (and they vary from person to person and place to place), but do your best to not let that take you down a slippery slope where you think you don't need to bother to abide by any rules ever, because it just won't matter. It will matter and it will generally tend to help keep you trapped.