Invisible People Report-Being Homeless and working Full-time

[Lady Freedom Returns]

Imagine waking up every morning homeless. You have to hustle to clean yourself up the best you can to be presentable at work. You stash your bedroll in the bushes hoping it will be there when you get back. You jump on a train and head to work. You spend every moment of every day scared that your employer may find out your secret. Then at the end of your shift, you take a train back to where you left your bedroll and felt safe enough to sleep outside. Now you have to start working on basic survival.

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[Anon-C]

1. The Dignity of Work!

[Lady Freedom Returns]

2. Kicking for the morning crowd.

[wendyb-NC]

3. I believe it.

When I was homeless, I found a job after 4 months of destitution, and 3 mos. later, finally found a place to live that I could afford. This period felt endless and often, I felt hopeless.
I had a profession to fall back on then, in 2011. I was a wreck emotionally, though. So ashamed, nothing in my life experience of 60 years could have prepared me for that.

[Demovictory9]

4. glad you found your way out of homelessness

[Newest Reality]

5. I know what you mean.

There is a survival level that you can literally feel and it is constant. A sense of hyper-vigilance sets along with a feeling of vulnerability. When you don't have family and friends, there is also a palpable state of alienation that goes with it. It is like being a non-person, and humans are rather wired to be social and connected in some way.

After a few years of living outside, even in a tent, it really wears you down. Winters are very cold, amenities are hard to come by and, when you over sixty that can tax your capacity to endure it beyond imagination. At least, that is my direct experience of it now.

To see it increasing dramatically for people of all ages, (with a rapidly growing population of homeless elders) is a huge indictment of the heart and soul of this country, as well as others.

What exacerbates the problem is that, obviously, people don't want to think about it for various reasons. Yet, if you do not have connections and the right amount of wealth, you are vulnerable to it. It is a form of coping by way of denial, but then, that leaves no solution and creates more vulnerability.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

6. Kicking for the East Coast, midday crowd.

[elocs]

7. I worked at a Salvation Army homeless shelter before I retired.

We had people staying there who worked full time but could not get an apartment because they had a criminal record from 10 years ago so nobody would rent to them even though they had never been in trouble again.
In America you never pay your debt to society, it keeps following you like your shadow.