I really appreciate the level of detail in this post. Not too little. Not too much.
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
I have my account set to show flagged comments. A lot of flagged comments are simply some form of "wrongthink" but not violating any guidelines. So I've used the function often to "save" a flagged thing but it seemed to have stopped working for me at some point. I can only speculate why, but I think I saw some other commenters saying that happens if you unflag too much.. wrongthink. I want to give the site admin the benefit of the doubt though. Maybe it's simply an automated process that notices you unflagged too many things that were flagged by others too much?
I also have that setting, and occasionally vouch for an inexplicably flagged comment I notice.
There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
(On some comments I make, I know when I make it that it's going to get downvoted, because it pushes against an opinion of the kinds of people who will downvote to suppress criticism. It used to be that criticizing cryptocurrency would get downvotes, but now it's popular to criticize. I can get reliably downvoted any time that I suggest that adding a fee for some basic public infrastructure (e.g., to drive on street in a city), in a "market-based" way, is a handout of the basic public infrastructure to the wealthy. Also, suggestions that there's still any bias against women, in anything, somewhere, seems to reliably get downvotes, no matter how relevant; I don't know why, but I'd guess it's because the topic has a lot of general angry sentiment, and people who are angry the other direction aren't represented as much on HN.)
I'd distinguish wrongthink from something being off-topic and done-to-death or a flamewar magnet. Maybe one mental exercise test for this is whether the same person would also still downvote as "topic" if the opinion of the post/comment were flipped.
>There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
I actually vouch for a lot of comments I disagree with that was flagged, and upvoted it because I want it to be shown to the world. And in other times I disagree with it but vouch and upvoted because I dont want HN discussions to be one sided.
I’ve lived in China for a few years and I noticed anytime I write anything even remotely positive about my experience there I will get downvoted or flagged. Even completely neutral comments sometimes gets downvoted.
Russian here. I can't show -any- cool tech made here or an optimization that we do that western countries don't because people would say I praise Russia no matter how much more often and harsher I criticize. They don't even know what I think about the country, I just can't speak about it.
I appreciate people who are saving flagged comments because what made HN great 10-15 years ago was that I often changed my views because people would articulate why they are right and they sometimes indeed were.
I don’t think anyone doubts there are good things that come from China. Using a throwaway account won’t help your cause marketing China. Like every other “superpower” China has their major, major flaws. The kicker is trust. Pro-China rhetoric on a highly-moderated forum should be met with skepticism.
This isn’t opinion. The great firewall of China isn’t a farce, it would be good to remember that.
It sounds more like the concern is that a post coming from China has a significantly higher likelihood to be state-sponsored propaganda than a resident’s/citizen’s genuine opinion. It makes sense on its face that it would be “higher” (that’s the point about the Great Firewall) but it seems to be a matter of personal opinion how “significant” that increase is.
one common misconception is that "the downvote is not a disagree button". it absolutely is. I made that mistake before, in the early days of reddit they used to stress that mantra, and I made the false assumption it was true here. You are getting downvoted because people disagree or don't like what you have to say. simple as that.
Downvotes sadly are endorsed by pg (the owner of HN) for use to indicate disagreement.
Flags are not downvotes and are not to show disagreement. They do seem to get used that way.
I like the others above have show-flagged enabled. "90%" of things I vouch are things I disagree with that represent what I consider a point of view that deserves to be known, has been at least reasonably well presented, and isn't flame-bait.
silencing the opposition creates an illusion of consensus. in the deluded minds of the terminally online, it is paramount to maintain that illusion.
in every remotely political discussion here, reddit opinions are allowed to be expressed as non-constructively as you please, but all dissent, no matter how factual and constructive, gets flagged within minutes.
They're not deluded. They're evil. By faking consensus you mint new converts because the false consensus affects the opinions of everyone new to the subject. The platform designers, moderators, etc, etc, know this and that's why they do it.
Apparently it's because the original headline had the unfortunate juxtaposition of "homelessness" & "experimentation"?
I wouldn't be so quick to call delusion/dissent when designers of our spaces have simply made it far too easy to turn private affects into public effects..
(& It might be rude of me to be so concrete.. so.. apologies)
You've already described the solution to the problem: we upvote things that we think are unfairly downvoted. If you say mildly controversial things, you can often watch this happen on your comments. Not that I wouldn't like reasons attached to downvotes and flags...
Not ironic at all. Downvoting and flagging exist exactly to handle content that is not worth the effort or even harmful to respond to (remember bullshit almost always takes more effort to debunk than to create). As such, it's usually a mistake to both downvote and respond.
But I think it's best to let the people vote if they value a story on how lifestyle hacking can help you go straight to building startups instead of having to first save up in a job.
What HN is or is not about is largely decided by flags (besides more direct moderator invention) so your reasoning is circular. If something is flagged then it's because enough people don't think it belongs here.
100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I have been here for years. Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable or touch a political nerve.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
> Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable
I unflag completely normal posts every day on the "New" page of HN. Many of them are actually very good posts, and some of them reach the number one spot of the front page after being unflagged.
Very rarely do I see the flagged posts being very objectionable.
I want to be able to upvote this comment just to show everyone how rules like "don't change the headline as originally given by website" or "let randos (with unpredictable emotional structure) flag stuff" lead to suboptimal outcomes
Sure, but any system of rules leads to suboptimal outcomes. Which isn’t to say the devil you know is better than the one you don’t, just that this being a suboptimal outcome is not in itself a reason to change those rules. In that context, the title rule is rather agreeable.
I usually see people complaining about misleading headlines when it does not match the linked article. To be fair, it is sometimes an improvement but the point is that it’s always editorializing. Keeping that to a minimum only when the article’s headline is particularly objectionable seems to be better than letting every poster editorialize as a matter of course.
For these above reasons, I like the "don't editorialize" rule by itself. BUT it seems especially suboptimal in comparison to its combination with the "let people flag stories without justification" rule.
No worries, I got ya, buddy:
Imho instead of eschewing quantification altogether, rules should have a ELO style rating computed from the effects of their pair-wise combinations :)
The hard part could be the combinatorial explosion lol
That was surely a great experiment. But it's very different from actual homelessness. I would have appreciated if the author had acknowledged that more. It's closer to a backpacker-in-a-tent-in-the-mountains experience than homelessness. In the latter, the living-in-a-tent is just a comparatively minor aspect of the experience.
This was a choice (essentially to save money) and the author had multiple fallback plans. Real homelessness is born out of desperation and lack of alternatives. Tragedies of mental health issues, abuse, severe financial distress, no savings, debt, warrants. No nice shower at the gym, no locker to keep a laptop and two suits. The constant fear of not just the police but also of getting robbed by another homeless, likely after something to sell for drugs. That's very different from anytime being able to crash on somebody's sofa to save on rent so you can earlier "afford to build companies".
We can even see it in one of the later paragraphs where potential spots in the bay area are evaluated. The local homeless should not be close. Oh, they shouldn't? That gives you an idea of the conditions actual homeless folks need to live under.
Author here. I get this view, I just think it's worth underlining how biased it is to the SF Bay area dystopian situation.
I've actually gone out of my way to meet homeless in the Bay. You'd be surprised how much of a continuum homelessness is. Most are definitely living hell on earth, but many I personally met have both fallbacks and money. Could be they're too attached to their family's image of them. Or that they weirdly enough have a better life now - I met a guy who led a small community and made quite some money from crime, he could have afforded to live anywhere, but this would mean taking a menial job like he had in the past, and he didn't want that.
Of course, the disclaimer is that many homeless care a lot about their self-image and will create stories to justify their current situation so it's hard to judge. But the point still stands that, even in hell of earth for the homeless, you'll find it's a continuum. And the world is much broader than SF - I've met people at every point of the spectrum, the most extreme being a multi-millionaire who lived Swiss forests for fun!
To summarize, there is no "actual homelessness", it's not a boolean but a spectrum, and I fail to see how gatekeeping the use of the most adequate word in this situation helps anyone.
If the problem is that it using the word comes across as disrespectful to people who mainly know homelessness through the prism of the Bay Area, maybe another avenue could be to add a link at the end of the article to promote a relevant NGO, which I'm definitely open to adding if people suggest a good one.
Jeez, our fellow eggheads are nit picking your story to the extreme. I loved your story because it's about problem solving. Your listing of the pros and cons is some of the best parts. Well done!
Some people like to treat homelessness as sacred. The image of a spotless victim, who has no choice but to suffer, is an object of veneration, even love.
It's an odd sort of worship but very common in the Bay Area.
> If something isn't important to know, there's no answer to the question of why people don't know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you're going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don't already know them. Is it because they're smart but inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?
So you can claim to have been homeless, or have experience having been homeless, but then you will be judged as having that experience. That isn't how you presented the story, but as a successful experiment where living in a dorm for $450 a month was also a good option. The redeeming lesson from such an experiment is that "being homeless isn't that bad" because "you weren't really homeless" not because "others also could have somewhere to live". The two has completely different implications.
You aren't being "gatekept" out of bad faith, but because it is nicer to believe that you are mistaken than the alternative. Because if you claim to actually have been homeless the story reads more like you put yourself above the rules, didn't consider your friends and don't understand the difference.
I'm not sure where all your mentions of the Bay Area come from. I'm writing from a European perspective, and in all major European cities you find homelessness prevalent. And it's not pretty.
A millionaire in the Swiss forest is not homeless. Choosing to live in a tent is not homelessness. To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives. As soon as it's a choice, to see romantic sunrises or fall asleep to ocean waves or whatever, that is, if calles "homeless", to me, a misuse of the term. It's a nice life, I've done it too and loved it, but I'd not start to call it "homelessness" and place myself into the same category as the poor souls sleeping under a bridge.
Of course it's a spectrum. Some folks have been forced out of their home and are living out of a car while finding a new place. That's homelessness. For some of those, it's temporary. For others, it's a spiral into misery, next is to lose the job, having a mental health issue, soon the car breaks down, and eventually they are sleeping under a bridge. Insubstantial of whether it's in SF, Berlin, Sao Paulo or Tokyo. Similarities to a concious choice are only superficial. Once it's a choice, it's outside the spectrum and is doing the fight against homelessness a disservice.
> To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives
Why does it imply that? Many homeless have alternatives, but they aren't either applicable, or the person don't simply want that. Just as one example, a homeless person with a dog could probably get rid of their dog so they can stay at the homeless-shelter, but instead chose their close bond with their dog over that. Does that suddenly mean the person isn't homeless?
Another (personal example) is when I first arrived to Barcelona and barely could afford food. I spent two nights sleeping outside in the city instead of paying hostel fees, so technically I had the choice of spending a bit of money so I had roof for the night. Lets say that situation was longer instead of just two nights, would I not count as homeless then because I could have spent my money differently?
The homeless shelter situations in the bay area have waitlists. Some of the encampments also have waitlists (!). A lot of the homeless actually work in the bay area, some of them far away. Being in line in time to get a spot on a shelter is a task by itself and can be mutually exclusive with working. There is so much at play here you do not understand well. If we assume you are well meaning, you need to know that some politicians are not telling the truth about the true state of things.
Im still having trouble understanding why this destinction matters here. Your saying there is a difference between making choices that resulted in homeless being the only option and choosing homelessness because its the best available option?
If at any point you can find a place of your choosing to rent within a few days without any hassle, you're not homeless. You're not in the category of person that could need help.
> Your saying there is a difference between making choices that resulted in homeless being the only option and choosing homelessness because its the best available option?
Absolutely. For example, if a city wants to build systems to help them, one group would need counseling, temporary housing, while the other would rather haver access to public showers, a dispensary, and another group none of that.
Let say you're in a place that attracts a lot of backpacker/vanlife, whatever you build there you would make people pay for it. There would not be any food bank close to that place.
No, I think they are trying to say it would be helpful in the larger discussion of homelessness to have more nuance than just "not in a house" because, like both "sides" in the thread above keep hitting each other with, it's a wide, complicated, and nuanced topic.
The folks pushing for different words seems to be coming from a fear that grouping all "not sleeping in a home" into one bucket risks having stories like this (opt-in, mentally capable, not-in-deep-danger, safety net) make ALL homelessness seem easier or safer or a choice, which is a common pushback for helping people in modern politics (get a job, shouldn't have had sex/been dressed that way, shouldn't have tried drugs, etc). There is also a trauma of so much bad faith out there in the world right now making this kind of point implicitly on purpose (along the same vein as "I'm just asking questions").
They aren't phrasing it that succinctly but that's my good faith reading.
The holy war on the other side is "don't project your XYZ on my story" and "don't put words in my mouth" which seem valid to me given the context; I think someone should be able to tell their own story in good faith without being responsible for how other use it, within reason, which is likely not a terribly controversial take.
I personally see points in both sides and mostly think this is an issue because of the choice of venue. I think it isn't helpful to start an argument/debate without agreeing on what to argue/debate about and we're seeing that here (plus the topic being a proxy argument for a group of underlying political/social philosophy values not directly being discussed).
I think most people understand this, but in reality many homeless do have a choice in their living situation. This idea that they can’t possibly have chosen their life reduces the homeless to human-like primates with no agency. Often they have a sense of personal dignity and are capable of making their own decisions, despite how destitute we see their situation.
My experience is from São Paulo and Seattle but entertaining this notion that it's a thought-out choice full of intention is wild. Most homeless people just want some shade of stability and would leave that situation any day any time if given resources.
They are not primates with 0 agency but most societies don't really give them a lot of options.
You have no idea what is going on in the bay area homeless situation. I am not discounting your experiment, which was very interesting, but you cannot apply your experiences to the bay area homeless situation.
I find it useful that terms have meaning and one can distinguish between what belongs to it and what doesn't.
A pork steak is a piece of meat taken from a pig. Once it's made of beans or some mushroom it may still be tasty (and I love good veggie food), but it's not a pork steak.
Similarly, the term "homeless" also has a certain meaning, and using it for something else muddies communication waters. And at worst, it makes the fight against actual homelessness harder: Next time some tax dollar is planned to be used for relief, somebody will point to those cases and say "well some homeless enjoy the sunrise and love the outdoors and have two suits in locker, and ain't none of my tax dollars go to that!!"
If you want to call that "gatekeeping", then sure. What's the purpose of your comment then? Gatekeeping me and telling me I should not call out the misuse of the term?
Common meaning is the protocol prerequisite for understanding and very often undervalued.
Words bring vibrations? Perhaps I don’t know, but they bring very strong meaning very often and in most languages also, even though English being famous for the same word meaning different things in different contexts, the conveyed meaning itself is still very important.
And homeless implies less of something which can be a moral choice also, but still there’s the ‘less’ which is not there when your bank account has enough for other options. The mental less in homelessness is bitter and very often related to certain major calamity.
Gatekeeping words would be important if it were respected. Unfortunately it is not, when the context doesn’t favor a specific flavour of the outcome.
Example in France, “homeless” is called SDF, and it means “no home” (no fixed address to receive mail, although shelters allow mail) but doesn’t mean “no roof”. And that was done to include women, because women were practically not represented on the street, as they often have someone who can host them, even if they cannot call it home. There is no word (except derogatory like “Claudo”, or workarounds like “on the street”) to describe the homelessness that men suffer.
Now, since women represent 16% SDF, but most of them are hosted, they do not tend to die during winters. They do not tend to face street violence. They do not match those stats. Unfortunately, since they still represent 16% of SDF, they also get reserved budgets in addition to the budgets which are destined to homelessness in general (and which are themselves already allocated with a slant towards the female gender - the whole thing is absolutely despicable).
So, since words are perverted for political goals precisely in this area, I’d rather we let history written by the writers, with their own appreciation of the words’ meaning. The usual side will win again, but when there is an odd article not written in “the correct way”, let it live.
Are you saying it's not actual homelessness because it was a choice?
Wikipedia says homelessness is "the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing". It doesn't say anything about it having to be a choice. I know people who say they're homeless by choice. Would you say that's an oxymoron?
In the US, you can live in campgrounds year round in a tent. Usually a nominal fee with access to amenities. Similarly, author of the article chose to live in a tent right next door to the University where he had access to amenities. I can totally see the analogous situation here. It was a way to save money not a necessity. Both situations don’t make you homeless.
That’s my takeaway and others on the difference here. Homelessness driven by choices then turn into necessity to live. I don’t think responding to the sentiment with technical definitions from Wikipedia is the right discourse either (as done in other comments not yours). You can see the problem with this story without having to cite your comment to try to bring some strength to it.
Technically speaking, you can if you move. Author of article was illegally camping so I don’t think the same idea applies. I was referring to the idea of camping somewhere intentionally with amenities for fun not to live. Author could have had an apartment or other places to look into but chose not to. That doesn’t make them homeless
By the definition you have provided though, someone that has access to stable, safe or functional housing but then chooses to not to use it (eg opting to camp instead), is not homeless.
Edit: the word “lack” really is the key word. This implies no choice, right?
I don't follow what you're getting at. OP did not have the budget to afford a house so he had to go homeless. He could have made other choices to afford a house sure, but many other homeless people could also theoretically make choices that would enable them to get housing.
The author has the opportunity to make choices about their situation, homeless people lack that choice, they can't just go get a job, or they can't get the money together for a deposit. They can't afford to travel to where the work is.
Theoretically they could choose to get treatment for addiction or mental health problems, but practically that isn't available to them.
> The author has the opportunity to make choices about their situation, homeless people lack that choice,
As adjudicated by whom?
> they can't just go get a job, or they can't get the money together for a deposit. They can't afford to travel to where the work is.
Many could actually. Some could move to lower cost of living areas. Some could choose to get education or training that enables them to get a job in the future. Some could get jobs, some could certainly move to where there are jobs. Some could choose to quit recreational drugs and alcohol. Some could use their welfare or disability payments and move to lower cost of living areas. Some who dislike living with others could choose to put housing above that preference and could afford move into group housing. Many do these things actually, I have heard many first hand stories from people getting themselves out of homelessness.
So how are we weighing up all these choices and deciding who is a "valid homeless" and who is not?
When I went to college, I had a PO box. Not sure how it works in Hong Kong, but I presume something similar. My apartment on campus did not have a PO Box but my college did.
I can lack(/not have) a jacket because I choose not to bring one with me. I don't think lack necessarily makes any assertions about choosing to lack something.
Words have connotations. The word "homeless" has very strong connotations of poverty and the associated lack of options, i.e. lack of choices.
So yes, considering it not to be actual homelessness if it's a choice is perfectly reasonable. You can't wikipedia-lawyer your way to a functional understanding of natural language.
This shouldn't be downvoted even though it is a jaded take. I think this is EXACTLY what is on full display from all sides in this thread (to the point that it should get probably get locked).
> I know people who say they're homeless by choice.
To me, that's a blatant misnomer. Elon Musk also calls himself "homeless". (By choice, quite obviously.) There is not much to discuss once the term is assigned that meaning.
Homelessness is a somewhat broad category though. There's lots of people couch-surfing between friends and their car. They're also in a very different position from people who are sleeping rough.
I only experienced traditional rough sleeping homelessness once when my "house" (my van) was towed and I had to sleep in an hostile architecture bus stop bench that had ridges between each "seat" area. Otherwise, I was technically "homeless"/vanliving in SV from about 2010-2019.
van is a home if you have your stuff in it, live in it, and enjoy moving around, this does not make you homeless, sorry. is a home on wheels and can be very comfortable should you decide so.
I commented instead of downvoting. However, to speculate, you implied a person isn't homeless if they have a van. You were responding to a comment containing:
> I was technically "homeless"/vanliving
Wherein they were relating their experience and recognized that they were vanliving (living in their van as their home) and even quoted their use of homeless, calling themselves "technically" so.
Even someone living in a tent or sleeping on the ground, if they keep returning to a site could say that site was their home. Some say the world is their home or that the region they stay in is. They would still be very clearly considered homeless despite having a "home".
As I understand it, it is a gray area whether vanliving is legal. You are allowed to park a vehicle but the owner doesn't have unlimited right to leave the van in one spot and live there. Even living in a van on your own land can be against code. People sleeping rough generally have no recognized right to sleep where they do. They are frequently moved and more often harassed. The situation is similar for those living in a van.
Anyway, that aside and trying to speculate about your downvote(s?), the context was that you started a language specificity discussion with someone who appeared to be unsure about the right words and hesitant to call themselves homeless. There were plenty of places on this thread to have that discussion but this doesn't seem an appropriate spot to me. I don't know whether that poster even knows you responded but if they do, I could see your response causing some difficult thoughts and/or emotions.
I doubt you intended harm but it can be helpful to consider the context to minimize the risk of harm or even just better understand the diverse manners in which your comments could be received. Hope you enjoy commenting here and learn from it and the comments of others.
Thank you for taking time to write this, appreciated - and it is a beautiful writing, I would say.
Indeed, I intended no harm, but having spent time on desolate beaches, retreats and similar, I could definitely disambiguate between living in a tent, in the forest, like even doing some coding from there, and being homeless. My comments joined the... seemingly overall uproar against author's choice to call his experience homelessness.
But you make a valid point reg. how many ways a comment can be interpreted.
My point was that precisely, and with my other comment - that homelessness is not a state you typically get to by choice. It is social status more or less. Unless the choice is to become sannyasa or traveling Buddhist monk and renounce the material world, which is not op's story, really. Given my previous experienced living in the tent in a forest for... months, well I can definitely say is not the same as being homeless. I have also met refugees (mostly levantines in Europe) who are much more homeless even when being crammed together in "homes" dozens at a time. They have interesting perspective of what is home, and having the world for your home is not always a good thing to say.
I completely agree that living in a tent can be lovely and some of my life's favorite moments include tent living (e.g. in the temperate rain forest of Olympic National Park) and moving every day.
I even mostly agree with the overall uproar. It feels like bending the term pretty hard for the author to claim homelessness. The further point that there may be moral hazard in that use seems reasonable.
I like your point about homelessness more or less being a social status. I think it adds insight and I have enjoyed that this whole discussion (ours and other bits in the context) has really stimulated me to more deeply examine what homeless means.
Your point about even having a standard shelter to live in (house seemed implied but isn't important) not wiping away homelessness is excellently instructive. I certainly know people I consider homeless who have assigned housing. Considering the counsel housing system in the U.K. seems like it might start to step to the other side of that line on the other hand, shifting the discussion to other dimensions of a person's needs and "enfranchisement".
Let me reiterate my gratitude for sharing your thoughts and even more for getting to a discussion that feels more like peace and curiosity.
It's the same Kevin Dahlgren. I don't know the complete story, but he allegedly wrote off transactions under fake names when doing work for the municipality of Gresham. I did remember reading somewhere that the goods he bought were given to the homeless but I don't remember where I read it.
Regardless I still really enjoy reading his blog.
> also this seems a really entitled take to say, "there is no homelessness" when there clearly is.
He's never said that and that's not the point of the article I linked either. Kevin has dedicated his life to recording the life of homeless people so he's clearly aware of it's presence. I think his work is quite important. There doesn't appear to be many people researchig homelessness who actually spend time on the street interviewing them. His posts and videos have given me a whole different view of homelessness, most of which in more vein of what the first commenter here was talking about. But it has also taught me that homelessness can be quite diverse.
If you're interested in the life of the homeless at all you should definitely read some of his blog. His collaborations with Tyler Oliveira on YouTube are also extremely interesting.
Stuff that we consider abnormal (homelessness, migration/seeking asylum, etc.) is at some point personal decision („I'm going to try to move to the next country, whatever it takes”), even if usually are not perceived as real choices, e.g. when the alternative is a lack of food or to sustain persecution. But a decision nonetheless, and one that will be taken by resourceful people, those who can spend a night or a fortnight in a tent.
If you know how to survive in a forest, you're a good candidate for a homeless or a migrant. Such decision point might be closer than you think.
Calling it a "choice" to seek asylum in another country because of war or threat of death in someone's home country for e.g. sexual orientation reasons is beyond cynical and cruel.
I truly hope you will never be in such a situation and then meeting somebody telling you that you are a refugee because of a choice you made.
The step from "it's a choice" to "it's your fault" is very small. There is a whole industry of populists thriving on the lack of distinguishing between these two.
Tech people often miss the social connotations such terms bring with them. Understandable, as many got into tech because of its clear definitions and lack of ambiguity and baggage, but the real world just doesn't work that way, and we have to acknowledge this.
This is HN, not fediverse, I thougt we can have a discussion that would involve making a distinction on this nuance (choice vs decision vs responsibility vs fault), instead on casting general aspersions, as is the case in other social media.
Not my choice, but my decision. It's not a question of responsibility of the a priori situation, but the moment that I snap and decide I can't take it any more. I need to do something. And not doing something is also a decision.
I helped a bit as a volunteer in an orga that among other things worked with refugees and I heard their stories. Every single one had this moment that one day they have risen and took ownership of their lives, instead of succumbing to helplessness. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't make it. That is something to admire.
One thing migrants and homeless need is to recognise they're humans that are disposed to make decisions about themselves, by themselves. To deny that is cruel, because it's inhumane. Humans can make decisions, non-humans can not. I don't know how it is on other side of the pond, but over here in Europe there's a big campaign to portray refugees (and all migrants) as non- (or sub-) humans, and denying them agency is part of that effort.
Right. And just as little as a refugee can decide their way out of the situation that their home country is in chaos and war, a homeless person rarely can decide their way out of poverty. The latter may have made choices earlier in life that contributed to their situation, but just claiming "well it's their choice that they are homeless" is not doing justice to the situation out there. Unless of course the situation is a choice, like for Elon Musk. At any point he could move into a permanent home wherever. It's absurd to use the same term for his situation as for an average person living under a bridge in SF.
I don't know SF homeless, but if you'd come ove here, you'd be surprised. Some of the refugees I met were “normal people” in their previous years, smart, well educated, well paid, resourceful. Some of them were much, much richer than me. That's simply because the poor in their country lack the means to even start the journey. They are those who have no choice but to rot to death (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). But not those who chose to leave the circumstances.
I'm not sure about the exact context of the language you quoted(not a native speaker), but ISTM you mean “well it's their choice that they are homeless” as somehow demeaning. Is it used in your country as a rhetorical device to imply that a person could have just chosen not to be poor (or persecuted), and then as an excuse not to help someone in need? That's very wrong and not matching reality I saw. Usually the choice was to either flee or something even worse happens to him/her (or the family).
I did this in Toronto and SF for a few summers in my 30s, well into my "real life" and beyond college. It was transformative, like creating my own UBI. Found all the same benefits: mundane daily moments become magical. Unexpected hospitality of strangers when I [on rare occasion] needed it. Admiration of friends and strangers. Etc etc
The main thing I did different was using a hammock tent (10min setup, 10min teardown each day). So I stayed in very public places (right off major foot traffic routes) and just went to bed early and got up at sunrise.
Also, I told everyone. No authority cared that i was doing it. In fact, i was organizing weekly events for government employees (some quite high level), and they all thought it was hilarious and were supportive.
Sounds similar to backpacking through {India | Camino de Santiago}.
I think it's important for every young adult who becomes a well-rounded adult to have experienced a short term of deprivation so they have a frame-of-reference what others in less fortunate situations experience. <my-two-centidollars>The problem today is that there are too many mean, spoiled individuals with way too much power lacking theory of mind, a sense of community, and basic human compassion.</my-two-centidollars>
That's about the 2 week drug and alcohol budget for an average homeless person. Homeless means no permanent shelter, not "forbidden to acquire and use money"
The ROI calculation is way too short sighted to be meaningful. To start you are already paying college tuition, and the expectation is to get an education that will help you pay off the loans (and then some). Going a few hundred deeper in the hole every month to have a roof over your head (you know, the most basic requirment for humans after water and food) is a no brainer and will massively increase your education ROI. A couple months of "homeless man" cosplay is probably fun and games but start to face the heat, cold, humidity, animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
Doesn't living in a tent also make you less vulnerable to smartphone and laptop addictions?
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
I read a comment on Reddit along the lines of ‘if you doomscroll every day to wake up, you wreck your dopamine levels for the day before even getting out of bed’.
I don’t have enough medical knowledge to assess this claim, but I made a simple rule: don’t touch the phone before getting out of bed! (except to turn off the alarm)
Perhaps, but it’s not really a reason to eschew conventional shelter. You’d probably try some smaller changes first (e.g., setting up screen time restrictions, deleting apps, switching to a dumb phone).
Better grades: could've spent more time in the library while paying rent anyway.
Learned a lot living at people's places: you could plan a month of no accomodation and couch surf, don't think that's such a stretch. More fundamentally, the tent piece was just a "social opener" to learn more about others. Many other things can be this social opener.
Material freedom: I buy that the experiment showed you that and that's awesome, but I also think some solid therapy around one's understanding of material reality could play a similar role.
For the grades, it's true you could always spend more time in the library out of sheer willpower. It was nice just to be nudged into it by this lifestyle, and definitely helped as willpower is limited.
People's places: have you heard of people doing this? I'm genuinely curious because I could never bring myself to be a nuisance if I didn't absolutely need it, meaning the blocker is definitely real yet fully in my head here.
Material freedom: I guess I haven't seen enough to agree with this one yet. The only intellectual pursuit I know that would genuinely get you closer to not caring about life so much as to reduce your fear in homelessness is the study of physics!
> but start to face the ... animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
These are the real dangers that a roof and walls offer you protection from. If you happen to find a benign niche where you don't face these threats, it's likely because there is an invisible layer of defense being provided to you by the societal structures around you.
Why put this experience along some pseudo-objective yardstick? Just read the article, the author tells you already how he experienced it and why he decided to do this. If you would not do this yourself, that's okay, but don't take away from the author like this.
This is not homelessness. This is "bandit camping". Not a value judgment on the act - when I was young climbing bum I did me a fair bit of it. But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless, who aren't doing it by choice to optimize their time for a relative luxury.
There's a place for policing language, but you're not doing anyone any favors by gatekeeping homelessness. This is not involuntary homelessness, but then a large number of unhoused people could live under a roof if they were willing to accept certain tradeoffs, whether that be living with an abusive spouse, with an estranged parent, in a sober house, or far away from a community of friends. There are unhoused people who could scrape by in menial, arduous--and possibly dangerous--jobs who instead choose to live life on their own terms.
Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
No but it definitely normalizes the issues around homelessness as no big deal when you write something where you’re intentionally homeless for financial gain.
And it didn't happen and if it had then he'd have crashed on a friend's sofa. And his laptop and two suits would have been safe in a locker at university.
An actual homeless person would have a quite different experience of a bust.
"I decide who is homeless and who isn't in retrospect by analyzing whether something happened to their tent in the woods or whether they were not discovered".
Sure. That's easier for you than talking about how differently things go with the cops for a rich university student caught tent camping on a lark, than for someone who is actually homeless.
Yes it does. A real homeless person doesn't go to the gym everyday to shower, or avoids bringing food to his tent but it's ok because "I can eat at the university", or charges his devices every day at the same university, or sleeps at their friend's place when the weather is too dangerous.
If was an interesting read and experiment, but it has its limitations as a real world comparison to homelessness.
Even assuming this is true, that doesn't make the article insulting. Myths about how housing does not follow supply and demand affect homelessness even more, but that doesn't make the person spreading these myths morally wrong.
You can be affected by something and not care about it. You can be affected by things you don't even know about, like the way regulations shape the houses we can live in.
I'm not sure this is entirely correct. Many have studied homelessness in an attempt to remedy it, and found that it is largely a choice* and thus near impossible to solve with resources from the outside.
*Sure, not a 'Hey, this looks fun' choice, more a conscious understanding of a tradeoff where homelessness is not choosing the alternative life.
Oh get over yourself with this contrived bit of supposed offense. Aside from it being nonsense, are you yourself homeless, a representative of a group of homeless people, someone who interviewed a number of them and asked if they're "offended" by anyone who doesn't absolutely have to live outside also using the phrase "i'm living homelessly"?
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
Actually the ETHOS classification system for homeless focuses more on where a person is living as opposed to why they're living like that. OP would alternate between two categories.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
Cripplingly Expensive healthcare is only an issue in one country in the world.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
I went to the ER in Canada (BC) a couple years ago, and they charged $950 to my credit card just to walk in the door. Everything else was extra, and charged at rates not wildly different from what I’ve seen in the US. And I’m a Canadian citizen! (I had temporarily lost my free healthcare eligibility because I lived outside the country for a few years.)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
It seems unlikely that there is not a single other country with “cripplingly expensive healthcare” besides the USA. I’m also of the opinion that there are more than 6 countries total.
An "ER visit" can be a completely benign and simple thing that happens after-hours but really you just needed a nurse/doct, OR it could be a life-changing set of multiple surgeries and tests and treatments and and and. Let's not dismiss how very-real emergency costs can be, just because we don't like the messed-up american healthcare billing mess. I've been to an emergency room in South Africa, as an example, and off the bat it cost about $100. That's almost monthly average salary of a huge portion of the population here!
Lucky that you happened to be in need in countries with a low cost of living. I needed an ambulance, stitches, and an MRI in Germany and it cost me $2000 USD. I wish I had travel insurance then.
Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.
Then again having an extra $2k in the bank might prove beneficial - perhaps preventing a personal catastrophe in a the near future. Or open doors that might make a significant difference down the road.
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
Agreed, but, say, a 20yo who's never had anything go significantly wrong for them, might not even consider that something bad could happen.
In that case, the appetite for risk versus reward is only appetite for reward.
If risks pointed out, at least that's closer to an informed choice they're making, and maybe they'll do the same risky thing but now be more careful about mitigating risk as they do.
(Source: Person who's bet it all at least a few times, and about to do so again, but finding ways to avoid stupid decisions and mitigate risks along the way.)
True in many places, but in Hong Kong, the cost of an A&E visit or hospital admission for the author (presumably on a student visa) at that time was about USD15/day.
> This turns into a surprisingly intense experience. I get to meet people in their most intimate space and bond over late-night conversations in ways that never would have happened otherwise.
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
Ok I was expecting a lot more. So it is one $450 USD per month? That doesn't very low. I guess HK Uni have decent discounts. But
>Living in Hong Kong without a dorm room would push rent up to at least $700 a month
Unless you only rent a bed with share washrooms and kitchen I can assure you it is not $700 but much closer to $1K if not higher depending on your living standard requirements.
If only this experience could reach media outlet. Hong Kong's rental or property pricing is just crazy expensive relative to what they offer.
Wild camping is tolerated in Hong Kong, but this guy is going to ruin it for everyone. Leaving 2.5 meter high tent pitched over daytime near buildings, is lazy and really really bad.
Stealth camping should be done in low profile tents (1.2 meters high). You should pitch tent at dark, and leave before sunrise.
Whether or not this guy is actually homeless is up for debate. What's not debatable is the pervading level of stingy "I spend hours and hours to save a few bucks" mentality that runs through this piece.
I agree. In the end, we trade our time for money and our money for (different) time.
There also gets a point where some of these things become "penny wise and pound foolish". I'm reminded of the people who spend 20 minutes driving across town to save $0.20 a gallon on gas. Which even in an empty 15 gallon tank, is a savings of only $3.00. Net cost benefit analysis says they would be better off working an a fast food restaurant or something for a higher trade-off of money per hours.
Yes exactly this... Queues of cheapos outside the lowest price gas station in town to save a pittance in dollar terms but not realize the lost opportunity cost striving to save a buck.
Odd given all his efforts so far, that when attempting to live cheaply in San Fran, getting a drivers license to live in a van was too big an obstacle to overcome.
It's a while back, but I think it's because you have to be a resident for at least 6 months to be eligible to getting a driver's license in a given country.
And getting the driving experience is not cheap if you don't know people who have a car you can borrow!
I’ve been at HKUST in 2016, too. I must’ve been pretty close to that tent a couple of times. Very interesting read. I couldn’t have done it due to the crazy big spiders
To solve the housing issues, all we have to do is build basic soviet-era apartment buildings everywhere and all will be good. The fact that we don't do this in many countries with crippling real estate situations must be a symptom of much larger underlying systemic issues. The future will hold a great many things but also some unavoidable and painful refactoring of leadership.
Too many in our country are against this because it isn't "fair". Everyone must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Homeless is an easy problem to solve and generally not that expensive. It is a political issue no one is willing to risk.
Probably I'm being naive, but what do you mean? I'm saying one way or another, apartments need to get built, either by government or private. As long as at the end of the day, as many small studios as needed to house absolutely everybody become available for, say, 500 USD/month (or less?). It then becomes a matter of what to do with those who do not manage to get a job. Anybody with drug issues needs to go into state rehab until they are willing and able to function and get a job.
I think the challenge is these sub 500 studios. It requires a functioning economy and state. E.g. land, utilities, zoning, infra, public services, law enforcement, medical, schools; all these things are needed to support housing. So maybe what is missing is a society, with housing just being the symptom, the manifestation, the telltale sign that there is not enough civilisation to support the people currently residing in some of these problematic states.
In 2023, CA population reduced by 268052 people, that is only 0.6% the the 40 mil population though. If 1% leaves every year, I believe that will compound into an 8% drop in a 10 year period. In 20 years, that will be 17%. Maybe that will help aleviate the burden a bit.
Makes sense. I guess it depends on the location, since in my case there were no animals as long as I didn't bring food in the tent. And another pro is you can pitch tents in places no one would ever go, while it's harder for vehicles. So less chances of getting busted.
Vehicles are tied to roads more or less and make contact with the most dangerous animal much more likely. Keeping food out of the tent is probably enough to discourage most animals from snooping.
1. Did you consider camping in one of Hong Kong’s official free campsites instead? I don’t remember seeing any rules that would prevent long-term camping. So, besides the less convenient location and perhaps raised eyebrows of their staff (if they regularly saw you at the campsite registration desk), it seems like a safer option?
2. I assume you were a taught student, not a research student, right? (If you were a research student, you could have slept in your assigned office, I guess.)
1. That would have been a great option had there been one close to the university! Proximity was a top criteria because commute is expensive money-wise and time-wise. Also, weirdly enough I think I was much safer in this illegal spot than in a regular camping where traffic makes robberies more likely.
2. I like how you think because I happen to have befriended a research student who did just that! I didn't envy him one bit thought because he had no windows while my tent view was magnificent. And then summer came and I would have given anything to have his AC!
Interesting article about alternative living, I understand why you would do this for fun, but obviously the risk vs. reward calculation makes no sense.
The convenience of a place with electricity, running water, a table and chair, you are legally allowed to sleep there, etc. Seems easily worth 450 Dollars a month. In the end he says he saved 2k, but that is not a relevant amount of money to save over months if you become a software developer in America.
Convenience is not the only possible reward, and the post touches on this.
I've stayed in many inconvenient places and the immediate benefit is often that it forces you to go out of your way to find good places to work from, to get food, entertainment, etc.
I lived and worked on the HKUST campus in the 90's.. Very picturesque. Surrounding coastline very rugged. He picked a good spot. No egress there at the bottom of the hill. Fun fact: He camped just below the historic location of Shaw Studios, who popularized the Kung Fu movie genre
I did this for a summer in a beautiful spot in rural Oregon as I was contemplating a career change, living out of my Prius compact. It was a special time, though not something I would do long term.
A great read, and an objective breakdown of the real world cost of living. Thank you. I'm surprised and kind of grossed-out how criticisms here of the word homelessness have skewed the spirit of the peace.
I read empathy with those in crisis. In Seattle, WA, USA there are many encampments applying what you're learned by doing, and your risk mitigation thoughts unpack this. You have the clear advantage of fallback support, which of course makes this an experiment as opposed to anything more, as you say in the title.
Re: being disappointed in many of the comments here: If you're looking for a culture-war point to make, you can find it. Please don't always go there - consider that the author may not be aimed in the direction you perceive. I recommend listening to David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" speech on YouTube or elsewhere - way better than Infinite Jest.
I get that it's super hard to replicate this and have a good time outside of the HK jungle, but to be honest it made me a lot more optimistic . You see people's real colors when you ask them to host you in their home, and in my case the support was overwhelming.
Here's some famous advice from Hong Kong's richest man:
--
A daily breakfast of vermicelli, an egg and a cup of milk.
For lunch just have a simple set lunch, a snack and a fruit.
For dinner go to your kitchen and cook your own meals that consist of two vegetables dishes and a glass of milk before bedtime.
For one month the food cost is probably $500-$600. When you are young, the body will not have too many problems for a few years with this way of living.
--
Note he's talking HKD, and HKD 550 translates into about USD 70.
Unlike rent, everything else in HK can be pretty affordable and it's pretty easy to have decent food for < 5 dollars / meal in HK if you go to non-western places.
There's "This-This Rice" places (Rice + 2 other ingredients like meat / vegetables) that usually have big portions and feel somewhat healthy.
Severals reasons: I don't think you could live 2 weeks in a car before getting controlled by the Police, at least in Hong Kong, tents are cheaper than cars, and I didn't have a driver's license!
is it a satire for tiktok? also a bit misleading that you representing someone that is not you in the single person picture of your blog. and mentioning that food is not cheap at “3$ a meal” while coming from one of the richest countries on earth…
I'd imagine most unhoused individuals are doing it as a strategic cost saving. Only, they're strategy involves eating and surviving rather than paying for unreachable/unsustainable rents. Maybe they didn't choose it, but it's still the strategy they're engaging in.
There are plenty of folks who can’t find housing for other reasons like background checks, credit score checks, etc. that might not be directly related to their ability to pay rent at that point in time.
Cool story, but this seems like a really good way to get your visa revoked if caught.
I kinda understand doing this if at home, and you have no other options. But this comes off as reckless and somewhat naive. To save 2K over a few months you risked serious injury, violated the terms of your visa and ultimately felt a need to humble brag about it.
I really appreciate the level of detail in this post. Not too little. Not too much.
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
> edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged.
Flagging seems to be one of the big vulnerabilities of HN.
Maybe flaggers should be required to state the reason for flagging, and this reason should be exposed.
Flagging means "no one should even see this on HN", and random people shouldn't get arrogant or cavalier about swinging around that power.
I have my account set to show flagged comments. A lot of flagged comments are simply some form of "wrongthink" but not violating any guidelines. So I've used the function often to "save" a flagged thing but it seemed to have stopped working for me at some point. I can only speculate why, but I think I saw some other commenters saying that happens if you unflag too much.. wrongthink. I want to give the site admin the benefit of the doubt though. Maybe it's simply an automated process that notices you unflagged too many things that were flagged by others too much?
I also have that setting, and occasionally vouch for an inexplicably flagged comment I notice.
There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
(On some comments I make, I know when I make it that it's going to get downvoted, because it pushes against an opinion of the kinds of people who will downvote to suppress criticism. It used to be that criticizing cryptocurrency would get downvotes, but now it's popular to criticize. I can get reliably downvoted any time that I suggest that adding a fee for some basic public infrastructure (e.g., to drive on street in a city), in a "market-based" way, is a handout of the basic public infrastructure to the wealthy. Also, suggestions that there's still any bias against women, in anything, somewhere, seems to reliably get downvotes, no matter how relevant; I don't know why, but I'd guess it's because the topic has a lot of general angry sentiment, and people who are angry the other direction aren't represented as much on HN.)
I'd distinguish wrongthink from something being off-topic and done-to-death or a flamewar magnet. Maybe one mental exercise test for this is whether the same person would also still downvote as "topic" if the opinion of the post/comment were flipped.
>There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
I actually vouch for a lot of comments I disagree with that was flagged, and upvoted it because I want it to be shown to the world. And in other times I disagree with it but vouch and upvoted because I dont want HN discussions to be one sided.
Throwaway here.
I’ve lived in China for a few years and I noticed anytime I write anything even remotely positive about my experience there I will get downvoted or flagged. Even completely neutral comments sometimes gets downvoted.
Russian here. I can't show -any- cool tech made here or an optimization that we do that western countries don't because people would say I praise Russia no matter how much more often and harsher I criticize. They don't even know what I think about the country, I just can't speak about it.
I appreciate people who are saving flagged comments because what made HN great 10-15 years ago was that I often changed my views because people would articulate why they are right and they sometimes indeed were.
I don’t think anyone doubts there are good things that come from China. Using a throwaway account won’t help your cause marketing China. Like every other “superpower” China has their major, major flaws. The kicker is trust. Pro-China rhetoric on a highly-moderated forum should be met with skepticism.
This isn’t opinion. The great firewall of China isn’t a farce, it would be good to remember that.
So because there are bad things in China nobody can say anything that's not negative about China? Or how do you see things?
It sounds more like the concern is that a post coming from China has a significantly higher likelihood to be state-sponsored propaganda than a resident’s/citizen’s genuine opinion. It makes sense on its face that it would be “higher” (that’s the point about the Great Firewall) but it seems to be a matter of personal opinion how “significant” that increase is.
> won’t help your cause marketing China
by what means did you determine that was his cause?
one common misconception is that "the downvote is not a disagree button". it absolutely is. I made that mistake before, in the early days of reddit they used to stress that mantra, and I made the false assumption it was true here. You are getting downvoted because people disagree or don't like what you have to say. simple as that.
Downvotes sadly are endorsed by pg (the owner of HN) for use to indicate disagreement.
Flags are not downvotes and are not to show disagreement. They do seem to get used that way.
I like the others above have show-flagged enabled. "90%" of things I vouch are things I disagree with that represent what I consider a point of view that deserves to be known, has been at least reasonably well presented, and isn't flame-bait.
silencing the opposition creates an illusion of consensus. in the deluded minds of the terminally online, it is paramount to maintain that illusion.
in every remotely political discussion here, reddit opinions are allowed to be expressed as non-constructively as you please, but all dissent, no matter how factual and constructive, gets flagged within minutes.
They're not deluded. They're evil. By faking consensus you mint new converts because the false consensus affects the opinions of everyone new to the subject. The platform designers, moderators, etc, etc, know this and that's why they do it.
Apparently it's because the original headline had the unfortunate juxtaposition of "homelessness" & "experimentation"?
I wouldn't be so quick to call delusion/dissent when designers of our spaces have simply made it far too easy to turn private affects into public effects..
(& It might be rude of me to be so concrete.. so.. apologies)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44213954
& What if everyone starts camping on pristine beaches? That'd be something! To marvel at!
[flagged]
You've already described the solution to the problem: we upvote things that we think are unfairly downvoted. If you say mildly controversial things, you can often watch this happen on your comments. Not that I wouldn't like reasons attached to downvotes and flags...
ironic that this was flagged an downvoted with no response, ha.
Yeah, that gave me a bit of a laugh too, but the flag seems to be gone now at least!.
Not ironic at all. Downvoting and flagging exist exactly to handle content that is not worth the effort or even harmful to respond to (remember bullshit almost always takes more effort to debunk than to create). As such, it's usually a mistake to both downvote and respond.
The reason for flagging here is simple: while interesting, this has nothing to do with tech or startups. A laptop was mentioned, but that’s about it.
HN is not strictly about tech or startups. So there is no reason to flag something based solely on the fact that it's not about tech or startups.
Thankfully it's clarified here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
But I think it's best to let the people vote if they value a story on how lifestyle hacking can help you go straight to building startups instead of having to first save up in a job.
That's a page about Show HN, not HN in general. The guidelines for news stories like this one are here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Specifically, I was paraphrasing this part:
> That includes more than hacking and startups.
Also this was not about voting or not voting, but about people flagging the submission.
What HN is or is not about is largely decided by flags (besides more direct moderator invention) so your reasoning is circular. If something is flagged then it's because enough people don't think it belongs here.
Appreciate the feedback!
100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I have been here for years. Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable or touch a political nerve.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
> Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable
I unflag completely normal posts every day on the "New" page of HN. Many of them are actually very good posts, and some of them reach the number one spot of the front page after being unflagged.
Very rarely do I see the flagged posts being very objectionable.
Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
Looks like it might have to do with the title, or at least the title was changed before it got unflagged. Good learning!
It was flagged because it originally had a totally different (and inappropriate) title.
I want to be able to upvote this comment just to show everyone how rules like "don't change the headline as originally given by website" or "let randos (with unpredictable emotional structure) flag stuff" lead to suboptimal outcomes
Sure, but any system of rules leads to suboptimal outcomes. Which isn’t to say the devil you know is better than the one you don’t, just that this being a suboptimal outcome is not in itself a reason to change those rules. In that context, the title rule is rather agreeable.
I usually see people complaining about misleading headlines when it does not match the linked article. To be fair, it is sometimes an improvement but the point is that it’s always editorializing. Keeping that to a minimum only when the article’s headline is particularly objectionable seems to be better than letting every poster editorialize as a matter of course.
For these above reasons, I like the "don't editorialize" rule by itself. BUT it seems especially suboptimal in comparison to its combination with the "let people flag stories without justification" rule.
No worries, I got ya, buddy:
Imho instead of eschewing quantification altogether, rules should have a ELO style rating computed from the effects of their pair-wise combinations :)
The hard part could be the combinatorial explosion lol
That was surely a great experiment. But it's very different from actual homelessness. I would have appreciated if the author had acknowledged that more. It's closer to a backpacker-in-a-tent-in-the-mountains experience than homelessness. In the latter, the living-in-a-tent is just a comparatively minor aspect of the experience.
This was a choice (essentially to save money) and the author had multiple fallback plans. Real homelessness is born out of desperation and lack of alternatives. Tragedies of mental health issues, abuse, severe financial distress, no savings, debt, warrants. No nice shower at the gym, no locker to keep a laptop and two suits. The constant fear of not just the police but also of getting robbed by another homeless, likely after something to sell for drugs. That's very different from anytime being able to crash on somebody's sofa to save on rent so you can earlier "afford to build companies".
We can even see it in one of the later paragraphs where potential spots in the bay area are evaluated. The local homeless should not be close. Oh, they shouldn't? That gives you an idea of the conditions actual homeless folks need to live under.
Author here. I get this view, I just think it's worth underlining how biased it is to the SF Bay area dystopian situation.
I've actually gone out of my way to meet homeless in the Bay. You'd be surprised how much of a continuum homelessness is. Most are definitely living hell on earth, but many I personally met have both fallbacks and money. Could be they're too attached to their family's image of them. Or that they weirdly enough have a better life now - I met a guy who led a small community and made quite some money from crime, he could have afforded to live anywhere, but this would mean taking a menial job like he had in the past, and he didn't want that.
Of course, the disclaimer is that many homeless care a lot about their self-image and will create stories to justify their current situation so it's hard to judge. But the point still stands that, even in hell of earth for the homeless, you'll find it's a continuum. And the world is much broader than SF - I've met people at every point of the spectrum, the most extreme being a multi-millionaire who lived Swiss forests for fun!
To summarize, there is no "actual homelessness", it's not a boolean but a spectrum, and I fail to see how gatekeeping the use of the most adequate word in this situation helps anyone.
If the problem is that it using the word comes across as disrespectful to people who mainly know homelessness through the prism of the Bay Area, maybe another avenue could be to add a link at the end of the article to promote a relevant NGO, which I'm definitely open to adding if people suggest a good one.
Jeez, our fellow eggheads are nit picking your story to the extreme. I loved your story because it's about problem solving. Your listing of the pros and cons is some of the best parts. Well done!
Some people like to treat homelessness as sacred. The image of a spotless victim, who has no choice but to suffer, is an object of veneration, even love.
It's an odd sort of worship but very common in the Bay Area.
PG recently wrote this:
> If something isn't important to know, there's no answer to the question of why people don't know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you're going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don't already know them. Is it because they're smart but inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?
So you can claim to have been homeless, or have experience having been homeless, but then you will be judged as having that experience. That isn't how you presented the story, but as a successful experiment where living in a dorm for $450 a month was also a good option. The redeeming lesson from such an experiment is that "being homeless isn't that bad" because "you weren't really homeless" not because "others also could have somewhere to live". The two has completely different implications.
You aren't being "gatekept" out of bad faith, but because it is nicer to believe that you are mistaken than the alternative. Because if you claim to actually have been homeless the story reads more like you put yourself above the rules, didn't consider your friends and don't understand the difference.
I'm not sure where all your mentions of the Bay Area come from. I'm writing from a European perspective, and in all major European cities you find homelessness prevalent. And it's not pretty.
A millionaire in the Swiss forest is not homeless. Choosing to live in a tent is not homelessness. To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives. As soon as it's a choice, to see romantic sunrises or fall asleep to ocean waves or whatever, that is, if calles "homeless", to me, a misuse of the term. It's a nice life, I've done it too and loved it, but I'd not start to call it "homelessness" and place myself into the same category as the poor souls sleeping under a bridge.
Of course it's a spectrum. Some folks have been forced out of their home and are living out of a car while finding a new place. That's homelessness. For some of those, it's temporary. For others, it's a spiral into misery, next is to lose the job, having a mental health issue, soon the car breaks down, and eventually they are sleeping under a bridge. Insubstantial of whether it's in SF, Berlin, Sao Paulo or Tokyo. Similarities to a concious choice are only superficial. Once it's a choice, it's outside the spectrum and is doing the fight against homelessness a disservice.
> To me, the term "homeless" implies a lack of alternatives
Why does it imply that? Many homeless have alternatives, but they aren't either applicable, or the person don't simply want that. Just as one example, a homeless person with a dog could probably get rid of their dog so they can stay at the homeless-shelter, but instead chose their close bond with their dog over that. Does that suddenly mean the person isn't homeless?
Another (personal example) is when I first arrived to Barcelona and barely could afford food. I spent two nights sleeping outside in the city instead of paying hostel fees, so technically I had the choice of spending a bit of money so I had roof for the night. Lets say that situation was longer instead of just two nights, would I not count as homeless then because I could have spent my money differently?
The homeless shelter situations in the bay area have waitlists. Some of the encampments also have waitlists (!). A lot of the homeless actually work in the bay area, some of them far away. Being in line in time to get a spot on a shelter is a task by itself and can be mutually exclusive with working. There is so much at play here you do not understand well. If we assume you are well meaning, you need to know that some politicians are not telling the truth about the true state of things.
> There is so much at play here you do not understand well
Yeah, I mean I don't live in the bay area, nor have I ever visited the place. My experience is mainly about homelessness in Spain I guess.
So whatever you think I've got from American politics, I can ensure you I haven't and it's entirely based on on-the-ground experience where I live.
Besides saying "You don't know the truth", is there any specific you can respond to from my comment you feel is incorrect or you disagree with?
- people living out of their car (homelessness)
- Vanlife (not homelessness)
- living in a tent out of necessity (homelessness)
- living in a tent for an experiment/fun/holidays (not homelessness)
Im still having trouble understanding why this destinction matters here. Your saying there is a difference between making choices that resulted in homeless being the only option and choosing homelessness because its the best available option?
If at any point you can find a place of your choosing to rent within a few days without any hassle, you're not homeless. You're not in the category of person that could need help.
> Your saying there is a difference between making choices that resulted in homeless being the only option and choosing homelessness because its the best available option?
Absolutely. For example, if a city wants to build systems to help them, one group would need counseling, temporary housing, while the other would rather haver access to public showers, a dispensary, and another group none of that.
Let say you're in a place that attracts a lot of backpacker/vanlife, whatever you build there you would make people pay for it. There would not be any food bank close to that place.
No, I think they are trying to say it would be helpful in the larger discussion of homelessness to have more nuance than just "not in a house" because, like both "sides" in the thread above keep hitting each other with, it's a wide, complicated, and nuanced topic.
The folks pushing for different words seems to be coming from a fear that grouping all "not sleeping in a home" into one bucket risks having stories like this (opt-in, mentally capable, not-in-deep-danger, safety net) make ALL homelessness seem easier or safer or a choice, which is a common pushback for helping people in modern politics (get a job, shouldn't have had sex/been dressed that way, shouldn't have tried drugs, etc). There is also a trauma of so much bad faith out there in the world right now making this kind of point implicitly on purpose (along the same vein as "I'm just asking questions").
They aren't phrasing it that succinctly but that's my good faith reading.
The holy war on the other side is "don't project your XYZ on my story" and "don't put words in my mouth" which seem valid to me given the context; I think someone should be able to tell their own story in good faith without being responsible for how other use it, within reason, which is likely not a terribly controversial take.
I personally see points in both sides and mostly think this is an issue because of the choice of venue. I think it isn't helpful to start an argument/debate without agreeing on what to argue/debate about and we're seeing that here (plus the topic being a proxy argument for a group of underlying political/social philosophy values not directly being discussed).
Exactly. Thank you.
Where does "vanlife because I have no better options" fall? It isn't black and white.
I think most people understand this, but in reality many homeless do have a choice in their living situation. This idea that they can’t possibly have chosen their life reduces the homeless to human-like primates with no agency. Often they have a sense of personal dignity and are capable of making their own decisions, despite how destitute we see their situation.
Have you talked to homeless people?
My experience is from São Paulo and Seattle but entertaining this notion that it's a thought-out choice full of intention is wild. Most homeless people just want some shade of stability and would leave that situation any day any time if given resources.
They are not primates with 0 agency but most societies don't really give them a lot of options.
You have no idea what is going on in the bay area homeless situation. I am not discounting your experiment, which was very interesting, but you cannot apply your experiences to the bay area homeless situation.
What is the purpose of this comment? Gatekeeping him and telling him he wasn’t _actually_ homeless?
I find it useful that terms have meaning and one can distinguish between what belongs to it and what doesn't.
A pork steak is a piece of meat taken from a pig. Once it's made of beans or some mushroom it may still be tasty (and I love good veggie food), but it's not a pork steak.
Similarly, the term "homeless" also has a certain meaning, and using it for something else muddies communication waters. And at worst, it makes the fight against actual homelessness harder: Next time some tax dollar is planned to be used for relief, somebody will point to those cases and say "well some homeless enjoy the sunrise and love the outdoors and have two suits in locker, and ain't none of my tax dollars go to that!!"
If you want to call that "gatekeeping", then sure. What's the purpose of your comment then? Gatekeeping me and telling me I should not call out the misuse of the term?
Common meaning is the protocol prerequisite for understanding and very often undervalued.
Words bring vibrations? Perhaps I don’t know, but they bring very strong meaning very often and in most languages also, even though English being famous for the same word meaning different things in different contexts, the conveyed meaning itself is still very important.
And homeless implies less of something which can be a moral choice also, but still there’s the ‘less’ which is not there when your bank account has enough for other options. The mental less in homelessness is bitter and very often related to certain major calamity.
Gatekeeping words would be important if it were respected. Unfortunately it is not, when the context doesn’t favor a specific flavour of the outcome.
Example in France, “homeless” is called SDF, and it means “no home” (no fixed address to receive mail, although shelters allow mail) but doesn’t mean “no roof”. And that was done to include women, because women were practically not represented on the street, as they often have someone who can host them, even if they cannot call it home. There is no word (except derogatory like “Claudo”, or workarounds like “on the street”) to describe the homelessness that men suffer.
Now, since women represent 16% SDF, but most of them are hosted, they do not tend to die during winters. They do not tend to face street violence. They do not match those stats. Unfortunately, since they still represent 16% of SDF, they also get reserved budgets in addition to the budgets which are destined to homelessness in general (and which are themselves already allocated with a slant towards the female gender - the whole thing is absolutely despicable).
So, since words are perverted for political goals precisely in this area, I’d rather we let history written by the writers, with their own appreciation of the words’ meaning. The usual side will win again, but when there is an odd article not written in “the correct way”, let it live.
Are you saying it's not actual homelessness because it was a choice?
Wikipedia says homelessness is "the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing". It doesn't say anything about it having to be a choice. I know people who say they're homeless by choice. Would you say that's an oxymoron?
In the US, you can live in campgrounds year round in a tent. Usually a nominal fee with access to amenities. Similarly, author of the article chose to live in a tent right next door to the University where he had access to amenities. I can totally see the analogous situation here. It was a way to save money not a necessity. Both situations don’t make you homeless.
That’s my takeaway and others on the difference here. Homelessness driven by choices then turn into necessity to live. I don’t think responding to the sentiment with technical definitions from Wikipedia is the right discourse either (as done in other comments not yours). You can see the problem with this story without having to cite your comment to try to bring some strength to it.
US public government campsites have stay limits. You can't actually "live" there.
Technically speaking, you can if you move. Author of article was illegally camping so I don’t think the same idea applies. I was referring to the idea of camping somewhere intentionally with amenities for fun not to live. Author could have had an apartment or other places to look into but chose not to. That doesn’t make them homeless
Living in a camping is safe and stable. Hiding from the police isn't safe and stable. That is a key difference. I am not sure what you try to say.
Its pretty clear I think you are wrong. Author wasn’t homeless.
By the definition you have provided though, someone that has access to stable, safe or functional housing but then chooses to not to use it (eg opting to camp instead), is not homeless.
Edit: the word “lack” really is the key word. This implies no choice, right?
I don't follow what you're getting at. OP did not have the budget to afford a house so he had to go homeless. He could have made other choices to afford a house sure, but many other homeless people could also theoretically make choices that would enable them to get housing.
The author has the opportunity to make choices about their situation, homeless people lack that choice, they can't just go get a job, or they can't get the money together for a deposit. They can't afford to travel to where the work is.
Theoretically they could choose to get treatment for addiction or mental health problems, but practically that isn't available to them.
> The author has the opportunity to make choices about their situation, homeless people lack that choice,
As adjudicated by whom?
> they can't just go get a job, or they can't get the money together for a deposit. They can't afford to travel to where the work is.
Many could actually. Some could move to lower cost of living areas. Some could choose to get education or training that enables them to get a job in the future. Some could get jobs, some could certainly move to where there are jobs. Some could choose to quit recreational drugs and alcohol. Some could use their welfare or disability payments and move to lower cost of living areas. Some who dislike living with others could choose to put housing above that preference and could afford move into group housing. Many do these things actually, I have heard many first hand stories from people getting themselves out of homelessness.
So how are we weighing up all these choices and deciding who is a "valid homeless" and who is not?
Doesn't seem like it. What's the address he would have given for mail sent to him when in the tent?
ie doesn't seem like there'd be a functional one that would work
So it's pretty clear he didn't have an "official" home during that period.
When I went to college, I had a PO box. Not sure how it works in Hong Kong, but I presume something similar. My apartment on campus did not have a PO Box but my college did.
Yeah, that might be a decent workaround for some stuff.
I can lack(/not have) a jacket because I choose not to bring one with me. I don't think lack necessarily makes any assertions about choosing to lack something.
Words have connotations. The word "homeless" has very strong connotations of poverty and the associated lack of options, i.e. lack of choices.
So yes, considering it not to be actual homelessness if it's a choice is perfectly reasonable. You can't wikipedia-lawyer your way to a functional understanding of natural language.
These are two very different things. Experiencing living in a tent for longer periods does not immediately equate forced live in poverty.
The words mean what they say they mean in order for their party to win elections. It's that simple. You deny it, they scream out in victimhood.
This shouldn't be downvoted even though it is a jaded take. I think this is EXACTLY what is on full display from all sides in this thread (to the point that it should get probably get locked).
> I know people who say they're homeless by choice.
To me, that's a blatant misnomer. Elon Musk also calls himself "homeless". (By choice, quite obviously.) There is not much to discuss once the term is assigned that meaning.
Homelessness is a somewhat broad category though. There's lots of people couch-surfing between friends and their car. They're also in a very different position from people who are sleeping rough.
I only experienced traditional rough sleeping homelessness once when my "house" (my van) was towed and I had to sleep in an hostile architecture bus stop bench that had ridges between each "seat" area. Otherwise, I was technically "homeless"/vanliving in SV from about 2010-2019.
Van is still a home, isn’t it?
The word home can apply to a van. I also know people who are considered unhoused/homeless whose home is a van.
van is a home if you have your stuff in it, live in it, and enjoy moving around, this does not make you homeless, sorry. is a home on wheels and can be very comfortable should you decide so.
I already said home can apply to a van. We have no argument there.
yes, sorry, my bad, just dont get it why comment got downvoted. no harm was intended.
No harm caused to me.
I commented instead of downvoting. However, to speculate, you implied a person isn't homeless if they have a van. You were responding to a comment containing:
> I was technically "homeless"/vanliving
Wherein they were relating their experience and recognized that they were vanliving (living in their van as their home) and even quoted their use of homeless, calling themselves "technically" so.
Even someone living in a tent or sleeping on the ground, if they keep returning to a site could say that site was their home. Some say the world is their home or that the region they stay in is. They would still be very clearly considered homeless despite having a "home".
As I understand it, it is a gray area whether vanliving is legal. You are allowed to park a vehicle but the owner doesn't have unlimited right to leave the van in one spot and live there. Even living in a van on your own land can be against code. People sleeping rough generally have no recognized right to sleep where they do. They are frequently moved and more often harassed. The situation is similar for those living in a van.
Anyway, that aside and trying to speculate about your downvote(s?), the context was that you started a language specificity discussion with someone who appeared to be unsure about the right words and hesitant to call themselves homeless. There were plenty of places on this thread to have that discussion but this doesn't seem an appropriate spot to me. I don't know whether that poster even knows you responded but if they do, I could see your response causing some difficult thoughts and/or emotions.
I doubt you intended harm but it can be helpful to consider the context to minimize the risk of harm or even just better understand the diverse manners in which your comments could be received. Hope you enjoy commenting here and learn from it and the comments of others.
Thank you for taking time to write this, appreciated - and it is a beautiful writing, I would say.
Indeed, I intended no harm, but having spent time on desolate beaches, retreats and similar, I could definitely disambiguate between living in a tent, in the forest, like even doing some coding from there, and being homeless. My comments joined the... seemingly overall uproar against author's choice to call his experience homelessness.
But you make a valid point reg. how many ways a comment can be interpreted.
My point was that precisely, and with my other comment - that homelessness is not a state you typically get to by choice. It is social status more or less. Unless the choice is to become sannyasa or traveling Buddhist monk and renounce the material world, which is not op's story, really. Given my previous experienced living in the tent in a forest for... months, well I can definitely say is not the same as being homeless. I have also met refugees (mostly levantines in Europe) who are much more homeless even when being crammed together in "homes" dozens at a time. They have interesting perspective of what is home, and having the world for your home is not always a good thing to say.
Thank you for your kind words and discussion.
I completely agree that living in a tent can be lovely and some of my life's favorite moments include tent living (e.g. in the temperate rain forest of Olympic National Park) and moving every day.
I even mostly agree with the overall uproar. It feels like bending the term pretty hard for the author to claim homelessness. The further point that there may be moral hazard in that use seems reasonable.
I like your point about homelessness more or less being a social status. I think it adds insight and I have enjoyed that this whole discussion (ours and other bits in the context) has really stimulated me to more deeply examine what homeless means.
Your point about even having a standard shelter to live in (house seemed implied but isn't important) not wiping away homelessness is excellently instructive. I certainly know people I consider homeless who have assigned housing. Considering the counsel housing system in the U.K. seems like it might start to step to the other side of that line on the other hand, shifting the discussion to other dimensions of a person's needs and "enfranchisement".
Let me reiterate my gratitude for sharing your thoughts and even more for getting to a discussion that feels more like peace and curiosity.
> Real homelessness is born out of desperation and lack of alternatives.
There's no single cause or experience for being homeless. There's no "real homelessness" either.
You might be interested to read "20-25% of all 'homeless' actually have housing" by Kevin Dahlgren.
https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/20-25-of-all-homele...
the same david dalgren who was sentenced for stealing identities of homeless people and stealing funds?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kevin-dahlgren-former-gresham-emp...
also this seems a really entitled take to say, "there is no homelessness" when there clearly is.
It's the same Kevin Dahlgren. I don't know the complete story, but he allegedly wrote off transactions under fake names when doing work for the municipality of Gresham. I did remember reading somewhere that the goods he bought were given to the homeless but I don't remember where I read it.
Regardless I still really enjoy reading his blog.
> also this seems a really entitled take to say, "there is no homelessness" when there clearly is.
He's never said that and that's not the point of the article I linked either. Kevin has dedicated his life to recording the life of homeless people so he's clearly aware of it's presence. I think his work is quite important. There doesn't appear to be many people researchig homelessness who actually spend time on the street interviewing them. His posts and videos have given me a whole different view of homelessness, most of which in more vein of what the first commenter here was talking about. But it has also taught me that homelessness can be quite diverse.
If you're interested in the life of the homeless at all you should definitely read some of his blog. His collaborations with Tyler Oliveira on YouTube are also extremely interesting.
> There's no "real homelessness" either.
Sorry, then I misinterpreted this sentence
I can understand I how you misinterpreted that, I should've made my point clearer.
Stuff that we consider abnormal (homelessness, migration/seeking asylum, etc.) is at some point personal decision („I'm going to try to move to the next country, whatever it takes”), even if usually are not perceived as real choices, e.g. when the alternative is a lack of food or to sustain persecution. But a decision nonetheless, and one that will be taken by resourceful people, those who can spend a night or a fortnight in a tent.
If you know how to survive in a forest, you're a good candidate for a homeless or a migrant. Such decision point might be closer than you think.
Calling it a "choice" to seek asylum in another country because of war or threat of death in someone's home country for e.g. sexual orientation reasons is beyond cynical and cruel.
I truly hope you will never be in such a situation and then meeting somebody telling you that you are a refugee because of a choice you made.
Seeking asylum is absolutely a choice. Both in choosing to leave the country and where you choose to go.
The step from "it's a choice" to "it's your fault" is very small. There is a whole industry of populists thriving on the lack of distinguishing between these two.
Tech people often miss the social connotations such terms bring with them. Understandable, as many got into tech because of its clear definitions and lack of ambiguity and baggage, but the real world just doesn't work that way, and we have to acknowledge this.
This is HN, not fediverse, I thougt we can have a discussion that would involve making a distinction on this nuance (choice vs decision vs responsibility vs fault), instead on casting general aspersions, as is the case in other social media.
Not my choice, but my decision. It's not a question of responsibility of the a priori situation, but the moment that I snap and decide I can't take it any more. I need to do something. And not doing something is also a decision.
I helped a bit as a volunteer in an orga that among other things worked with refugees and I heard their stories. Every single one had this moment that one day they have risen and took ownership of their lives, instead of succumbing to helplessness. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't make it. That is something to admire.
One thing migrants and homeless need is to recognise they're humans that are disposed to make decisions about themselves, by themselves. To deny that is cruel, because it's inhumane. Humans can make decisions, non-humans can not. I don't know how it is on other side of the pond, but over here in Europe there's a big campaign to portray refugees (and all migrants) as non- (or sub-) humans, and denying them agency is part of that effort.
Right. And just as little as a refugee can decide their way out of the situation that their home country is in chaos and war, a homeless person rarely can decide their way out of poverty. The latter may have made choices earlier in life that contributed to their situation, but just claiming "well it's their choice that they are homeless" is not doing justice to the situation out there. Unless of course the situation is a choice, like for Elon Musk. At any point he could move into a permanent home wherever. It's absurd to use the same term for his situation as for an average person living under a bridge in SF.
I don't know SF homeless, but if you'd come ove here, you'd be surprised. Some of the refugees I met were “normal people” in their previous years, smart, well educated, well paid, resourceful. Some of them were much, much richer than me. That's simply because the poor in their country lack the means to even start the journey. They are those who have no choice but to rot to death (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). But not those who chose to leave the circumstances.
I'm not sure about the exact context of the language you quoted(not a native speaker), but ISTM you mean “well it's their choice that they are homeless” as somehow demeaning. Is it used in your country as a rhetorical device to imply that a person could have just chosen not to be poor (or persecuted), and then as an excuse not to help someone in need? That's very wrong and not matching reality I saw. Usually the choice was to either flee or something even worse happens to him/her (or the family).
Not just warrents, but restrictions post-release than limit where persons can live.
I did this in Toronto and SF for a few summers in my 30s, well into my "real life" and beyond college. It was transformative, like creating my own UBI. Found all the same benefits: mundane daily moments become magical. Unexpected hospitality of strangers when I [on rare occasion] needed it. Admiration of friends and strangers. Etc etc
The main thing I did different was using a hammock tent (10min setup, 10min teardown each day). So I stayed in very public places (right off major foot traffic routes) and just went to bed early and got up at sunrise.
Also, I told everyone. No authority cared that i was doing it. In fact, i was organizing weekly events for government employees (some quite high level), and they all thought it was hilarious and were supportive.
Here's my learnings: https://github.com/patcon/urban-camping
EDIT: Ah, and these were my notes from living in rented shipping containers with a friend: https://github.com/patcon/container-city/wiki/Notes
Sounds similar to backpacking through {India | Camino de Santiago}.
I think it's important for every young adult who becomes a well-rounded adult to have experienced a short term of deprivation so they have a frame-of-reference what others in less fortunate situations experience. <my-two-centidollars>The problem today is that there are too many mean, spoiled individuals with way too much power lacking theory of mind, a sense of community, and basic human compassion.</my-two-centidollars>
> So I stayed in very public places
"I'm currently tenting in the backyard of a friend's place."
"Tenting in a park is not something I'm comfortable advising right now :)"
Any solutions other than a friend's backyard?
Love the actionable advice like "I rent a PO Box for about $200 per year."
That's about the 2 week drug and alcohol budget for an average homeless person. Homeless means no permanent shelter, not "forbidden to acquire and use money"
ah, i didn't even process that that comment might be sarcasm :)
The ROI calculation is way too short sighted to be meaningful. To start you are already paying college tuition, and the expectation is to get an education that will help you pay off the loans (and then some). Going a few hundred deeper in the hole every month to have a roof over your head (you know, the most basic requirment for humans after water and food) is a no brainer and will massively increase your education ROI. A couple months of "homeless man" cosplay is probably fun and games but start to face the heat, cold, humidity, animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
Doesn't living in a tent also make you less vulnerable to smartphone and laptop addictions?
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
I read a comment on Reddit along the lines of ‘if you doomscroll every day to wake up, you wreck your dopamine levels for the day before even getting out of bed’.
I don’t have enough medical knowledge to assess this claim, but I made a simple rule: don’t touch the phone before getting out of bed! (except to turn off the alarm)
So far, it really seems to work!
This is even more true for kids. Zero screen in the morning.
That’s another huge plus yes! I made a point of never bringing my laptop and turning off data on my phone before going every night.
Hard to quantify how much of a difference this made, but it definitely translated in higher drive and propensity to being present.
That sounds like an unrelated problem to your own addictions.
Arguably a dorm is pretty minimal as well, it’s just a climate controlled room with a bed.
If you have to physically remove yourself from housing to stop using technology negatively, that’s an addiction problem, not a problem with housing.
That's definitely true, but you also see how some settings make it easier to be virtuous than others right?
Also, the success apps like tiktok and instagram does suggest addiction is more the norm than the exception.
Perhaps, but it’s not really a reason to eschew conventional shelter. You’d probably try some smaller changes first (e.g., setting up screen time restrictions, deleting apps, switching to a dumb phone).
Better grades: could've spent more time in the library while paying rent anyway.
Learned a lot living at people's places: you could plan a month of no accomodation and couch surf, don't think that's such a stretch. More fundamentally, the tent piece was just a "social opener" to learn more about others. Many other things can be this social opener.
Material freedom: I buy that the experiment showed you that and that's awesome, but I also think some solid therapy around one's understanding of material reality could play a similar role.
For the grades, it's true you could always spend more time in the library out of sheer willpower. It was nice just to be nudged into it by this lifestyle, and definitely helped as willpower is limited.
People's places: have you heard of people doing this? I'm genuinely curious because I could never bring myself to be a nuisance if I didn't absolutely need it, meaning the blocker is definitely real yet fully in my head here.
Material freedom: I guess I haven't seen enough to agree with this one yet. The only intellectual pursuit I know that would genuinely get you closer to not caring about life so much as to reduce your fear in homelessness is the study of physics!
> but start to face the ... animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
These are the real dangers that a roof and walls offer you protection from. If you happen to find a benign niche where you don't face these threats, it's likely because there is an invisible layer of defense being provided to you by the societal structures around you.
> I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards
The “Community Support” section was my favorite. I would love to hear you elaborate on experiences and lessons you learned while staying with others.
Why put this experience along some pseudo-objective yardstick? Just read the article, the author tells you already how he experienced it and why he decided to do this. If you would not do this yourself, that's okay, but don't take away from the author like this.
This is not homelessness. This is "bandit camping". Not a value judgment on the act - when I was young climbing bum I did me a fair bit of it. But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless, who aren't doing it by choice to optimize their time for a relative luxury.
There's a place for policing language, but you're not doing anyone any favors by gatekeeping homelessness. This is not involuntary homelessness, but then a large number of unhoused people could live under a roof if they were willing to accept certain tradeoffs, whether that be living with an abusive spouse, with an estranged parent, in a sober house, or far away from a community of friends. There are unhoused people who could scrape by in menial, arduous--and possibly dangerous--jobs who instead choose to live life on their own terms.
Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
No but it definitely normalizes the issues around homelessness as no big deal when you write something where you’re intentionally homeless for financial gain.
Does it? How so? If anything it showcases some of the trials otherwise unknown to those who don’t face them (eg weather, tent mold).
Those are trials of camping. The cops coming and tossing your tent and everything else you own in a dumpster, that's a trial of homelessness.
This was specifically addressed in the blogpost. This is illegal in Hong Kong too.
And it didn't happen and if it had then he'd have crashed on a friend's sofa. And his laptop and two suits would have been safe in a locker at university.
An actual homeless person would have a quite different experience of a bust.
> And it didn't happen
"I decide who is homeless and who isn't in retrospect by analyzing whether something happened to their tent in the woods or whether they were not discovered".
Sure. That's easier for you than talking about how differently things go with the cops for a rich university student caught tent camping on a lark, than for someone who is actually homeless.
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Yes it does. A real homeless person doesn't go to the gym everyday to shower, or avoids bringing food to his tent but it's ok because "I can eat at the university", or charges his devices every day at the same university, or sleeps at their friend's place when the weather is too dangerous.
If was an interesting read and experiment, but it has its limitations as a real world comparison to homelessness.
You're right that this situation was very privileged. But there's not such thing as a "real homeless", it's a continuum. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215698
Also, virtually all the "real homeless" I met went to the gym to shower.
A real homeless person defecates on the ground and dumps his trash wherever he goes. That is the reason they are unwanted
> But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless
I'm sure homeless people have more pressing thoughts than what words nerds on the internet use to describe outdoor living
Not if the nerds on the internet are stirring the societal discourse around you. That affects the unhoused whether they care or not.
Even assuming this is true, that doesn't make the article insulting. Myths about how housing does not follow supply and demand affect homelessness even more, but that doesn't make the person spreading these myths morally wrong.
> but that doesn't make the person spreading these myths morally wrong.
That’s a nice out for anyone who gets caught lying. “I didn’t think it was morally wrong to repeat lies.”
So you're protecting people from something that even you admit they don't care about?
You can be affected by something and not care about it. You can be affected by things you don't even know about, like the way regulations shape the houses we can live in.
I'm not sure this is entirely correct. Many have studied homelessness in an attempt to remedy it, and found that it is largely a choice* and thus near impossible to solve with resources from the outside.
*Sure, not a 'Hey, this looks fun' choice, more a conscious understanding of a tradeoff where homelessness is not choosing the alternative life.
If there's a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it above.
Edit: I've taken a crack at it. If there's a better way, we can change it again.
I really appreciate the new title. It's doing the topic more justice.
So sorry you had to spend time changing the title! Learning the lesson for next time.
Oh get over yourself with this contrived bit of supposed offense. Aside from it being nonsense, are you yourself homeless, a representative of a group of homeless people, someone who interviewed a number of them and asked if they're "offended" by anyone who doesn't absolutely have to live outside also using the phrase "i'm living homelessly"?
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
Actually the ETHOS classification system for homeless focuses more on where a person is living as opposed to why they're living like that. OP would alternate between two categories.
What should you call this person without a fixed home? Perhaps "temporarily unhoused"?
> and saved me close to $2k over the 4.5 months.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
Cripplingly Expensive healthcare is only an issue in one country in the world.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
I went to the ER in Canada (BC) a couple years ago, and they charged $950 to my credit card just to walk in the door. Everything else was extra, and charged at rates not wildly different from what I’ve seen in the US. And I’m a Canadian citizen! (I had temporarily lost my free healthcare eligibility because I lived outside the country for a few years.)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
It seems unlikely that there is not a single other country with “cripplingly expensive healthcare” besides the USA. I’m also of the opinion that there are more than 6 countries total.
Please name one with cripplingly expensive healthcare.
India
An "ER visit" can be a completely benign and simple thing that happens after-hours but really you just needed a nurse/doct, OR it could be a life-changing set of multiple surgeries and tests and treatments and and and. Let's not dismiss how very-real emergency costs can be, just because we don't like the messed-up american healthcare billing mess. I've been to an emergency room in South Africa, as an example, and off the bat it cost about $100. That's almost monthly average salary of a huge portion of the population here!
Lucky that you happened to be in need in countries with a low cost of living. I needed an ambulance, stitches, and an MRI in Germany and it cost me $2000 USD. I wish I had travel insurance then.
Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.
Edit: added! thanks for the feedback again
If he was on a student visa in Hong Kong he was able to access public health care for close to free.
All Hong Kong residents are eligible (anyone with an HKID and permission to remain >= 180 days).
I would say it's not about the cost, but possible permanent injuries
Then again having an extra $2k in the bank might prove beneficial - perhaps preventing a personal catastrophe in a the near future. Or open doors that might make a significant difference down the road.
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
Agreed, but, say, a 20yo who's never had anything go significantly wrong for them, might not even consider that something bad could happen.
In that case, the appetite for risk versus reward is only appetite for reward.
If risks pointed out, at least that's closer to an informed choice they're making, and maybe they'll do the same risky thing but now be more careful about mitigating risk as they do.
(Source: Person who's bet it all at least a few times, and about to do so again, but finding ways to avoid stupid decisions and mitigate risks along the way.)
True in many places, but in Hong Kong, the cost of an A&E visit or hospital admission for the author (presumably on a student visa) at that time was about USD15/day.
> This turns into a surprisingly intense experience. I get to meet people in their most intimate space and bond over late-night conversations in ways that never would have happened otherwise.
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
I'd recommend be welcome.org which is truly community run and owned.
I lived in the woods during my undergrad too: https://medium.com/@caydenpierce4/the-homeless-hippie-cyborg...
This was in between two stints living and working in a mobile RV hacker lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT1gPmQQkxI
I'm in SF now and we'd probably be best friends.
>and saved me close to $2k over the 4.5 months.
Ok I was expecting a lot more. So it is one $450 USD per month? That doesn't very low. I guess HK Uni have decent discounts. But
>Living in Hong Kong without a dorm room would push rent up to at least $700 a month
Unless you only rent a bed with share washrooms and kitchen I can assure you it is not $700 but much closer to $1K if not higher depending on your living standard requirements.
If only this experience could reach media outlet. Hong Kong's rental or property pricing is just crazy expensive relative to what they offer.
The camping took place in 2016, almost 10 years ago. Could it be that you are referencing contemporary prices?
You're both right. It was 10 years ago and my living requirements definitely were low
Another reason is that Hong Kong has a lot more affordable housing in the outskirts, like in the village of Tai Po Tsai that borders this university.
Wild camping is tolerated in Hong Kong, but this guy is going to ruin it for everyone. Leaving 2.5 meter high tent pitched over daytime near buildings, is lazy and really really bad.
Stealth camping should be done in low profile tents (1.2 meters high). You should pitch tent at dark, and leave before sunrise.
"I first try putting a friend 3 meters away from the tent and asking him to find it. Vegetation is so thick he can't. No need to spray camouflage!"
You're safe! No one found me, and I took it away a decade ago.
He did it in 2016, he hasn't ruined anything.
More people were openly & brazenly wild camping in HK during covid than this.
Why does it matter if literally no one discovered it?
10 years later: did it ruin it for everyone?
Whether or not this guy is actually homeless is up for debate. What's not debatable is the pervading level of stingy "I spend hours and hours to save a few bucks" mentality that runs through this piece.
I agree. In the end, we trade our time for money and our money for (different) time.
There also gets a point where some of these things become "penny wise and pound foolish". I'm reminded of the people who spend 20 minutes driving across town to save $0.20 a gallon on gas. Which even in an empty 15 gallon tank, is a savings of only $3.00. Net cost benefit analysis says they would be better off working an a fast food restaurant or something for a higher trade-off of money per hours.
Yes exactly this... Queues of cheapos outside the lowest price gas station in town to save a pittance in dollar terms but not realize the lost opportunity cost striving to save a buck.
Odd given all his efforts so far, that when attempting to live cheaply in San Fran, getting a drivers license to live in a van was too big an obstacle to overcome.
It's a while back, but I think it's because you have to be a resident for at least 6 months to be eligible to getting a driver's license in a given country.
And getting the driving experience is not cheap if you don't know people who have a car you can borrow!
The "Community Support" section is really touching.
Glad you liked this! It was so great I've been meaning to do this again for years but never made the leap by fear of being a nuisance.
I honestly think everyone would be much happier and less lonely if sleep-overs didn't stop being a thing as we reach adult age.
I concur. The experiences couch surfing were the most interesting part (aside from the psychological calm of sleeping and waking outside)
I’ve been at HKUST in 2016, too. I must’ve been pretty close to that tent a couple of times. Very interesting read. I couldn’t have done it due to the crazy big spiders
Great writeup. I appreciate the bravery.
To solve the housing issues, all we have to do is build basic soviet-era apartment buildings everywhere and all will be good. The fact that we don't do this in many countries with crippling real estate situations must be a symptom of much larger underlying systemic issues. The future will hold a great many things but also some unavoidable and painful refactoring of leadership.
Too many in our country are against this because it isn't "fair". Everyone must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Homeless is an easy problem to solve and generally not that expensive. It is a political issue no one is willing to risk.
Probably I'm being naive, but what do you mean? I'm saying one way or another, apartments need to get built, either by government or private. As long as at the end of the day, as many small studios as needed to house absolutely everybody become available for, say, 500 USD/month (or less?). It then becomes a matter of what to do with those who do not manage to get a job. Anybody with drug issues needs to go into state rehab until they are willing and able to function and get a job.
I think the challenge is these sub 500 studios. It requires a functioning economy and state. E.g. land, utilities, zoning, infra, public services, law enforcement, medical, schools; all these things are needed to support housing. So maybe what is missing is a society, with housing just being the symptom, the manifestation, the telltale sign that there is not enough civilisation to support the people currently residing in some of these problematic states.
In 2023, CA population reduced by 268052 people, that is only 0.6% the the 40 mil population though. If 1% leaves every year, I believe that will compound into an 8% drop in a 10 year period. In 20 years, that will be 17%. Maybe that will help aleviate the burden a bit.
Tents aren't a good long term plan IMO. They don't protect you from animals. Vehicles are much better.
Makes sense. I guess it depends on the location, since in my case there were no animals as long as I didn't bring food in the tent. And another pro is you can pitch tents in places no one would ever go, while it's harder for vehicles. So less chances of getting busted.
Vehicles are tied to roads more or less and make contact with the most dangerous animal much more likely. Keeping food out of the tent is probably enough to discourage most animals from snooping.
Great write-up!
1. Did you consider camping in one of Hong Kong’s official free campsites instead? I don’t remember seeing any rules that would prevent long-term camping. So, besides the less convenient location and perhaps raised eyebrows of their staff (if they regularly saw you at the campsite registration desk), it seems like a safer option?
2. I assume you were a taught student, not a research student, right? (If you were a research student, you could have slept in your assigned office, I guess.)
Thank you!
1. That would have been a great option had there been one close to the university! Proximity was a top criteria because commute is expensive money-wise and time-wise. Also, weirdly enough I think I was much safer in this illegal spot than in a regular camping where traffic makes robberies more likely.
2. I like how you think because I happen to have befriended a research student who did just that! I didn't envy him one bit thought because he had no windows while my tent view was magnificent. And then summer came and I would have given anything to have his AC!
Interesting article about alternative living, I understand why you would do this for fun, but obviously the risk vs. reward calculation makes no sense.
The convenience of a place with electricity, running water, a table and chair, you are legally allowed to sleep there, etc. Seems easily worth 450 Dollars a month. In the end he says he saved 2k, but that is not a relevant amount of money to save over months if you become a software developer in America.
Convenience is not the only possible reward, and the post touches on this.
I've stayed in many inconvenient places and the immediate benefit is often that it forces you to go out of your way to find good places to work from, to get food, entertainment, etc.
For camping in humid summers, it's amazing how much difference a power bank and little fan can make. A little electricity goes a long way.
Tell that to a real homeless who typically as to be very creative to even just charge their phone. If they have one.
Very nice write up, cool experiment and very intriguing
Is that UST? If it is - it's really incredibly stunningly beautiful, that view. I envy the bravery giving you that sight to see every morning.
Yes exactly! It’s UST. Beautiful view :)
I lived and worked on the HKUST campus in the 90's.. Very picturesque. Surrounding coastline very rugged. He picked a good spot. No egress there at the bottom of the hill. Fun fact: He camped just below the historic location of Shaw Studios, who popularized the Kung Fu movie genre
The user manual linked in the homepage (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aZuBR-jVCda-VkG-8MzX...) seems like an interesting idea.
Very cool, really enjoyed this one. I think the boredom would get to me quickly, though.
What makes people do something they clearly know is illegal, while being a guest in the country?
I did this for a summer in a beautiful spot in rural Oregon as I was contemplating a career change, living out of my Prius compact. It was a special time, though not something I would do long term.
Inspiring. Bold choices.
let me know if you try the sailboat thing in san francisco!
In San Francisco you’d need to worry about the pirates.
Hong Kong is such an amazing place. I lived there overlapping with your stay. I miss the food and the weather, but most of all the people.
>One close friend was looking for someone to rent his cave for about $100 per night.
Someone has an actual cave to rent out?
A great read, and an objective breakdown of the real world cost of living. Thank you. I'm surprised and kind of grossed-out how criticisms here of the word homelessness have skewed the spirit of the peace.
I read empathy with those in crisis. In Seattle, WA, USA there are many encampments applying what you're learned by doing, and your risk mitigation thoughts unpack this. You have the clear advantage of fallback support, which of course makes this an experiment as opposed to anything more, as you say in the title.
Re: being disappointed in many of the comments here: If you're looking for a culture-war point to make, you can find it. Please don't always go there - consider that the author may not be aimed in the direction you perceive. I recommend listening to David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" speech on YouTube or elsewhere - way better than Infinite Jest.
I have to admit I never had to consider falling boulders in my brief bout with homelessness
Hmm, really makes you optimistic...
I get that it's super hard to replicate this and have a good time outside of the HK jungle, but to be honest it made me a lot more optimistic . You see people's real colors when you ask them to host you in their home, and in my case the support was overwhelming.
I'm more shocked of how you can have a meal for 1 or 3 dollars.
Hong Kong food is rice-based and rice is cheap!
Here's some famous advice from Hong Kong's richest man:
--
A daily breakfast of vermicelli, an egg and a cup of milk.
For lunch just have a simple set lunch, a snack and a fruit.
For dinner go to your kitchen and cook your own meals that consist of two vegetables dishes and a glass of milk before bedtime.
For one month the food cost is probably $500-$600. When you are young, the body will not have too many problems for a few years with this way of living.
--
Note he's talking HKD, and HKD 550 translates into about USD 70.
Unlike rent, everything else in HK can be pretty affordable and it's pretty easy to have decent food for < 5 dollars / meal in HK if you go to non-western places.
There's "This-This Rice" places (Rice + 2 other ingredients like meat / vegetables) that usually have big portions and feel somewhat healthy.
How come you didn’t just get a cheap car and sleep in that?
Severals reasons: I don't think you could live 2 weeks in a car before getting controlled by the Police, at least in Hong Kong, tents are cheaper than cars, and I didn't have a driver's license!
There are a number of homeless students at UC berkley
This is camping, it's nothing like homelessness. At best, it's homelessness tourism.
is it a satire for tiktok? also a bit misleading that you representing someone that is not you in the single person picture of your blog. and mentioning that food is not cheap at “3$ a meal” while coming from one of the richest countries on earth…
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I uhh, is this homeless larping? What in tarnation
How about homelessness as a strategic cost-savings experiment?
I'd imagine most unhoused individuals are doing it as a strategic cost saving. Only, they're strategy involves eating and surviving rather than paying for unreachable/unsustainable rents. Maybe they didn't choose it, but it's still the strategy they're engaging in.
There are plenty of folks who can’t find housing for other reasons like background checks, credit score checks, etc. that might not be directly related to their ability to pay rent at that point in time.
yeah. wouldnt have been fun if it was out of necessity
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Why doesn't Hong Kong fix their real estate problem?
Cool story, but this seems like a really good way to get your visa revoked if caught.
I kinda understand doing this if at home, and you have no other options. But this comes off as reckless and somewhat naive. To save 2K over a few months you risked serious injury, violated the terms of your visa and ultimately felt a need to humble brag about it.
Not everything needs to be shared.
It was a fun read nevertheless