If you were homeless, where would you sleep?

Maybe behind a restaurant or something.

Op I’d come to your house and share your bed.

I'd relocate.

Multilevel parking garage, lost of corners to hide in and protection from weather

I’d sleep in my weekend house at the Cape until I could get back on my feet.

I would try to get to the woods. I’d rather try surviving in the wilderness than around cruel people. Also I’m a loner so I’d have no community

Between your legs

I’d sleep in exactly the same place I do now- with anyone who wants to fuck me!

In my car. It's paid off and in good condition.

If I didn't have that option, I would also go to the woods to try to survive the wilderness. I figure it's safer than the streets and at that point I wouldn't care if I died so it would be nice to be surrounded by nature.

There’s a nice cemetery across the street from my place. I’d probably pitch a small tent in the wooded area.

I don’t know, but it would be somewhere in Cali where I’ve got year-round decent weather. San Diego seems like a good place for vagrancy.

Dense foliage around an office building, for cover and safety. But only in a mild environment; if it gets too cold there I would I ride empty train boxcars south til I got to a warm environment. No way am I being poor/homeless AND cold.

I walk very early (around 4:30 a.m.) and in front of churches seems to be very popular.

My mom’s house.

Somewhere "where the rule of law still exists".

If I could I'd get a van. If not, in the back country of Hawaii where I can disappear. I know of many areas that would work well, having lived there for a long time and having been a hiker most of my life. I'd be fine but only if healthy and mobile.

I had a coworker who slept in the office for three weeks between apartments. No one ever knew, she told me years later.

Shelter, or outside the shelter if full. If you want to be relatively safe and undisturbed.

I've thought about this a lot, OP. R12 has it right, I think, except what about security cameras and alarm sensors?

Inside an enclosure that surrounds an auxiliary generator outside an apartment and retail complex. It’s like a shed. I could scale the side wall and sleep in the space beside the generator, and maybe pack a knapsack with a neoprene camping or yoga mat.

I was homeless for two months. I did sex-work and paid $900 weekly for a short term furnished rental. Lived hand to mouth (literally) and it really destroyed my soul. Luckily I found a nice affordable place.

I would go live at a relative's house. This is why you maintain good relations with your family and don't cut them off.

Depends what kind of family you have. You can be nice and cordial and, in your time of need: NOPE!

I'm pretty so I would never be homeless. Just no self esteem.

In a cardboard box, down by the river.

In the basement of some troubled celeb.

I would have to sleep in my car I guess. I don't have any family in the country I live in.

I once slept the night on a bench at Rockefeller Center. It was a long time ago. Of course it's a much different city now.

I’d find Kate Jackson’s van down by the river and knock.

Surely she’s lonely… though she’d carp your ear off.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say, R22. I mean, don't you people have any friends?

Baby boomers are increasingly becoming homeless

Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.

Thanks in part to a series of recessions, high housing costs and a shortage of affordable housing, older adults are now the fastest-growing segment of America’s homeless population, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, based on data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The fact that we are seeing elderly homelessness is something that we have not seen since the Great Depression,” University of Pennsylvania social policy professor Dennis Culhane told the Journal.

Here’s what has triggered what some experts are calling a “silver tsunami” — and what they say needs to change to reverse the tide.

In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%.

Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby boomers (those aged 57 to 75) particularly vulnerable.

My toothbrush and I would go to Los Copa.

I'm confused. We have one thread saying Boomers are homeless & another saying they're buying all the houses. It's almost like generalizing doesn't work. Crazy thought. If it weren't working everyone wouldn't be doing it. Were I homeless I'd try to get back to my hometown & stay with friends and family for short bursts, so as not to wear out my welcome. 4 days here. 5 days there.

[quote]If you were homeless, where would you sleep?

With yo mama!

R30 Many people who are homeless have mental health and/or addiction issues, so no, typically they don't have friends to help.

If I stayed in the city I’d probably become nocturnal. I’d sleep in a park all day and then stay up and ride the subway all night to keep safe and warm. I’d find a wholesale bakery and beg for some bread at 4:00 AM when their trucks are heading out for the morning delivery.

[quote] It's almost like generalizing doesn't work.

You shut your stupid mouth!

I was homeless when I was 16. I hitchhiked into the city with nothing. I stayed in a homeless shelter and slept on a mat with my jacket as my pillow and no blanket. In the day I went to the library, walked around aimlessly and shoplifted food or used money from begging. After a week, I moved in with my Dad but he beat me up a few months later so back to the shelter I went. Atleast I got into a youth shelter with an actual bed.

R36, you really have it all worked out .

I think I’d live in my car. I’d get a gym membership and go to the public library a lot. Also, Starbucks.

Going nocturnal sounds like a safer option.

I’ve seen Stone Pillow, I know the ropes.

If it was temporary for sure, I’d go camping. In my Flyoverstan state, we have campgrounds that are as low as $5 a night and in some cases free if you to the state forest.

I have a van. I've been sleeping in it for a year now. I have two cats and a Boston. I work for Instacart and get their food from there. I take a Sheba cat food here and an Alpo there. I eat whatever. It's not really that bad tbh. I shower at the local gym every day. And watch TV on my phone. It gets a bit lonely but I just sleep it off. Sometimes I just sleep for 13 hours without realizing it. Ugh, it's good tho. I promised my cats and pup we wouldn't go live anywhere if they didn't let us live all together. It's tough. But we'll make it. I don't need compassion or govt help, nothing would insult me more. It's about grit and determination. I'm saving for something bigger. A house.

My storage unit.

I had a friend who tried sleeping in his storage unit. They found out after a few nights and evicted him.

With the fishes.

I lived in Hawaii for a few years in the mid 90s and I always thought that would be the perfect place to live if I was ever homeless. I went back around 2015 or so for vacation and was shocked at the amount of homeless in Waikiki compared to when I lived there. I guess everyone had the same idea.

Best of luck to you R43.

I would sleep in phases in the daytime. I'd mostly go for shopping centers in affluent suburban areas that are quieter, and put sunshades on the windshield. I doubt anyone would bother you if your car didn't look stuffed and dirty. Sleep for 2-3 hours at a time and then move to a different location. People might honestly think you're just on your lunch break or something like that.

I'm a very eccentric sleeper. I need quiet and darkness. There's no where out of doors in a city that could supply those two things. I have overnight camped in my Prius before and that's doable for a night or two. I don't know if I could adapt to it long term. It takes energy to figure out how to sleep comfortably in a car (windows really need to be slightly ajar or the steam from breath will make the inside of the car a moist mess), and it would need to be a very dark and shady spot, otherwise, the moment the sun hits a car in the morning it becomes sweltering. If I were forced out of my home and someone stole my car, I'd probably go insane looking for a safe and sheltered sleeping site. I wouldn't feel safe or comfortable in a shelter, with hundreds of strangers on mats all around me. I doubt I'd be able to sleep, or only very fitfully, certain that some of them would be awake and trying to steal from me. I tried to sleep on a park bench in Italy one year when I missed the last night train and all the inexpensive pensiones were already closed for the night, but I couldn't hack it. I paid for an expensive American-style hotel cursing the whole while.

In the boneyard, because I'd kill myself if things got that bad.

In the cemetery near me there are some beautiful old mausoleums with broken doors. In one there is a sleeping bag. I’m not sure I could sleep alone in graveyard though.

I've actually given this one some though, but more along the lines of civil unrest/natural disaster/zombie apocalypse. I'd find a mlak keyed disabled bathroom in a park. They hardly get used and often have showers and changing tables etc

I've got a MLAK key through work, so homelessness here I come

What is MLAK?

The trick is a flyover state with a lot of parks. Most have that rule about 14 days out of 30 at a park, or in some cases the entire county. Just go place to place every so often. If it’s a more populated area, don’t have to go far. But yeah, the rate will matter. $6 a night is a heck of a lot cheaper than $25. Probably should invest in a solar charger and lifestraw as well.

[quote]I’d sleep in my weekend house at the Cape until I could get back on my feet.

And people say Greg has no sense of humor!

Homeless is due to too much money going to a few. We all know it, and letting the rich have enough money to fuck with politics has destroyed our democracy.

James Madison warned us about this. He said factionalism is the greatest danger republics faced, and that those who profit immoderately from government will always find issues real and imagined to divide the people and promote it. The best remedy was to tax the rich to mediocrity and support the poor to comfort. We have neglected his lessons under the fraud that the Founding Fathers had an anti-government bias (they did not, it is a historical lie) or that billionaires have done something to merit this immoderate wealth when not a single one of them has.

Unsettling to me that I and so many others posting here seem to have really ruminated on this question--as if it were a genuine possibility we need to plan for.

I guess we all know it is. Don't we?

Hopefully I would still have my car, so would sleep in that in Walmart parking lots while I try to get to a warm climate. I guess after that, I would want to backpack/camp in a tent - but I would try to keep moving and not stay in any one place for very long.

R47 There has been a problem with the lower 48 buying the ticket to send their homeless to Hawaii. They get off the plane with no place to go. It's been difficult for the state to ID a lot of these people but if/when they do they will sometimes be returned to their home state the same way. I understand that it got so bad a few years ago that residents were up in arms over it and the state was forced to begin taking action to see that this stopped. I'm not certain how successful that program has become but I can assure you that there are still a shit-ton of mainland homeless roaming the islands. Waikiki was such a filthy mess that tourists were disgusted and complaining like mad. The news orgs got wind of this and the bad mouthing was all over the news. These days when ever a fire starts the first thought is that it began due to homeless encampments. Hawaii is in a drought situation and parts of the state are so dry that there are currently fire disasters everywhere just waiting to happen. Hawaii does not have the equipment and resources to fight these fires. You heard it here. Lahaina is just the beginning.

It’s bad luck to think about this shit

[quote] And people say Greg has no sense of humor!

You think I’m kidding?

I’d slap faces viciously and randomly

I'd just meth so I wouldn't need to sleep.

^^DO meth^^^

My car