Middle school teacher journeys into the state of homelessness.
 

Orange middle school teacher vows to go homeless for 30 days - Orlando Sentinel

This should be a real education for this teacher as well as for his middle school students. He starts his odyssey after tonight's fireworks. You can follow him on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/hungryandhomeless/info

Interesting but idealistic. The venture into the homeless community of Orlando could be a very dangerous feat.

That's quite true. He will have to be real careful about arguments and the like.

I agree bad thing could happen. Desperate people will spot right off that he's not Sorority member.

He can sleep in the streets, abandoned buildings, and woods if he wants, but he will not be "homeless". He will have piece of mind knowing his wife and children are safe in their cozy home with proper clothing, food, and comfortable bed. He will also have piece of mind that his little adventure, dangerous as it may be, is temporary and will end in only a month or sooner if he so wishes.

None of you really could ever understand the plight of homelessness. Unless of course you had spent some time volunteering in soup kitchens, or taking bags of food, clothing, shoes, and toiletries to them.

People have a huge misconception homeless people are drug addicts and drunks. The truth is many of them do not start out that way but some end up that way living on the streets. How many of you know over 50% of homeless people are Vets and women?

Most of us sit in our beautiful homes thinking being homeless could never happen to us. The reality is it can happen to anyone. Prime example, the people who lost their pension and have no electric or water right here in TV.

I tip my hat to this teacher for doing this. Perhaps we all should so we can truly appreciate how fortunate we are. Although, I have not spent one night homeless, but I have been into their community many times and I always leave feeling grateful and humble.

I worked an average of ten hours a day for 50 years but always liked my day off much better. Could it be that homeless like not workingbetter than going to the salt mine?

Yup, you nailed it. I mean who wouldn't prefer sleeping on the ground in filthy clothes without access to even the most basic human necessities. Who doesn't enjoy hunger and the constant threat of violence. Who doesn't just love seeing their kids go hungry. Throw in the pleasures of lice, freezing in the winter and heat stroke in the summer, and these lazy bums have got it made! It's probably just as you said in your post, that being homeless is just like your day off from work. And add to that.......oh never mind.
In an effort to discuss this rationally, let's look at the reasons for homelessness. If a person is a member of a family, the top reasons for homelessness are lack of affordable housing, poverty, and unemployment. For singles, the top reasons are substance abuse, mental illness, and lack of affordable housing. About 1.5 million children are homeless. About 40% of homeless men are veterans (those darn lazy veterans).
I have been quite fortunate in my life. But there were many times when We were starting out with young children that I could have been laid off from a job and lost health care coverage. Then I was just a few months away from trouble. If I had suffered a heart attack or something else health related, then we were only a few pay checks away from trouble.
Perhaps what this teacher in the article is doing will help stimulate some real talk on this subject with a true understanding of the reasons for homelessness.

https://www.facebook.com/hungryandhomeless

I hope people will follow his experiences being homeless.

This touches home for me (pun intended) because I could easily have wound up homeless without the safety net of my parents. I have told my story repeatedly on Talk of the Villages so I will not bore you with it but just touch on the highlights of being painted as mentally ill after putting up a rigorous and very well documented fight to be honest about my interest in doing something about a glaring niche in the access to practical information for survivors/victims of crimes. I discovered this niche the last weekend of February 1976 in libraries in Reno where I was looking for practical information about victims/survivors rights and whatever else I could find after the murder of Michelle Mitchell in Reno, Nevada. Michelle was murdered on my birthday of 2-24. ( The case was re-opened a few months ago http://www.rgj.com/story/news/crime/...-case/2140206/ ). I got four degrees after this but checked in all the institutions I attended or visited to see what they had from the eyes of someone personally affected by violent or other crimes. I rarely found much of any real practical value and started writing everyone I could think of to help address this problem while also talking about the danger of putting advocates mental health at issue when you do not like the content of their ideas. I tried to get public health and other medical professionals involved after talking about this effort while a subject (613) at the University of California San Francisco Health Campus study on stress on the unemployed over 17 weeks in late 1992-1993 with interviewer Myra Young. I was basically kicked out of Law Librarianship starting the Summer of 1991 at the New Orleans Law Librarian convention for challenging powerful people about how instead of addressing the issue of this niche in practical information they attacking me personally by putting my credibility at issue when all you really needed to do is check their libraries' holdings to see I was being honest. I still see a problem with many libraries' holdings with respect to practical information for victims/survivors of crimes but with the Internet and Google and other search engines it is a lot easy now to just find this kind of information from your computer, cell phone, Facebook friends, etc.

some skipped over the COULD happen in sentence. For us that can adapter, do other jobs that we don't want to, and was not born with the silver spoon in our mouths some how found jobs to put roof over our heads. NObody said we didn't care. But, drugs and alcohol does play pretty big role in the problem. Not being able to adapt and mental problems also may play role. Now notice the words "may" and "could". Thanks for the scolding From someone that has worked since I was 14 years old and didn't have mommy and daddy to pay my way through college and beyond. When you have to you learn lots of skills or you drop off the face of the society.

I still think high risk involved IMO a lot goes on after midnight. MY point is what's the point so he said he done it and conversation at the party?

My problem had been that mistakes you make in whom you write and what you say on the Internet often stay there for what seems like decades. So, they closed a lot of doors to employment in many other areas.

In 2000, I tried volunteering in two Palm Harbor public libraries to get a foot in the door to public libraries, for instance, but a fight I had been involved with getting the Florida Victim Services Directory linked to libraries across FL made this door shut in 2004. I had trouble seeing eye-to-eye with the Director of one of these libraries who insisted they had a link when his reference librarians and I told him otherwise. My fight for the FL Victim Services Directory was state-wide back in 2000 through 2007 or so.

I was not about to just agree with this Director that there was a link to the Florida Victim Services Directory http://myfloridalegal.com/directory when anyone with a computer could see that there was not. Probably would have made mine and my parents' life a lot easier in Palm Harbor if I had just agreed with this Chairman of the Palm Harbor Board of Commerce back around then.

I did continue fighting for a link to the Florida Victim Services Directory from the Villages' area libraries when we moved to the Villages in 2005. Gary Corsair, a Villages Daily Sun reporter, wrote a short piece about my efforts with Villages' area libraries. The article is from Memorial Day weekend in May 2007.

I have managed to avoid being homeless but finding any kind of work has been very difficult mainly because of my Internet presence.

Thanks for posting the link.

Unfortunately many homeless suffer from mental illness. Have you read The Soloist or seen the movie? It is very enlightening. We have good friends who are well off financially and good parents of 4 children. One of the children has been homeless for years, not because of a lack of a support system. He drifts home occasionally and his parents have tried numerous ways to get him help. It breaks their heart and they worry constantly but he has made the choice and it seems not much can be done. A very sad situation.

I have seen a lot of movies and read books about mental illness. I had a nervous breakdown due to long term stress (and probably another matter but I have been trying to get that investigated by the ObamaCare people) in late March -April of 2000 and spent maybe a week in the hospital and then in a mental ward. I have tried to get the National Alliance on Mental Illness involved with my work as painting someone mentally ill often has the affect eventually of making them so. http://www.nami.org/

I know from reading your posts that you have suffered a lot of stress. I am glad you have wonderful parents to stand beside you through your difficult times. I follow NAMI on Facebook. It is a wonderful educational and support organization.

Thanks. I follow NAMI too on Facebook. Any group that aims to educate people about mental illness works against others who would use it as a weapon for manipulation by labeling people they want to discredit.

My guess is there are a lot more of us who have felt just how sinister this approach is. Some of these probably are in the ranks of the homeless. The problem is that the more you complain about it the more mentally ill you sound. That's what I did when in the mental health facility just took the pills and went with the flow after a kindly intern told me to shut up with the story I insisted was true. He said I would probably not get out of there unless I became just a good pill taking patient. Still there were suicide attempts who were released quicker than I was because they had the gift of gab. I never have had that talent. I did report what I had thought happened to me to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office down at their headquarters on September 17, 2002. The desk officer thought I was bonkers when I tried to explain what happened. I got out a letter from my US Representative, The Honorable Michael Bilirakis, from Palm Harbor and the desk officer then allowed me to talk to a Detective (Crandell). I then handed him several hundred documents about my fight for survivors/victims access to information. Mainly, I did this because I did not want the trigger they used to put me into a mental health facility used very easily ever again. Or, if it was, I would have something very well documented with the police. Detective Crandell said that they had mixed feelings about making victims/survivors of crimes more important players in the legal game which is what would happen if you give them access to information about the rights and services available to them.

The letter from the Honorable Michael Bilirakis was about a cybersmearer I picked up on Findlaw's message boards after I started posting documents about my fight for practical information accessible for survivors/victims of crimes. This was one extremely nasty cybersmearer. I have seldom found one more despicable than the one I had for about five years on Findlaw's message boards from roughly mid 2001 through 2006.

Regardless of the various causes for homelessness, we, as a nation, can never solve the problem. However, we, on a community level can. The only way to tackle a problem of this magnitude is from the bottom up, town by town.

There are too many reasons for being homeless. Just throwing money at this scourge has no better chance of success than trying to eradicate mosquitoes with a shotgun. Many homeless desperately do not want to be where they are. However, many homeless desperately fight to stay that way.

Mental illness, drugs, unemployment, bad luck are all mixed into the stew. If the stew has ingredients that do not belong, you can only fix it by separating all of the ingredients and starting anew.

We need to first extract from the mix all of the homeless that DO NOT WANT TO BE HOMELESS. Only then can we work to mitigate the rest and this cannot be done thousands of miles away in DC.

Absolutly correct.........:bigbow:

I am. Just saying that a lot of homeless persons is due to common ole laziness

Really? I think a lot of it is caused by hopelessness.

Problem is, people who are in real need of assistance don't know how to get it, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, people who are not truely deserving, know how to use the system.

If that's what you really think, you need to think harder.
I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of homelessness due to laziness is almost negligible.

My experience volunteering at a homeless shelter
 

In the suburbs of Chicago there is a network of homeless shelters run by suburban churches called Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS for short). I have volunteered for this program since the early 1990's at one of the shelters at a Lutheran church in Palatine (a northwest suburb of Chicago). The goal of PADS is to provide overnight shelter, dinner and breakfast from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. from October 1 through April 30. This prevents the homeless in the Chicago suburbs from freezing to death during the Chicago winters; especially last winter when Chicago had 82 inches of snow and record cold temperatures during January and February.

During my years as a PADS volunteer, I have encountered the mentally ill, people who abuse alcohol and other substances, women (and sometimes their children) leaving abusive relationships with no where else to go, and some who are simply down on their luck with no support system and little money to fall back on when a job is lost. Also, a surprising number of PADS guests hold minimum wage jobs (or jobs that pay slightly higher than minimum wage). Decent one bedroom apartments in the northwest suburbs of Chicago rent for $900 and up; two bedroom apartments start at $1,200 and up. I don't think someone making $9.00/hr. even working 40 hrs. a week can pay $900/month for rent; even splitting the rent with a roommate at $600 a month could be stretch for someone making $9.00 an hour.

Very few of the homeless I have encountered while volunteering would I classify as lazy or don't want to work. There have been so many times when I have finished my volunteer shift at PADS that I come back to my townhouse that needs updating, and I am so grateful that I have my own home, even if the carpeting needs replacing, and the bathroom needs updating. I have been so fortunate that since graduating from college in the early 1980's I have only been unemployed for a total of 3 weeks, and I have never had to apply for unemployment benefits. There but for the grace of God I am not homeless. Just my two cents.

https://www.facebook.com/hungryandhomeless

I hope more people will follow this man's journey of Facebook.

When I worked as a Urban Corps Intern while a University of Minnesota Law School student, there were some homeless people in Minneapolis who would come in from the cold of the winter or the heat of the summer. I was at the Minneapolis Public Library for about 9 months or so as an Urban Corps Intern.

There were allowed to use the library but we just had to wake them up every once in while.

Before one denigrates another person for their lot in life, one should do their homework or walk in that person's shoe. I read the book "Black Like Me" by John Griffin 50 years ago which impressed on me that valuable perspective. I still remember that lesson. I believe this person is doing that homework.

That does seem to be this man's reason to try this. Of course, he knows he can stop being homeless with a phone call and his journey only lasts 30 days or so but it is an attempt to walk in the shoes of people who are homeless who are looking for food, shelter, clothing, friendship, etc., in Orlando. He might be seen as an outsider to those who have been on the streets a long time who may have already staked out various territories. I expect even though life can be cut throat at the top and middle, it can be even more so near the bottom.