Choosing Streets Over Shelter

Published December 10, 2008 @ 08:51PM PT

Life can be dangerous for people without homes. Without a roof or doors to lock, homeless people are often at the mercy of the streets, its people, and its elements.

In recent months, several homeless people have been victimized by senseless and brutal acts of violence, targeted simply because they call the streets "home." In fact, streets have become so dangerous that there is a strong push for federal hate crime protection for homeless people.

Despite the dangers, many homeless people choose to stay on the streets rather than in a shelter. Communities like Portland, Oregon to Athens, Georgia, are seeing tent cities pop up at alarming rates.

But why would anyone want to choose to live this way? Today's Sacramento Bee provides a glimpse into one homeless man's rationale for choosing to live with an "army of homeless" on the streets instead of in a homeless shelter:

Despite the perils of the streets and the bracing cold of winter, he did not plan to seek indoor shelter.

"It can be very dangerous out here," said Totten, an angry scar scissoring down from his left eyebrow. "I thought about buying a pistol to protect everyone. But then I got worried about it getting into the wrong hands."

Still, he insisted, braving the mean streets is better most nights than sleeping at the winter haven at Cal Expo, or any shelter for that matter.

Totten and other diehards prefer living outdoors, they say, where no one forces religion upon them or monitors their eating, drinking and sleeping habits. They dote on their pets, pick up cans and bottles and recycle for extra income, and gather wood to create campfires for warmth and cooking.

It seems the appeal of living in a tent city has a lot to do with the independence they can maintain and the sense of community. One homeless woman interviewed in the article said it best: "We don't want that much. Just a piece of land and our freedom. Is it too much to ask?"

Photo from the Sacramento Bee: "Tony Sims, 51, shakes out his blanket last month at the Bannon Street homeless camp, where he had been living August. Bannon Street, and a site near the Blue Diamond almond factory, are two of the area's largest camps, despite regular police sweeps. A day after this photo was taken, police moved the homeless out."

Share this Post

Comments (7)

To many privileged "Christian" individuals, homeless persons are not unlike Hindus from the "untouchables" lowest caste. Their visibility is simply blurry blight.

Like all minorities they dislike, these Right Wing paragons of virtue dismiss their plight as their "choice" because they offer so many of them alternatives where they can retain their own self worth and sense of human dignity.

Of course, many of these "shelters" have rules that only RW paragons would consider necessary in order to dispense mercy.
You simply leave your human dignity outside and enter with fear and repentance. You will get a high carb low protein diet and more fire and brimstone than you can use even on the coldest winter night.

Granted, the Ronnie Raygun state gubernatorial and national presidential era emptied true institutions of compassion and care for " socialization and normalization" in CBG's at lowest cost. Who cares if they do not receive their psychotropic drugs!!! The mind will perceive many behaviors as "choice" when you are challenged.

Posted by A B on 12/11/2008 @ 11:01AM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
Reply to thread
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by A
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply
Visualize free green emergency public housing in the form of a community of class A fire resistive plastered straw bale passive solar cabins, with a central public restroom and shower facility. People in need would be given a key to one, no rules but to obey the law and work so many hours at the community garden and greenhouse per week. Visualize a government of people who tell the elite who created the policies that created our troubles with the environment, energy and the economy, "No More!" Visualize Justice, Visualize Peace, Visualize a brilliant green landscape of loving village settlements dotted all across the land. Visualize a people living there using micro and community scale technologies for growing their own food, making their own liquid and gaseous fuels, recycling all material and nutrient flows, educating their children with truth, creating the most amazing and beautiful arts and crafts and living in balance. Visualize governance that concerns itself primarily with coordinating efforts and information among the settlements, where war is only in history.

Posted by Howard Switzer on 12/11/2008 @ 11:21AM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
Sounds like you are talking about communes and co-ops, living off the land in the 60s and 70s. It was a wonderful time and way of life depending on which one, one got involved in, had to be careful then, too. Utopia, does it really exist somewhere? Or is it simply a state of mind that causes one to rise above their circumstance?

Posted by SusanE Tisdale on 01/31/2009 @ 12:34PM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Like
Reply to thread
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by Howard
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply
If every democrat with an extra bedroom would extend their home to one homeless person or family, we could eliminate homelessness tomorrow.

This won't just give a homeless person a place to sleep, but it gives him or her a family and new friends that can help the homeless person make the changes in their lives that will change the world.

Posted by Grant Robinson on 12/11/2008 @ 12:39PM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by Grant
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply
Hello I'm at school and I'm going to work soon,while I have time to chat with you I want to say like I did last night the rich folks need to help out in our country they need to pay that tax like I said the Graduated Corporate Income Tax then we all can make it out here if not homelessness will continue and gradually get worse than ever and the economy will sink into a great depression and than what, there maybe have to be bloodshed to stop this greediness for money and these folks will not step foward to help the poor. It is our birthright to have a home.

Posted by mary august on 12/11/2008 @ 02:25PM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by mary
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply
A lot of people camping out here in Seattle. The mats in the shelters are too close together. Really tight and crowded. A lot of people can't hack that. Been there done that. King County Vets helped me out with rent. Sometimes it is only a matter of a few hundred bucks to stay off the street. Might have to see King County Vets this month.

Posted by antmanbee jim on 12/11/2008 @ 06:18PM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by antmanbee
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply
Here are my reasons for choosing to remain "outdoors" rather than go to the shelters (which I initially tried):
1. Shelters usually require that you enter early in the eve and then remain there until early the next morn when you must leave. This can totally waste HOURs of otherwise possibly productive time, just sitting around in unpleasant to worse circumstances -- and a time when EVERY resource, including time, must be marshalled.
2. The shelters I've been to are designed to try to keep alcoholics, drug addicts and criminals from being able to do those things. I don't do those things, so the preventative measures simply needlessly and oppressively impose upon my own adult freedoms. Like going around the corner for a coffee in a cafe and looking for work or some other way to earn money using the wifi.
3. Literally "imprisonment" with some of the worst people. This is a lousy way to spend evenings and is COUNTERproductive. Or worse.
4. Property Impracticalities - I have a bicycle with a trailer attached. This is a GOOD solution to having to constantly carry around one's belongings. It's a LOT more useful, and less "unattractive" than the stereotypical shopping cart, etc. However, shelters typically do NOT offer any kind of secure options for one's belongings, usually severely limiting how much one can even carry in. This forces people to a ridiculous minimum of belongings... one of the factors that actually contributes to perpetuating a person's homeless predicament.
Also, you DON'T want other people at shelters to see what you DO own and have. There are many thieves that will then know what you're carrying around with you, many of whom you WILL run across later... at night, alone, etc.
5. The "solution" IS the "problem" - Shelters are often euphemized as "emergency shelter"... but the emergency is that you have nowhere else to just be and operate, so being AT a "shelter" is the emergency. And being in that predicament, even with the "help" of merely having a lousy place to sleep indoors, a disgusting bathroom and a gesture of a "meal" - AT BEST - just perpetuates your true problem.
While "outdoors" you can spend up until midnight or so at comfortable cafe's, with options to interact with intelligent and, possibly, helpful people. You can work on things that may actually afford a chance to get out of the jam. Use wifi. Etc.
The "price" is that of some modest purchases, but then also having to find a place to sleep outdoors. This is becoming harder and harder to do, as cities virtually outlaw being homeless like that.

Posted by SlumJack Homeless on 06/02/2009 @ 11:50AM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- 1 person likes this comment. Like
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by SlumJack
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Shannon has worked in homeless shelters and service organizations in San Francisco, the Triangle region of North Carolina, and currently in the greater Boston area. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.