If you are homeless and relatively footloose and fancy free, this may be a good opportunity to pack everything you plan to take with you and go elsewhere.
Pro tip: Don't leave a bunch of stuff in a storage unit with fantasies you will come back for it. Sell or ditch everything you don't plan to take with you and travel light.
Things I wrote elsewhere about picking someplace to go: If you are able-bodied and wanting to start over under circumstances where you imagine you will need to sleep rough at first, you could consider going to Port Aransas, Texas, where you can sleep on the beach for up to three nights for free. When I was there, I was told the ferry that runs 24/7 was always looking to hire people.
Although housing in Port Aransas was not cheap, the nearest city on the mainland is Aransas Pass. It should have cheaper housing. Corpus Christi is about 30 minutes away by car, if I recall correctly. Big cities tend to be where the jobs are.
If you aren't able-bodied and planning to immediately get a job, Port Aransas may be a terrible place to be homeless. It's a really little town. No, they can't afford to support a large number of indigent individuals.
A lot of people seem to travel to California while homeless, in part because it has very homeless-friendly weather. Going to California because the weather is homeless-friendly is probably a little like that saying about "No one plans to fail, they just fail to plan."
No one plans to be long term homeless, but going someplace that is very homeless friendly with very high housing costs seems like a good recipe for ending up stuck on the street. It can amount to planning to be homeless without realizing it.
I did go to California myself when I was fairly newly homeless. Most of the time that I spent on the street was in California.
I've written about this previously. In a nutshell, I didn't go to San Diego in order to "be homeless" there.
I didn't go figuring California was "homeless friendly." Instead, I went there while homeless because I have a serious medical condition and exposure to the ocean is known to help it. I also had lived all over the US as a military wife, so I knew from firsthand experience that my health problems were more manageable on the West Coast.
I ultimately left California to get myself back in housing, which is part of why I have come to believe that going to California can be a recipe for long-term homelessness. I could not figure out how to get back into housing while in California. I left the state and was back in housing three days later.
My health issues are the primary reason I have financial problems. If I were able-bodied, I would be firmly middle class. So I went to California to get my health back so I would be capable of working more and that was successful.
I'm not middle class yet, but I am more able to work and my income is gradually going up. That's part of how I got back into housing.
If you want to get your life back, you need to pick a place to go for better reasons than "It is homeless-friendly." If that is your only criteria, the outcome may well be that you remain stuck on the street for a long time.
Last Updated September 23, 2019
Pro tip: Don't leave a bunch of stuff in a storage unit with fantasies you will come back for it. Sell or ditch everything you don't plan to take with you and travel light.
Things I wrote elsewhere about picking someplace to go: If you are able-bodied and wanting to start over under circumstances where you imagine you will need to sleep rough at first, you could consider going to Port Aransas, Texas, where you can sleep on the beach for up to three nights for free. When I was there, I was told the ferry that runs 24/7 was always looking to hire people.
Although housing in Port Aransas was not cheap, the nearest city on the mainland is Aransas Pass. It should have cheaper housing. Corpus Christi is about 30 minutes away by car, if I recall correctly. Big cities tend to be where the jobs are.
If you aren't able-bodied and planning to immediately get a job, Port Aransas may be a terrible place to be homeless. It's a really little town. No, they can't afford to support a large number of indigent individuals.
A lot of people seem to travel to California while homeless, in part because it has very homeless-friendly weather. Going to California because the weather is homeless-friendly is probably a little like that saying about "No one plans to fail, they just fail to plan."
No one plans to be long term homeless, but going someplace that is very homeless friendly with very high housing costs seems like a good recipe for ending up stuck on the street. It can amount to planning to be homeless without realizing it.
I did go to California myself when I was fairly newly homeless. Most of the time that I spent on the street was in California.
I've written about this previously. In a nutshell, I didn't go to San Diego in order to "be homeless" there.
I didn't go figuring California was "homeless friendly." Instead, I went there while homeless because I have a serious medical condition and exposure to the ocean is known to help it. I also had lived all over the US as a military wife, so I knew from firsthand experience that my health problems were more manageable on the West Coast.
I ultimately left California to get myself back in housing, which is part of why I have come to believe that going to California can be a recipe for long-term homelessness. I could not figure out how to get back into housing while in California. I left the state and was back in housing three days later.
My health issues are the primary reason I have financial problems. If I were able-bodied, I would be firmly middle class. So I went to California to get my health back so I would be capable of working more and that was successful.
I'm not middle class yet, but I am more able to work and my income is gradually going up. That's part of how I got back into housing.
If you want to get your life back, you need to pick a place to go for better reasons than "It is homeless-friendly." If that is your only criteria, the outcome may well be that you remain stuck on the street for a long time.
Last Updated September 23, 2019