Rick, let's you and I head on over to some homeless shelters and shanty towns and "key-out" the percentage of people that we feel fit the physical depiction of Sir Lancelot - I mean "Adam the Homeless Man" - and see what we come up with. Or do you frequently see young white dudes (with all their teeth) with B.A.'s frequenting the homeless shelters & streetscapes?

I'm not classifying what he did as "cheating". I'm saying that he represents about a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the actual population living homeless (and I don't really want to give you even a fraction: hell, I'd say he doesn't represent a single one - but then there's a lot of stupid (nay, "confused") people out there).

How he went from A to B happened because he's young, white, & educated which for a homeless person rarely - and if we're just going by statistics - rarely makes.

Rick Reuben wrote:Don't just babble about how you don't like the guy. He is not meant to represent every homeless person.

No, just the college educated, job trained, privileged background, white, young, male, apparently well-socialized, illness-free, addiction-free, disability-free, mental problem-free ones. I suppose you could argue that his naivete is a mental handicap. Since there are so many of this type of homeless person crawling the streets of America's cities, I'm sure his example is especially relevant to them.

All of those descriptors apply to me although I suppose it depends on your definition of "privileged." Do you know how quickly I could get a job, save money, get on public assistance, get into an SRO and get my shit together if I hit the streets? Faster than this shithead. Fuck this twerp.

Rick Reuben wrote:
Go ahead. Tell us what special advantages he used to escape his particular situation.

1. Lack of a mental disorder.
2. Lack of stifling addiction.
3. Lack of several military tours in godforsaken country, where he felt every day he was going to be blown up, and/or anyone-be it woman or child or "friend" were going to frag him, and/or watching his true buddies get blown up right next to him.
4. Lack of severe behavorial abuse from parent/family member/family friend.
5. Lack of color.
6. And um... HAVING A FUCKING CREDIT CARD IN HIS POCKET.


Of course, any half intelligent person with a stable background can make it out of poverty, especially when you're thinking it's a social "experiment." When you ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING TO SLEEP AND EAT TODAY, it's a different scene.

The true travesty here is that this complete crock of shit story is even remotely considered debatable.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Sourmilk wrote: has the advantage of being a young, white male with a college degree

Point out how he cheated to go from $25 and the shelter to a job, truck and an apartment. Don't just babble about how you don't like the guy. He is not meant to represent every homeless person. How could he? His story illustrates one particular scenario: if you go broke and land in a shelter, it's possible to get back out if you work at it.

I've basically only lurked here, but whatever. I couldn't let this stand.

The crucial point is not that the guy "cheated" at his asinine "experiment." The point is that the experiment isn't reflective of the challenges faced by the homeless.

Here's an abstract of a very interesting <em>New Yorker</em> about different approaches to the problem of homelessness: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/0 ... 213fa_fact. Alas, the full article isn't there but if you can find it at a library or elsewhere, one of the important points is that healthy, stable, non-addicted people like the guy in the experiment are typically only homeless for a short period of time because they got knocked on their ass by a job loss/spouse leaving/sudden drop in funds. And they do exactly what that guy did, use the available services and get back on their feet — often within a week.

The problem we think of as chronic homelessness, on the other hand, is almost exclusively composed of populations of severely addicted, sick or mentally ill people, for whom job-finding services et al. aren't very effective.

So the guy proved healthy people can get out of homelessness relatively easily? Awesome but meaningless.

what was he wearing on his first day of homelessness? A fucking Armani Exchange polo and some dockers?

Did he smell of B.O. and piss like some of the dudes at the shelter I helped run for two years?

how did he go about getting an apartment? Did they have to do a background check? did they accept two months rent in cash? Did he get a bank account? How did he go about getting one?

It's a little unnerving the way a few of you are painting the homeless, as if saying "lack of this", or "addiction" is going to accurately represent the vast majority of the homeless.

As if "white privilege" prevents whites from being in a similar situation.

Yeah I was gonna say, most homeless people are homeless because of chronic behavior, mental or drug problems that they can't afford to get help for.

A completely sane, sober person renting an apartment or buying a car?
It's a miracle!

Completely sane, sober people very rarely find themselves exiled from their friends and family, the support system that allows most people to never be homeless.

There are programs and ways out, yes, but navigating those programs when you are schizophrenic?

The experiment would have only made sense if the dude dropped acid everyday while trying to get out of homelessness.

someone should kidnap him, get him hooked on H, give him $25 bucks and see if he can do it again.

Skronk wrote:It's a little unnerving the way a few of you are painting the homeless, as if saying "lack of this", or "addiction" is going to accurately represent the vast majority of the homeless.

It represents the vast majority of the homeless we see on a regular basis. Most of the homeless are homeless so briefly you don't even notice. Or they're too busy going to the job that doesn't pay them enough to rent an apartment.

Well, he seems to have learnt something useful:

Do you need a college education? I don't think so. To be honest with you, I think I was disadvantaged, because my thinking was inside of a box.

Punchable, much?