The Homeless Guy

I ran across an interesting blog today written by a homeless guy, called (interestingly) The Homeless Guy. He has been blogging for more than four years, but he recently attracted enough attention to make it to the front page on Digg (apparently driven by this Wired story). His blog will frustrate you if you look for him to explain his homelessness in a quick easy way, or offer a solution to homelessness, but he will give you some insight into the world of the homeless.

He has a PayPal link on his site to accept donations, and he says that he tried Google Ads and they didn’t work (”Click here to learn how you can be homeless!”)?
Is he for real? Salon did a story about him in October, 2002. And he isn’t alone. A search on “homeless blogger” reveals several other such people including a woman profiled by NPR in January, 2004.
So why is a guy who has attracted national attention at least twice, and who is obviously intelligent and literate, perpetually homeless? Let’s just say there are reasons why it is difficult to pull people out of homelessness.

Read a few posts on his blog, and you’ll see homelessness, charity efforts, inner-city renewal and many other things from a new perspective.

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June 22, 2006 · Filed Under Culture, Web

Comments

One Response to “The Homeless Guy”

  1. bartlmay on June 22nd, 2006 11:41 pm

    Been there, done that. I agree with what he has to say. I too have had periods of homelessness. Definately not something that I cherish and want to ever relive.

    I have personally observed panhandlers that do so with deceiption. They wear grundgy dirty clothes to their “job” where they manage to “earn” well over $1000 a day. Then go home shower and dress up to spend the night on the town using the tax free money that obtained that day. I’m not going to say that all panhandlers do so with deceipt but I have a hard time giving what little I do have to panhandlers.

    Having personally spent time in homelessness I speak from my unique point of view. I did not want a hand out. I wanted a leg up. I did not want a infusion of cash, although that did help in the short term. What I really wanted was employment. I may restart a blog of my own to express my full experiences in homelessness.

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