Where's the best place to be homeless?
I haven't ever been homeless. I wouldn't like to be - I guess it goes without saying that it's better to have a home than to be homeless - but it's something I'm interested in. If you were homeless but could be so anywhere in the world where would you choose?
Homeless people where I live (north west of England) generally seem very anxious, miserable and altogether wretched people. They have no obvious posessions and they tend to sit next to ATM machines asking people that use them for spare change. They are usually ignored or avoided by members of the public. Some make a little money selling a magazine called The Big Issue.
This is in contrast to the homelessness I saw on holiday in California last year. Homeless people there seemed to have a much better life. They often had large bags and packs full of posessions and a lot that I saw had shopping trolleys filled with stuff. One guy I saw near Santa Monica Pier was asleep under the shade of a tree. He looked pretty well-fed and it's a cliche but he looked like he didn't have a care in the world! Someone in San Francisco told me that in that city there are people who are homeless because it's a lifestyle choice they made.
Based on that I would much rather be homeless in Southern California than in Manchester, England. I think if I was homeless somewhere in America I'd try to make my way there - or Florida or Texas - just for the sake of not being cold in the winter.
I'm also interested in homelessness in bygone times. Reading books like Down and Out in Paris and London (George Orwell) and The Autobiography of a Super-tramp (William Henry Davies) - first hand accounts of homelessness in the early 20th Century - makes me think that being homeless was more pleasant eighty to a hundred years ago than it is now.
Where's the best place to be homeless? Has anyone had experience of being homeless? If so, where, when and for how long? How realistic is the notion of gradually relocating hundreds of miles to somewhere warmer?
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