A Voice for the Houseless: Society Today….
Raelee Childers, houseless and with a substance abuse problem, is writing a sometimes column for us. She says she hopes to open the hearts and minds of those that are so quick to judge a book by its cover. Comments will be monitored for civility towards the author as well as other commenters.
Disagreements are fine. Personal attacks are not.
Well, well, well. Look at the world, all happy and joyous today. Supposed to be Christmas holidays and all that jazz. But let me tell you, for folks like me and others in my shoes, today ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. Nope, it’s just another day in the calendar. No real family to call my own, no true friends to lean on. And let’s not forget about the majority of society, where do they leave us, the homeless? Ignored, forgotten, isolated. It’s like we’re invisible, like we don’t belong anywhere.
If I lived like most of you, I’d probably end up hating myself and the person it turned me into. Seriously, you have no idea what it’s like to be constantly belittled, looked down upon, and treated as if I’m not even a real person just because I don’t conform to society’s expectations. Trust me, until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, experienced the pain I’ve endured, and shed the tears I’ve cried, you have no right to pass judgment on me.
Today’s society is seriously messed up, I mean, it’s like a never-ending episode of Judge Judy. And you know what? That’s why I’m totally cool with being homeless. Yeah, you heard me right. I’ve seen firsthand how heartless, cruel, and judgmental people have become. It’s like they’ve all taken a masterclass in selfishness. But you know what? It’s actually made me a better person. How, you ask? Well, let me break it down for you.
Living on the streets has taught me the value of acceptance. I’ve learned to see people for who they truly are, without any preconceived notions or judgments. And let me tell you, it’s a refreshing change from the constant scrutiny of “normal” society.
I’ve also discovered that happiness doesn’t come from material possessions or fancy luxuries. Nope, it’s the little things that matter. The things that most people take for granted, like a warm meal or a friendly smile, I’ve learned to appreciate them like never before.
But here’s the real kicker: being homeless has taught me how to make the most out of life. I’ve come to realize that this is my fate, whether I like it or not. And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’ve embraced my circumstances and found a sense of peace within myself. It’s like I’ve unlocked this hidden resilience and strength that I never knew I had.
So yeah, society may be messed up, but it’s made me a better person. And honestly, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
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Thanks for your perspective. I have always questioned why everyone just assumes that the homeless need to be taken under our wing and coddled. I have never lived that life but I think a lot of the homeless, bums, addicts etc. are happy with being who they are.
Well honestly I can’t always speak for everyone but for myself at least I feel that this is what I’m suppose to be doing in life, speaking up for some of us out here. Making a difference in this world.
Being a “substance abuser” is your job? What you are “supposed to be doing in life”?
I would truly be interested in hearing you explain that. I doubt I am the only one
What I meant by that was speaking up for everybody else that is homeless writing this column that’s what I meant by this is what I’m supposed to be doing
While you are anathema, I consider your fully developed rationalization regarding your situation to be remarkable…
I hope someone gives you everything you desire, which appears to be nothing at all, in the coming solar cycle…
“Entitled Home-lessism”, is my new way of thinking about you…
Be safe, be well…
Wow, thanks for the colorful message! I must say, your use of big words really adds a certain je ne sais quoi to your insults. It’s almost impressive how you managed to string together so many insults in one comment Bravo! But hey, I’m glad you find my rationalization remarkable. I mean, who needs material possessions when you can have a fully developed rationalization, right? It’s like the latest trend in self-fulfillment. Move over, minimalism, entitled home-lessism is the new way to go! In all seriousness though, I’m sorry if my situation doesn’t align with your expectations. But hey, we all have different paths in life, right? And who knows, maybe one day I’ll find everything I desire, even if it appears to be nothing at all to you.
A homeless person, sitting there with a smartphone, and likely, an income, year in and out, complaining about “society”, while appearing to be unconcerned and not-uncomfortable, seems over-the-line to crazyland…
You are not uneducated, you have had some privilege, and clearly, you are not stupid, just living in a stupid manner… In my opinion, you could have an ordinary life with all the accoutrement, but choose to continue to complain and maintain…
At least you are not here to announce your “Go-Fund-Me”…
Excelsior, and there’s housing going in, all over the place, if you care to look, in Colusa, Clear Lake, Williams, and elsewhere, so if you wanted housing, now is the time to move… Meanwhile, flip your middle finger at “Society” and remember:
The homeless are fewer than half of one percent of the current population of California, but the expenditure of resources towards services and support from all the other people in “society”, has never been greater, and many wealthy folks are planning to profit, Trump-like, from government programs to house folks in fine new subsidized and section 8 housing…
Be of good cheer, Raelee, for the “many” are already paying for “the few”…
I’m sorry you said income as if I have no income what-so ever all I get is my food stamps. You think I’ve been privileged, how when I’ve never been to college nor do I have a high school diploma. And when have I complained. The only thing that I have complained about is how people in this world can be which is judgmental,cruel, and abusive of something that is not normal to them or something that they don’t understand.
There are 2 janitor jobs at southern humboldt schools available, paying $19 an hour foe a 40 hour week. I doubt they require much college. We (commenters) are amused by your ability to justify your poor poor pitiful self
How do you know that this person can physically or mentally work even a part time job? I am disabled and struggle daily with keeping a roof over my head.
Food stamps and whatever else you can grift…
Income is income, but even a retired person pays taxes…
I have a rental house that’s empty after 118 months of continuous occupancy, but the “renters” who have applied are inspiring no confidence… And all the “flippers” want to buy my rental!!
Sorry, it’s part of my “income”, but you will need to be qualified and I can “discriminate” at will…
You can apply for General Assistance and Medicare, and you should apply for SDI, since you are an admitted “drug addict”, which is a disease, not simply a crime…
Get down to an AA or NA meeting, starting just about now, and access any State or Federal program you can apply for, get on the list for new housing in Ukiah, Clear Lake, Lakeport and many, many other locations…
If you half wanted to recover, you probably could, but then you would have to work, instead of complaining about how you “lack” things…
If you choose what you have, then you will certainly get it!
Can you please ask your fellow homeless mates to please quit trashing areas. At least show a little respect for the area your camping in.
In which areas and I can at least try to talk to a few of them
Well, check out the mess at the 7th st over crossing Arcata. Almost any green area where they camp county wide.
It never ceases to amaze me the amount of junk some can collect.
If I was homeless I would want less to haul around not more.
I wish I could help in Arcata area but unfortunately I live behind the Bayshore Mall. And I agree with you about the trash. It can be absolutely disgusting in my opinion. And I have helped EPD a few times by cleaning up old encampments where people have left a huge mess.
Thanks. I have nothing against those that choose a nomadic lifestyle. But respect the area.
I have met a lot of good people like yourself.
Here is an example of what is happening here locally.
Sorry it’s upside down had to downsize it.
The homeless are not invisible. They used to be. But now they occupy a lot of public resources and public attention. It’s just the resources don’t make much of a difference in the end.
What would be interesting is what you think makes your situation different from the people who do keep themselves housed.
Homelessness has a bad rap for so many reasons. Some are legitimate. The biggest reason I have issues with the homeless is that I spent 15 years working for them. In that time I learned the majority do not wish to contribute to providing their own needs. They have a sense of entitlement. The only goal they have is to get on public assistance. I’m not against public assistance as a stop gap between employment, but the homeless as well as a huge percentage of non homeless welfare recipients have made it a lifestyle with no desire to provide for themselves. In 15 years I had thousands of clients and only 2 had a desire to be self sufficient. Both succeeded. The other thousands were only interested in that government money.
Add to that the drug abuse, violent crime and the trashing of every place they camp, and the result is that I no longer have the ability to sympathize. I know there are likely the 2 in several thousand who are just in a bad situation and want something better. For the rest, public funds need to completely go away, as it is doing nothing but enable bad behavior.
It’s not that people don’t want to be self sufficient, because believe me a lot of them do but it’s just that they can’t. Either due to a medical reason, physical or mental. Some believe that they can’t be self sufficient because they’ve been told that they can’t.
You are so articulate and obviously you know the territory.
I keep hearing that help is available for those who want it, but the obstacle is that the red tape process to receive the help is unfathomable and overwhelming to people who are just struggling to survive every day.
Can you help others with that beurocracy? Even if you don’t want help yourself, I bet you’d be great at helping others get it.
Your loss of empathy is sad. I am sorry for it and for you, for losing it. I try to look at each person as someone’s infant, originally, and realize that I cannot begin to know what happened before or after birth to lead them to their present state. As for the messes, I too find them abhorrent, BUT, if you actually weigh the open messes of the homeless with the hidden messes of the rest of us, in terms of overall environmental impact, well, perhaps they actually are having FAR LESS impact on the world than we who are housed. Just a thought.
Absolutely Claire! If we didn’t have access to infrastructure to haul away our daily trash, and our urine&feces, it’s hard to imagine the sorts of messes we’d pile up all around us. While our personal wastes may be treated, and trash hauled off and dumped somewhere out of sight, it’s not like we don’t make huge messes, and that they have no further impacts on the environment when out of sight&mind.
That’s not even mentioning all the wastes we offload into our common air&waterways, with our demands to have goods barged, ferried, and trucked to our doorsteps.
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Let’s keep up our feeble excuses to despise the poorest amongst us to avoid dealing with our own far greater pollution of mind&body.
I agree with Alf about one thing. Conversations with homeless get very, very old with repetitions. In the decades I did it, I only met one man who volunteered that he had screwed up his own life. Otherwise it is always about how someone did them wrong, treated them unfairly or ripped them off. Meteors always fell out of a clear sky and hit them and only them. If the economy was bad, that’s why they couldn’t get a job.
If the economy was good, some other explanation was offered. I often wonder how traffic ever got through on those one days when there was a requirement to show up in person for something with all the cars that broke down so they couldn’t get in I heard about. Unless of course money was on offer. Then cars never caused trouble and neighbors were alwas willing to bring them. A real mystery of world shaking proportions.
Now a lot of people in that situation chronically are there because they lack the capability to see clearly what causes it or is unwilling to make that small effort which could make huge improvements. So I never got to the point of hating. I did learn, even while listening, not to believe their interpretations or assessments. Only a very few are really that unlucky. Mostly it’s a matter of choosing poorly at every point because they can’t (and yes won’t) make better choices. So why is there this idea to take their word for what is needed if the goal would be to help them? That they have a history of failing to solve ? To offer sympathy? And keep calling it “empathy” when it really just polite small talk? The bottom line was that they needed help they were unable to see they needed and frequently did their best to frustrate. You worked to get what helps in real terms without the song and dance.
I haven’t lost empathy for those who are the 2 mentioned above. Sympathy is what I lost for the rest. It’s impossible to have empathy for those you cannot relate to or understand. I have never felt like I could just give up and get entitlements, so there’s nothing to relate to for empathy. However, I have had tough times and have clawed my way forward anyway. That’s the reason I have no sympathy for those who choose to just give up and live on entitlements. It’s a total system of mooching everything off of others, which I find morally reprehensible.
Alf or Raelee (or someone else) – How much public money is available for a homeless adult with no children? How do things work?
General Relief is not very much. In Humboldt it’s supposed to be a loan. Sometimes it gets repaid when SSI is authorized. Having been out of the business for over half a decade I have no idea if it went up, but maximum grant used to be $303 a month. The problem is that the administrative costs, which are not a loan are huge. Then, SSI can be for the rest of their life. I have heard it’s much harder to qualify for SSI now, but it’s based on medical records. It used to be easy to get a doctor to provide fake medical conditions in Humboldt. I fought against this fraud constantly, yet administration told me I had to stop trying to be fraud prevention and just work with what I was provided by the client. Thus, we had active fraud by medical providers that was supported by totally corrupt administration.
SSI is there for people over 65 with no other qualifier. $1185 a month.
SSI is also for anyone who can provide medical documentation of disability whether or not they ever worked. There is social security retirement that requires 40 quarters of work to qualify. Anyone who doesn’t qualify gets SSI, the Federal welfare program.
I don’t know the only public assistance I get from anything is my food stamps I don’t get no SSI or nothing like that.
Hey Raelee, appreciate your articles. Happy to help with any supplies you might need this winter, send me an email [email protected]
So, you are an enabler.
How sad.
Bet you get off on your false sense of virtue …
Just so you know, Federal regulations only allow adults with no verifiable disability 3 months of food stamps every 3 years unless they fulfill a work requirement. This is called the Able Bodied Adult Without Dependents rule (ABAWD). California decided it didn’t like this rule so have been using California tax dollars to pay for the remaining 33 of 36 months. This means anyone that doesn’t meet the requirement is a serious extra burden to taxpayers. It’s time this regulation get back in place. That way, actual taking responsibility for yourself would be a prerequisite to receive assistance.
You are excused from the ABAWD work requirement and time limit if you are any one of these things:
Unable to work due to a physical or mental limitation;
Pregnant;
Have someone under 18 in your SNAP household;
Excused from the general work requirements (see above);
A veteran;
Experiencing homelessness;
Age 24 or younger and in foster care on your 18th birthday.
And this is the website I have gotten this information from https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/work-requirements
You basically said in your letter that you are cool with being homeless. Is that so you think you fulfill an exemption to get food stamps? The reality is, you have made a conscious choice to be homeless, not work and collect food stamps. There is no moral justification for choosing to live off of other people’s hard work. Think about that for a while. You say we judge the homeless unjustly. However, living off of any government program is, in a way, stealing form others. If you are unwilling to at least try to make your own way and earn your own living expenses than how can you say those who are actually working hard to make a good life for themselves are in the wrong resenting those who refuse to do so? This is exactly why I could no longer conscientiously work at social services. The vast majority are looking for an excuse not to do anything for themselves. It’s a truly sad picture of humanity at it’s worst.
You know what I’ve applied for job after job after job trying to get one so don’t tell me that I haven’t tried to get myself out into a different situation you don’t know the struggles that I have been through in my life or how hard it truly can be out here.
You can’t really tell from looking what income a homeless person has. I have know some who got VA benefits or even trust fund income of thousands a month but either burn through it in days, had others take it from them or simply ignored it. Most do not have such resources. There are time limits to most welfare if children are not in custody or permanent disability is not established.
There was a period a couple of decades ago where some local judge ruled that general relief had to be high enough to pay for some basic needs. It lead a huge influx coming to Humboldt and was abandoned in about a year.
Raelee, Thank You for sharing your personal journey thus far. My experiences, Very Diverse comes with age and the choices I have made. This factor alone has allowed for an incredible journey. And my dear, you are not alone, Holidays suck big time for many. As you know, you can have a billion dollar home and feel the same way. Many, myself included, do not have that support system around them. Positive side, no dishes to wash ! I finally realized that not everyone has to like me. Acceptance of that fact without resentment, frustration or feeling victimized is incredibly freeing. That rainbow is not owned by anyone. Universally we all get to enjoy its beauty. Judging others ! Please, you know as well as I this has gone on forever. Wrong shoes to a high end dinner, to gangs etc. … hell, we need Judge Judy 🙂 & by the way, homelessness is not your “fate” whether you like it or not ! It’s part of your journey in your personal, diverse, life experiences. As you should know nothing ever stays the same. Know that. Not many reading your article have a clue what it is to live without shelter. Your voice is needed, first for yourself then guess what ? It will have an impact (including negative comments, welcome to our challenging members of society), for others. It did for me. You are needed and wanted … hell I had to go back in your article to spell “whether” correctly.From the Heart, LynHomeless X2Community Service Award Sonoma County for the first homeless shelterRetired Licensed Vocational NurseRetired Registered Dental AssistantRetired Certified Domestic Violence Counselor
“If I lived like most of you, I’d probably end up hating myself and the person it turned me into.”
Who are you referring to? People who read local news pages?
It sounds like you are sick of being judged. So let’s not judge each other.
No I’m referring to the stuck up snobby judgmental people in society
Hello, Raelee,
I do not feel it is necessary for everyone to live in a house, an apartment. You may not have a house, but you are sheltered. This is the primary thing. I do have concerns, as others have mentioned, about the impact of people who live on our public lands without proper facilities. I work with a group of people who do monthly work days behind the Bayshore Mall. Some of the campsites there are tidy, many are not. Many of the people are civil, some are not. I have a question for you. If you were offered a place where you could legally camp, with sanitary facilities provided, but probably lacking some of the privacy you now have, would you accept it? The bonus is that you would not have to be concerned about the police coming in and removing your belongings. And you would have fresh water. I do not have this to offer you, but it is something I would be willing to put time into if I thought enough “houseless” people were interested. I think you have the right to be safe and free from harassment, and I also think those of us who value our trails, our natural areas, have the right to enjoy them without fear.
What is it that you want society to give you?
There is a stigma against homelessness because the obviously homeless tend to be obvious for all the wrong reasons. Same with the stigma against drug abuse, the obvious cases are obvious because of the harm they cause to innocent bystanders.
We all choose our path through life, and there are always people who will judge us for those choices without knowing us.
The one thing a society which both breeds and feeds off a steady stream of angst, anger, and free-floating anxiety cannot stand is non-participation. Aggressive and competitive to the core- beginning as all things within the individual- acceptance calls the entire game into question. Many won’t look within till death bed bound and finally free of all the exciting distractions wealth affords. Though poverty can be suffocating/ oppressive in its own way, it seems more often to softening the heart. Bless yours.
Compassion is Queen, Kindness is King.
Acceptance is Godliness.
I do not agree with the statement that poverty softens the heart, violence and crime is more prevalent in low income neighborhoods. Just because people work does not mean they are participating in the game, things have to get done, if everyone sat around doing nothing all day, how would society function, we would all be sitting on the ground eating dirt. I know hippies are anti work, and think everyone that works is brainwashed, but hippies always have a hand out asking for money, it is unrealistic that society could function on vegetables alone. Spend one week just eating vegetables, no grains or proteins, or fats, just vegetables, and tell me how much energy you have.
Violence and crime are not human nature, they are the byproducts of this so-called functioning society. Dog eat dog eat dog. I’m vegetarian.
You’re right though, hippies like Gates and Bozos and Buffett and Musk are always looking for more. You should see all the messages I get from Nancy Pelosi- I mean she really needs $15!
I don’t see where I said “do nothing”. Though true there is nothing more challenging than sitting with eyes closed in silent stillness, as all the bullshit we are buried in from birth becomes both evident and abusive.
Even still, when the other 90% of reality is factored in: It’s all perfect. You are perfect, even if presently a bit buried..
A judge Judy show?? “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not true,” Judge Judy.
Your opening paragraph which highlights the reality of the isolation, pervasive losses and the resentment at other’s joy or accomplishment that is associated with substance abuse in no way aligns with your closing claims of having feelings of pride in having been transformed to a better person. Cmon.
Real truth: Addicts have three possible outcomes: Institutionalization, Recovery, or DEATH.
Here’s to everyone who is struggling with (or drowning in) substance abuse choosing recovery! And in turn eventually reunifying with your family, your health, your passions and career and a stable life in an abundant future of possibility!
looking back at all the years this letter writer/column contributor/ such writing for this blog (starting 2018) …
Lived experience bringing gratitude and less judgment of others is great.
It sounds like you’ve found peace in accepting your situation. In the comments you said you’ve been looking for a job. I was wondering what all you have tried and barriers to getting out that you personally face, if you don’t mind me asking. I’m wondering if you’ve continually tried, but for some reason you’ve had to give up most of the hope. I’m also wondering why the drug use. Like if it’s recreational, to cope with being homless, for physical or mental pain or all of the above. I’m not judging, just curious.