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Stories by the Homeless Themselves
As many as 3,500,000 people in the Unites States are homeless in any given year, so all of us likely know of someone who has been homeless without knowing that they were. So we are quite lucky to be able to offer the following stories, told by the people themselves, of their life-altering experiences with homelessness. Each story offers a rare and unique glimpse into the life of someone who has experienced life without a home. These are brave individuals who have chosen to transcend the guarded egotism of personal vanity for the sake of the higher virtue of educating the public on homelessness. If we listen, we might become better-equipped to understand the causes, realities and injustices associated with homelessness.
Featured Story
A Call Away
(From A Place To Stay)
by Kelly Robinson
Published: July 1, 2009
The majority of Americans only think of homelessness when someone tries to clean their windshield at an overpass intersection or holds out a cup asking for spare change. Maybe it comes to mind when they see it on television or when a mother and her child are spotted sleeping in a storefront doorway.Read More ...
Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of an ongoing series by Kelly Robinson.
A Homeless Heart
by Kelly Robinson
Published: October 23, 2009
I was thinking this morning that homeless can be a state of mind. No really - hear me out. I have been there. I’ve been the one who was curled up in a shelter lost and alone, so don’t think I am talking out of turn. I have also been the one living in a house but equally as homeless because I had no options and no other place to go. I would have to think hard about which was worse. I still have no verdict on that. When I was homeless, at least I had options. I could get in my car and find new shelter or new choices. So state of mind? Maybe, at times, that is true. Maybe, sometimes, we become so disheartened that we have a homeless heart.Read More...
The First Day
by Kelly Robinson
Published: July 8, 2009
Just by the very nature of life, difficult and heartbreaking things happen to everyone. If we wanted to, we could rate these events in our lives
on a scale of wonderful to worse. In fact, and I am pretty sure that at some university somewhere they are doing a study on creating that scale at
this very moment. So I won’t go there, but if we were to create that scale, the first day that someone becomes homeless would certainly be
at the far end of worse.
Read More...
Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of an ongoing series by Kelly Robinson.
Homeless in Washington, D.C.
by Stephen N. Thomas (Washington, D.C.)
Published: August 4, 2009
Little did I know that I was headed for homelessness at age thirteen. Growing up in the “hood” of Washington, D.C. for me wasn’t easy. In my neighborhood, I was the only kid whose father didn’t live with him.
Single mother, two sisters and me. No father, no brothers and me. I was always picked on as a kid for one reason or another. Either it was
because my father wasn’t around, or because while playing around the house my sisters would dress me in girl’s clothes with lipstick on to play
house with them and the other kids would be looking in the windows, or because I was the fat kid in neighborhood. Someone was always picking on me.
Read More ...
The Tale of a Homeless Artist
by Michael F. Brown (Kansas City, MO)
Published: July 11, 2009
I actually started doing drawings for a living in my senior year in high school. The teacher ran out of things to teach me, so he gave me credit
to run an art business. Bitten by the entrepreneur bug after graduating high school, I went straight out to pursue art as a passion as well as a
career without any more formal training. I was bored by the idea of sitting in a classroom, learning to do something that should come to you naturally
and instinctively. My academic education ended after high school. I just wanted to get the hell out of there frankly, so college was out of the question
for me. Plus, growing up, my mother never pushed going to college on us.
Read More ...
Our Growing Family
by Eric Sheptock (Washington, D.C.)
Published: June 26, 2009
In my life, I’ve been abused and almost killed, adopted into a mixed-race family, raised in a mansion and homeless.
These are just a few of my experiences, of course. If I could tell you more, then you’d agree that my life is full of
sharp contrast. The irony of life. Sometimes it just baffles me.
Read More ...
Homeless Girl (United Kingdom)
Read More ...
Published: June 23, 2009
Everything about my life doesn’t make sense. I should be the last person to become “homeless”. I never had a problem with drugs or alcohol and my mental state is fine. But here I am two years later in what has become the most defining point of my life.Read More ...
Tammy (Florida)
Read More ...
Published: June 22, 2009
I was about twenty-three years old. I lived in West Palm Beach. I had a great job. I bought a next to new car. I owned a condo in a gated community. Then I met a man I fell in love with. He moved in with me. For three years everything was great. Then I started missing things. At first I thought I misplaced these things. I must have been in denial. Little did I know, he had a dark secret that he managed to keep from me for three years. He was an IV drug user.Read More ...
ddjango (Raleigh, NC)
Published: June 21, 2009
ddjango (the “dd” is silent) is a political and cultural writer in exile from Boston. He began writing on the internet with the now-archived blog ddjangoWIrE in 2002, then founded P! in 2004. He has been known to post at American Samizdat, PBA, Peoples Voice, Thomas Paine’s Corner, Empire Burlesque, Corrente, and other sites. He is also a published Content Provider at Associated Content and a Sustaining Member of ZNet.Holding a Master of Education degree, ddjango has served as a community organizer, social worker, therapist, trainer/organizational developer, researcher, and cab driver. He was also an undistinguished singer-songwriter, member of the Boston-Cambridge folk community in the ’60s and early ’70s.
ddjango writes about post-politics, post-society, freethought, spirituality, singularity, trans- and post-humanism, and techno-fascism.
Read More ...
Selections from Night Train, by Donald O’Donovan
Published: May 21, 2009
Night Train was written on twenty-three legal pads while the author was homeless on the streets of L.A. He is currently looking for a publisher for his work.
Donald can be contacted at: 