5 lessons from working at a homeless shelter
Better to learn these lessons vicariously
For a short period of my life, I worked as a security guard at a men’s homeless shelter. I needed a job that fit my schedule and allowed me to box, and this was a job that would hire me. It was a very simple position: on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I worked security at the homeless shelter. The job was pretty straightforward.
A social worker of sorts would process in each homeless man. My job was to inspect their bags for drugs, alcohol, or weapons. I scanned them with a metal-detecting rod and made sure they weren’t high or intoxicated.
Like all “security” jobs, I wasn’t supposed to actually intervene in a physical manner if things got out of hand. I was just to call the police if things got out of hand. This was, for the most part, the easiest job I’d ever do. However, it did have its moments.
Notable moments from working at the homeless shelter include:
Getting scabies from taking a nap on one of the never-washed mats the homeless people slept on.
Getting my life threatened several times for trying to break up fights
Dealing with police officers more in 6 months than I did for the rest of my life
Someone from the homeless shelter broke into my car
The job didn’t teach me anything new about human nature, but I did learn a few things about homeless people and myself. Prepare to have most of what you've been told about the homeless population to be challenged.
I'm not saying that my perspective is the most accurate, but I've seen how many think and behave between this job and volunteer assignments. What I've found may surprise you.
1) Time waits for no man: the truth about the homeless
There’s this prevailing myth that most homeless people are military vets or suffer from mental illness. This simply isn't true.
I watched about 500 homeless people get processed over my six months there. I’m not sure how many had prior service with our military, but I remember only 1 who had a mental illness to the point where someone should have had someone else taking care of him.
Most of them were guys who’d done 5-10+ years in prison, and their friends/family moved on. Since they're convicted felons, the criminal justice system makes it virtually impossible for them to get work. They had simply run out of options to make money and did not have a support system.
This is a difficult situation for people to imagine who have never been incarcerated or had someone close to them do time. While there are resources in prison to better yourself, imagine how difficult it can be to do that in an environment with other criminals. Sure, there are the exceptions who make it out, but for the most part, what happens is exactly what you’d expect.
If you avoid going to prison, your life is going to be mostly alright. It may not be spectacular, but you’ll always be in a position to improve. Of course, you have to consider what type of person you’re typically dealing with when you talk about people who get jail time of this nature.
2) The problem with being unlikable: how do you become homeless?
Here’s a question to ponder. Imagine that you suddenly lost your place to live. What would you do? If you’re like most people, your basic plan would consist of finding a new place to live and, in the meantime, staying with a friend or relative.
Well, if you’re like many of the guys at the homeless shelter, you won’t be able to get a new place when they run background checks. Even if you could get a new place, it’s going to be extremely difficult to get a job to pay rent. So naturally, you’d just stay with friends or relatives until you figure it out.
Except for these guys. They can’t because their friends and relatives have deserted them. In more than a few intake interviews, I heard that friends and family deserted these guys after failed promises and multiple imprisonments.
We’d like to believe that those we care for will be there for us through thick and thin, but EVERYONE has a breaking point. Clearly, the families of these men had reached theirs and were willing to let them live on the street.
3) The difference between minimalism and poverty
I often cut up on minimalism because I believe it’s most people justifying a lack of ambition or grit.
While I’m a firm believer that everyone should be happy with what they have, “minimalists” often highlight their lack of modern convenience as a mark of superiority. Rather than just saying they don’t make enough or aren’t ambitious enough to earn more, they make their lifestyle of lack seem preferable.
This is most people. I met two truckers who decided that it was simply more sensible to stay in homeless encampments and shelters than to rent an apartment. These were guys in their 50s who had never married and had no kids.
Whichever city they were in, they just found the homeless shelters and tried to get in there first for the night. Truckers make decent money. Certainly enough to not need this. It's not the path I would take, but I get it.
To me, this was a true minimalist lifestyle and is something that has always stuck with me.
4) Most of us are one paycheck away from a disaster
I witnessed some tragic scenes at the homeless shelter. I saw more than one guy who got laid off just a few weeks earlier. He couldn’t make the rent and had no savings, so they evicted him. Reality is both fair and cruel.
This is one of those experiences that is far better to learn vicariously. You don’t need to learn EVERYTHING the hard way. You won’t survive long enough to reap the benefits of the lessons if you do.
There are several stats about how most Americans don’t have anything saved. Some people doubt that the majority of Americans have less than $1000 saved, but I've seen this happen too many times to doubt it. Even if a person has $10,000 saved, how long would it last in a place like San Francisco or New York?
I'm inclined to believe they're true. If you don’t have anything saved, work on building value and income streams because being homeless is no way to live.
5) Some people wait for things to get better—others force the issue
There were two 18-year-old kids in the homeless shelter for about 3 weeks while I was there. I got to know them and learn their story.
They weren’t thrown out of their house or anything. They were from a small town in West Virginia with zero opportunity. They decided to leave and figure out how to make it work up here in Pittsburgh (where I live, about an hour away from the two.)
In 3 weeks, they went from nothing to having jobs, being enrolled at community college, and getting an apartment.
Most people would have waited and made excuses. These two dudes took their lives into their own hands and made things work for them. If they had that type of grit and courage at 18, I’m sure they’re doing alright.
The recap
So, to recap, the five lessons I learned from working with homeless people are:
Time waits for no one
Don't be unlikable
There's a difference between minimalism and poverty
Most of us are one paycheck away from a disaster
Change your life instead of waiting for it to change
I learned from the homeless, so you don't have to. The rest is up to you.
Having worked as a social worker and a counselor and a psychologist and a rehabilitation psychologist in this field like I tell you you're 100% correct. I have very little sympathy anymore because of my 30 year experience. It is a choice they make. It is also Multi factorial and it is also social Darwinism. Furthermore society and religion is so structured that it actually encourages homelessness and lack of responsibility for behavior because there is a whole industry toward people making a living taking care of the "homeless and the so-called mentally ill became mentally ill because they self induced it through irresponsible drug abuse and alcoholism." I don't believe alcoholism and drug abuse is it disease at all. It's a choice and they chose to become ill and become despicable homeless disgusting people living in the gutter. OK, so be it. Many are absolutely satisfied with living in the gutter also. You can give them everything, food, new clothes, job, money, medical care, and education and the second you turn your back, the right back in the gutter. I know this from 30 years experience. It's where they wanna be, so who am I to demand that we become like a communist country and put a gun to their head and force them to be "good people."
I also found out that many times when I help people, they resent it. Why? Because when you help people it further reinforces the idea that you are better than they are. Or you have more and people don't like other people having more. Who knew there was a whole area of reverse psychology that is never mentioned or talked about in the psychology of giving or helping others.
A whole new body of research needs to go into the so-called "poor," because we're doing it all wrong and we're actually reinforcing and creating for people with the current philosophy and welfare system coming back to us in the butt and slap us in the face and creating more poor people as a result.
Ed,
My experience with the homeless is less than yours in terms of depth, but I did volunteer to serve meals at a homeless shelter for 15 years. This was at a ‘no drug/no alcohol’ shelter and the rule was strictly enforced. There were about 300 male residents aged 40-70 who all slept in one very large room on mats on the floor. They were not allowed to stay there during the day and were bused to daytime destinations of their choosing in the morning, returning by bus in the evening. Most did not have jobs but some did. The facility was designed to be transient not long term, and length of residency varied considerably. The conversations with the homeless around mealtime were not typically deep and tended to range around acceptable social topics, however on occasion that would change, and someone would open up about their situation or their past, usually in private. Out of the breadth of my 15 years experience I came to view homelessness as a complex and varied problem that was resistant(not conducive) to stereotyping. I met and talked to homeless men who had college degrees, who had worked for corporations, who were talented musicians, who were men of character(demonstrably), who had had a stereotypical family life at one time, a few with professional backgrounds. But all were genuinely homeless, many but not all by choice. There was often the theme of family estrangement or abandonment but some continued to have relationships with children or other family members. This revolving group of men is likely a different cohort than the group of 500 you encountered, possibly because of the screening process used by the catholic run facility I volunteered at. I felt that there were as many “stories” as there were men.