Reasons to live on the streets instead of in shelters

Very interesting recent article "Why I Choose Streets Over Shelter" in change.org's Ending Homelessness blog where an Oakland, CA, homeless man, using the moniker SlumJack, provides five reasons why he prefers sleeping on the street to staying in an emergency shelter.

SlumJack's first reason will resonate with anyone who has been subjected to the nightmare of Sacramento's Winter shelter:

1. Shelters usually require that you enter early in the eve and then remain there until early the next morn when you must leave. This can totally waste HOURs of otherwise possibly productive time, just sitting around in unpleasant to worse circumstances -- at a time when EVERY resource, including time, must be marshalled.

SlumJack's other reasons are affected, I think, by his use of a bicycle towing a cart to haul his property. He's subject to having property stolen and has trouble finding a somewhat secure place to keep his things. [As the Sacramento homeless know well, bicycles, themselves, are often and easily stolen.]

Also, very contrary to my experience in Sacramento, SlumJack finds his brother homeless to be "some of the worst people."

Anyway, SlumJack has an interesting perspective. I am happy to find that SlumJack has re-started a blog he first began in 2008 called homeword unbound. In his first new post of 2009, "I am resuming/continuing this blog,"put up just yesterday, SlumJack gives us a list of why the blog had sat idle.

In celebration of finding SlumJack's blog, I am, of course, adding it to the blogroll in the right-sidebar in SacHo.

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