Inside the makeshift social services office at the Sleep Inn, there were hundreds of single-serve disposable plastic bowls of cereal, the kind with paper on top that peeled back like a sardine can. There were a few varieties to choose from, but the cereal was packaged for convenience and economy, and for parents and their children at the Sleep Inn, it was another reminder that being poor meant having fewer options. Someone somewhere had decided that a single small serving of cereal per day was good enough, and to many, each plastic container felt like a single serving of poverty. To experience homelessness was to live a life where everything, it seemed, was decided by the shelter staff, by the hotel staff, by the government. Every aspect of their lives was apportioned right down to the cereal.
–Troop 6000: The Girl Scout Troop That Began in a Shelter and Inspired the World by Nikita Stewart
Adora Myers
I bought a van, at great personal and financial difficulties, to get away from shelter staff.
Having a vehicle you can live in, however humble and cramped, is a game changer when homeless. I did everything I could to protect my vehicle, even when the welfare office and ‘helping professionals ‘ tried to convince me to give it up because the value of the vehicle meant I was to wealthy to qualify for some programs. To wealthy??? It was an old Toyota for crying out loud!
There is so much crap you go thru just because you are not wealth or just have money you have to hold your head up an just leave them alone you are as special as anyone else 8s don’t forget that no one is any better then you
Thank you!