I knew a guy in the late 90s who checked himself into jail every winter. He just didn’t have enough money to heat his home and buy food at the same time, and he was disabled and couldn’t land a job in construction no more, so that’s the only thing he found to stay alive.
When the snow started to come down, he’d go to our local minimart with a plastic gun. You know, like the really cheesy ones with a red cap at the muzzle, to make sure nobody would think it was real and gun him down my mistake, and to avoid getting a harsh sentence. He knew the store owner, since it was a small town and everybody knew each other.
He’d say hello, point the gun at him and gently say “Could you please call the police like last year?” The store owner used to try to talk him out of it, but he’d say “Don’t force me to make it real because I don’t wanna.”
Then the sheriff would show up - they knew each other too of course - and he would try to convince him this wasn’t a good idea. And the guy would say “Look, will you book me or not? Because if you don’t, you’ll come back next week to my place but with the coroner this time.”
So the sheriff would book him. And the judge, who knew exactly why he was there at the trial, would sentence him to 5 months - time enough to get out in spring.
After I left town, I heard he kept doing that for many years, until he got tired of being poor and committed suicide.
Well that story just got bleaker with each sentence
I lived in Austin, TX and used to know a homeless guy, Walter Dwight Green 1955, back in '98 that spent winters in jail for public intoxication for the same reasons.
Including name, in case anyone else knew him and wants to chat. He was originally from Kentucky.
I was a teenager at the time but I tried to help him as much as I could.
I had to leave town for a year, when I came back, I found out he froze to death in the winter I was gone.
Didn’t know your Walter, but a family member of mine was a corrections officer at a small town jail in Podunk Tennessee. 17k people in the whole county, and each winter the jail would triple their numbers for this exact reason. First snow’s coming, time to buy 50 bucks of booze and get lodging for the winter. Fucking horrible people have to do that. I’ve been desperate. Like, living in a shack with no plumbing, no electric, and by the grace of God and some clever shop lifting a propane heater to keep 4 of us warm in 110 square feet in -26 degrees level of desperate. I can’t imagine being so desperate as to willingly go to jail. Which just shows despite all that, how fucking lucky I am. I worked in commissary, family members have been jailers and cops. It’s better than freezing to death, of course, but no one should ever have to make that choice. Housing is a right, and our laws need to catch the fuck up with that.
God bless this pitiful country.
I know someone that got shot by the cops with one of those toy guns…
And then Einstein clapped the Baby Jesus’s ass and all the harpies cried at the wave after wave of baby bald eagles flying over. Amen.
I’m a cynical guy, but the only unrealistic part is the implied community cohesion that resulted in him not getting shot in the face. If you are going to shout into the void, put a little more effort in, even if it might only be for your own benefit.
He was white, obvs
the only unrealistic part is the implied community cohesion
Those who are old enough and grew up in small town America remember the sense of community. If you’ve never experienced it, I feel sorry for you, whether it’s because you grew up in a big city or because it disappeared for your generation.
But I will say this - echoing what Bamfic said: yeah, you kind of needed to be white. I was and so was the store owner and the dude who was doing the fake holdups. So I’m not deluding myself: I know the sense of community didn’t include everybody necessarily. But it was a thing for sure.
It does exist! But it’s increasingly rare in atomised society, certainly in cities.
This reminds me of a news story from a few years ago. An elderly man had robbed a bank and only asked for $1. When he was arrested he said he couldn’t afford to get the various medical treatments he needed so he wanted to go to jail so he could get the healthcare they would provide him as a prisoner
I think they don’t even do that anymore nowadays. Provide healthcare in prison that is.
This is false, they absolutely still do.
Watched an inmate receive one of the ridiculously overpriced antiviral cures for Hepatitis-C.
I’ve been bamboozled! Thank you for correcting my error.
In older times you could ask any grocrey store and they’d direct you to a place in back where they give away their just-expired food. But now they’re salting their throwaways. ERs are supposed to not turn you away, and if they do it might justify stealing food.
Find out how the police respond to homeless people in your area (fellow transients will know). Some will help you out while others will be glad to assault you knowing no one will care.
Religious kitchens will force you to convert. In the old days, it was easier to play along, but I dont knownwhat the new methods of coercion are. They’re a lot more abusive and bigoted now.
Obviously it depends on the church and area, but I rarely experienced people trying to convert me when I was homeless. Most were trying to help the less fortunate and it ends at that. There was a church who would set up for lunch 3-4 days a week with no strings attached. A pastor came and delivered me MREs at like 2am in the morning one time after getting a call from one of his friends. He never once mentioned church. I’m thankful they were able to keep me alive in that dark time in my life.
ind out how the police respond to homeless people in your area
Just a reminder that the Supreme Court just recently affirmed that it is legal to punish people for being homeless.
Religious kitchens will force you to convert.
All what they say is a lie? /s
Hold up any bank in the United States. Make sure it’s not armed and don’t actually take anything.
You’ll get like five years in the feds. Do 3.5-4 years in a camp. Get universal healthcare and free meals…
America is a third world country.
OP notes that prisons in america now charge you for your stay.
Some states will do that which is why you rob a bank making it a federal case. Generally, federal prisons are better than state prisons in the United States.
Meaning it’s a one-way ticket. You never really got rid of slavery.
Correct. Enslaving prisoners was amended into our Constitution. Fear of that enslavement keeps most people in line.
You’d hate to hear where law’s like loitering is illegal come from.
The idea behind them was basically to book the released slaves and then rent them out to the farms again.
And if you don’t get caught you can use the money for food, housing and healthcare.
That is an if so huge I think I can feel its gravitational attraction.
Only 10% of bank robberies fail, and 80% of stolen bank money is never recovered.
Brb gonna go research a new uh… Hobby
I think its funny (incredibly depressing) how disability doesnt scale with cost of living in your local area. Like my disabled mother makes about $1K a month off SSI and she lives in CA luckily with family.
She would be in this same situation if she had to move tomorrow. I aint doing much better but even working a job I dont make enough to rent here so we will have to find a way out together.
Were both those locations supposed to be CA?
Yeah my bad I was just trying to articulate that stuck feeling that most people have if they cant really afford to leave or stay. She would lose pretty much everything she ever owned if she had to leave.
We have to focus on mutual aid. Identity politics of either major party seems very much designed to be this way, and maybe of any party that makes it onto a ballot.
That thread was toxic AF. OP needed mental health care
Yeah. Some people offered legitimate and very good advice, but OP wasn’t receptive at all.
Yeah they were asking for incredibly questionable advice and were just looking for validation rather than ideas to get out of that problem.
As a realistic answer that hopefully no one needs, stealing food and shelter is probably more comfortable than prison. Just do that, and if you get caught then mission accomplished anyway.
How do you steal shelter? Squatting?
Find an abandoned building and make yourself at home. I preferred the park/sidewalk when I was homeless though.
Find a camping store and steal a tent.
Dude living in a tent fucking sucks if you’re trying to hold a job and not on a distance hike. Even distance hiking it sucks, lean-to’s are absolutely preferred. But yea I guess it’s better than nothing
You just can’t hold down a job when you are homeless. I new a few who had tried, but something always gets in the way. That being said, a lot of missions/churches will let you use their address as a mailing address.
And there’s been efforts to cut that down as well, some places won’t accept a church as a mailing address for official ID, voting, etc.
However, monks/nuns/etc use a monastery as their legal address, and that’s considered legal, so… if Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption were to become registered again, and open monasteries throughout the US, homeless people could then in theory become monks and list their permanent address as the nearest monastery
I’d argue it’s not the tent itself that sucks as much as the lack of access to things like toilet, shower, and electricity.
What about the ER? Get yourself checked in for a mental breakdown or the like, stay the night. It’s not like they will be able to collect on the bill if your income is measured in cents per day and your address is “under the overpass near that one busy intersection.”
My mother-in-law was in the US visiting us when she got appendicitis. Took her to the doctor and had to get surgery the same day, her appendix was close to bursting and we were told she wouldn’t have made it another day. My wife overheard the nurse yelling at the doctor for accepting a patient with no insurance. So apparently even in life and death situations, sending you back is an option if you don’t have insurance.
I work at a hospital. I have heard that another hospital in our city will transfer patients to our hospital because, we are “better at treating their particular condition”, that condition being “poor”
That’s because you work in a very rich hospital that can easily afford the cost right? Right?
We survived a very rough period about a quarter century ago that taught leadership the value of fiscal responsibility. It was quite literally an existential crisis. The lessons carried us through multiple economic downturns in the intervening years including the pandemic.
Regarding the challenging cases that are deemed too unprofitable by other institutions, our solution is to improve both the quality and the efficiency of their treatment so that we are able to cover expenses without compromising care.
I’m quite proud of the work we do. In a world filled with corporations led by over paid sociopaths, I believe that our (non-profit) organization is doing the right thing for the right reasons.
I watched a documentary about the situation of health care in the US and I think it was Texas’s gouvernement who was saying that hospitals are required to give you the health care needed in the case of an emergency.
This is broadly true, though there can be some wiggle room in the exact definitely of “immediate life-saving care” depending on where you end up. In particular, a condition like appendicitis that will inevitably lead to a crisis may be turned away until it actually becomes one, even if that makes things riskier and costlier for everyone involved.
Right, sometimes you need to be actively dying to receive care, not just at risk of dying.
drugs are illegal and plentiful in the US. Purchase them and if not arrested stock up as an alternate option.
Other than being white, how can I make it from the arrest to prison alive?
mmm. thats a tough one, but either way. Problem solved.
Take grim comfort that police killing people is noteworthy enough to make the news, you’ll prolly be fine!
Police killings have been on the rise and virtually none of them have made the news
Generally, you should make it to prison alive because it’s a business and you being there makes them money. Getting out of prison alive however is much more difficult. In theory, having you as a repeat offender is more profitable, but your organs might be more profitable instead. Depends on the market…
Still costs money… 😔
well you don’t expect to be arrested for free do you?
Punch a USPS driver… It’s a feddie to assault a federal worker… I would definitely reach out to some mutual aid groups first though. Prison isn’t very fun and I can’t imagine not very entertaining if you can’t read.
Traffic ticket, hearing, then insult the judge until contempt of court.
Shit, I would look at it another way. What other time in history could someone ask this. Its not like prisons in the fifties had wheelchair ramps.
wow america is really a mess of a country :(
jeffrey archer “is it september already?”
unironically, dying is a ditch cold is probably safer than being in a prison/jail as a disabled person lmao.
Maybe you could clock into a ward or something? That’s probably a better option.
One does not simply clock into a ward
obviously not, but judging by some of the other comments, and the above post, that might be possible for this individual.
