Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Zero dollars a day?
Most of the time the stories that pop up on the Yahoo home page are pretty lame but every now and then one catches my eye as I'm passing through. Today it was “Living on zero dollars a day.” I thought, hey I would like to live on zero dollars a day, why not give it a perusal. Turns out it is an interesting and fairly descriptive homeless by choice story. I am not prepared to go that far to save money. I like having a bed to sleep in. One question I do have, though, is why does the author not address the issues that face those who are homeless not by choice, as a comparison to this gentleman who apparently has the luck of the Irish when it comes to his hunting and gathering forays. While I agree that less conspicuous consumption is generally a good thing, I also understand that the security that comes with having an actual home is important. Besides the issues with sanitation, the homeless are often harassed by the police, they are abused and robbed, underfed, and practically invisible and dehumanized when it comes to considering the ills of society. And most of them do not have the option to leave the lifestyle so easily as, it seems from reading the story, that this man can.
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2 comments:
I agree with your critique; this article feels a little bit like an idealization of homelessness. I've noticed that extreme poverty in general is being idealized in the media at the moment, and it's making me very uneasy, because it's totally ignoring the huge and ever-widening class gap in this country.
Homelessness is not easy. The subject of this article is lucky to live in an area where he seems to be able to make it work. A more interesting story, to me, might be why he's having so much success. (Could it be because he's not mentally ill, and is therefore not deemed as a threat when he's in the community? Because he's white, and therefore a "rugged individualist" instead of a scary homeless guy?)
Unfortunately, I do watch families slide into homelessness. It's much harder to do all that with small kids. I suspect being a childless white guy hitting on all cylinders, not depressed from job loss and rejection, helped him a lot.
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