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I'm not saying that we should pull the money from crop insurance subsidies, just that we pay like $20 billion a year for a thing that most people have never heard about. We could similarly pay for this with as much gusto.

If billionaires and corporations payed taxes at the same rate we do, we’d be able to do all this.

But it turned out the judge had a seeing eye dog and it was another case of blind American justice. So we went back to the church and had a Thanksgiving dinner never to be forgotten.

This residence is a giant pile of garbage.

https://earthship.com/2020/03/30/sustainable-luxury-in-the-phoenix-earthship/

You're assuming he surrounded himself with piles of festering useless waste. More likely he had the stuff he cared about and the supplies he needed, and they just took everything and threw it away, cause that's what cops do to the homeless.

Nevermind, I read it.

I do volunteer work for a couple homeless orgs in Canada and reading this story doesn't surprise me. he wasn't "doing it wrong" he was doing what was logical in his head. I see guys all the time carrying around bags or pushing a car literally filled with garbage. paper, cans, tim hortons cups, whatever. They pick it up, they keep it. It's a form of hording. It's not so much "I could potentially use this one day" its more like "I have nothing and having something makes me feel a bit more normal". It's 100% a mental illness and you always find it with older individuals. They carry around too much and the majority of which they don't need but they carry it because they need "something". They need some kind of possession. they just collect garbage.

Actually, a lot of that sounds pretty practical.

The barrels would work as slow burn barrels for long term heat on cold nights, the bike parts could be a source of income (part bikes > full bikes to sell), more than 2 pans seems too many, but he may go through them fast if used over an open fire (depending on the type of pan), for millennia campers kept fires buring over night or for days to make cooking later easier (yes it's risky in some situations, but practical in general), and covering his car would ensure it looked cleaner and required lower maintenance (both have a lot of perks for a homeless person trying to live cheaply and fly under the radar). I'm not sure about the tires, but keeping cans and some other materials can def provide a source of income.

Nothing is ever really disposable, except the abusive people in your life. We could all benefit from less of those. Everything else is reusable or recyclable. Just listing this guys possessions without explanations for them makes them easy to dismiss as trash, but that isn't necessarily even close to honest. He likely had some actual waste on site from food prep or completed projects, but by no means was all his stuff trash.

Did you know that at the current rate of increase in homelessness, half the country will be homeless in ten years? The fastest growing demographics are people over 50, children without families and Latino/Hispanic populations.

Half the country is 115 million people. This is going to keep happening at a larger scale. Shelters are full.

On one small good, the fastest shrinking homeless populations are veterans and children with families

What, you don't weigh all your trash in your trash scale at home? /s

Individually, the average American generated 4.9 pounds of waste per day in 2018

4.9 lb/day x 4 people x 30 days = 588 lbs, so really not that far off.

https://govfacts.org/housing-infrastructure/solid-waste-management/waste-collection-disposal/where-americas-waste-goes/

True, let's hope the parks are still there

I treat parks better than I treat myself