Another great blog from Kevin

Its hard to be homeless and poor . Many peopel just walk by and think they know but they don't understand at all.

Kevin's blog is at http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/
on his page is a "Paypal Account like of his. Click on it and donate a few bucks to Kevin to help him. Thank You.

Now here is Kevin's Blog
This one dated
Sunday, December 05, 2004

What's It Like?
Many people have asked me what it is like to be homeless. Here is some information about homelessness that might help you with your school project.When you are homeless you have almost no privacy. As you have no place to call your own, you spend almost all your time in public places - libraries, sidewalks, parks, etc. The only time you can have some privacy is when you go sneaking onto someone else's property when they don't know you are there. Sometimes homeless people find old buildings that no one is using. Of course someone owns the building, even if no one is using it, so it is illegal trespassing. But, if nobody knows you are in the building, then it's kind of like having your own place. Most of these abandoned buildings don't have any electricity, yet even if they did you wouldn't use it because it would give you away, letting people know you were there. That's why it's good to have a small flashlight with you, so you can find your way around. And, most of the time, these abandoned buildings don't have any running water. If they did have running water, then you could use the restrooms in the building. But, again, most don't have running water, so you don't have a toilet to use. When that happens, some homeless, just go wherever they are, and that leaves a smelly mess. Some homeless people are very clean people, but because other homeless people just don't care about anything, the clean homeless people have to put up with a lot of mess. And, they get blamed for a lot of things they didn't do. That's one of the bad things about not having any privacy - you can't even get away from the other homeless people. All the people with homes tend to look at all homeless people like they are they same, and that's not true. But, when people make shelters for the homeless they put all the homeless together, the clean and the messy, the nice and the mean, the happy and the sad. Even if you keep yourself clean, and you are nice to other people, and you are generally happy, you will be forced to live with other homeless people who are not. And when you have to live with these ugly homeless people, it's starts to take away your happiness, and you stop being so nice, and you don't care so much about being clean.Rest is something you don't get very much of when you are homeless. And a lot of that is due to the fact you can't get any privacy. When you live at a shelter, they are always waking you up early - 5 to 5:30 EVERY morning - 7 days a week. You never get a chance to sleep in. And, without privacy you never have a place to take a nap. Of course you can try to find some place, but there will always be the police, or security guards, or other people who won't let you get any rest. If you stay at a rescue mission to sleep at night, you have to wait in long lines to find out if you can even get in for the night. And if you get in, then the chaplains will want to preach at you for an hour or so before letting you go to sleep. And a lot of the preaching is done just to get you to feel bad about yourself. The thing is, when you are homeless, you already feel bad about yourself, so all that preaching only makes you feel worse - it doesn't make you feel better. And when you feel really bad about yourself and about your life you don't really feel like doing anything. You just feel depressed and sad. And you can't do anything to make your life better when you feel that way.It's against the law to sleep in parks, or on sidewalks, and in some places, it's illegal just to sit on the sidewalk, or laydown on a bus bench. Then you have to travel all around the city to find food to eat, and since you have no money, you can't ride the bus, so you have to walk everywhere. You have to spend hours everyday just going from one place to the next to get food. And all that walking will make you tired as well. Same when you go looking for a place to get clothes, or a shower.And all that walking causes homeless people to have lots of problems with their feet. All the sidewalks are either cement or asphalt which is bad for your feet. And it's hard to keep your feet clean which means it's really easy to get athletes foot. Athletes foot is a fungus that grows on the bottom of your feet and between your toes. It makes your feet itch and your skin peel, and sometimes your skin will crack and split apart and bleed. And this is even worse when you do a lot of walking because you will also have big calluses on your feet too. This is why I always mention socks, when people ask what homeless people need. Most homeless people don't have a way to wash clothes so they need new socks as often as they can get them. Although homeless people can get enough food to eat, the food usually isn't that good, or healthy for them. Most of the really cheap food is unhealthy, like Bologna. Homeless people get a lot of Bologna sandwiches and other fatty food. That's why how a homeless person can get fat. You would think that because he is poor, that he will be skinny, but that's just not true. There is a company in Nashville that makes donuts, and they donate a lot of donuts to the homeless, so lots of homeless people get donuts with every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Other foods like spaghetti and lasaugna can be bad for you if you eat a lot of it, and homeless people do get a lot of that stuff - fried chicken too. At the rescue mission, we eat fried chicken several times a weeks, and some times every day of the week.Ok, I hope that's enough for today. I'll try to write some more tomorrow. Thank you for caring enough to make homelessness a part of your school projects. I hope you do well.