Refuges for the homeless

There are many places where a homeless person might seek refuge.

Outdoors: In a sleeping bag, tent, or improvised shelter, such as a large cardboard box, in a park or vacant lot.

Hobo jungles: Ad hoc campsites of improvised shelters and shacks, usually near rail yards.
Derelict structures: abandoned or condemned buildings, abandoned cars, and beached boats

Vehicles: cars or trucks are used as a temporary living refuge, for example those recently evicted from a home. Some people live in vans, covered pick-up trucks, station wagons, or hatchbacks.

Public places: parks, bus or train stations, airports, public transportation vehicles (by continual riding), hospital lobbies, college campuses, and 24-hour businesses such as coffee shops. Public places generally use security guards or police to prevent people from loitering or sleeping at these locations for a variety of reasons, including image, safety, and comfort.

Homeless shelters ranging from official city-run shelter facilities to emergency cold-weather shelters opened by churches or community agencies, which may consist of cots in a heated warehouse.

Inexpensive Boarding houses called flophouses offer cheap, low-quality temporary lodging.
Residential hostels, where a bed as opposed to an entire room can be rented cheaply in a dorm-like environment.

Inexpensive Motels also offer cheap, low-quality temporary lodging. However, some who can afford housing live in a motel by choice. For example, David and Jean Davidson spent 22 years at a UK Travelodge [27].

Friends or family: Temporarily sleeping in dwellings of friends or family members ("couch surfing").

Source: Wikipedia

Homeless:Poetry

HOMELESS

Psychologically speaking,

We’re all quite insane.

Financially speaking,

We’re a taxpayers drain.

Religiously speaking,

We’re a very fertile ground.

Anthropologically speaking,

We’ve always been around.

Individually speaking,

We’re not the ones to fear;

But, popularly speaking,

They wish we’d disappear.

© Joy Bright McCorkle

First published in THE STREET SPIRIT in the Spring of 2000