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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHomeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture
http://www.newsweek.com/homeless-millennials-are-transforming-hobo-culture-323151On Reddit, hes /u/huckstah, an administrator on /r/vagabond, a subreddit with nearly 10,000 membersmany of them identify as homelesswho trade skills and stories. On the road and the rails, hes Huck, and even after we speak twice by cellphone, he tells me hed prefer I dont print his real name. People say, Well, you chose to become homeless. But thats wrong, he says. Huck says hes been a hobo for upward of 11 years and started hopping trains and hitching rides at 18. I did not choose to become homeless. If you want to say I chose to become homeless and sleep on the streets, really all I have to say is fuck you. Youve never experienced it.
Or maybe you have experienced it, thanks to the recent Great Recession that caused a spike in homelessnessespecially for familieswith its tidal wave of foreclosures. And if you have, theres a good chance you were probably one of the many homeless with a mobile device, a sight that has become increasingly common. The ubiquity of cheap phones and even cheaper data has prompted even longtime homeless to join the growing ranks of people with a cell connection but no house. The day I started on the road, I had a flip phone, an iPod, a TomTom GPS, an atlas, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi wasn't very easy to find, says a medic whos been a hobo for four years and asks me to identify him as Nuke. (I have a pretty decent amount of training and experience in treating combat trauma.) He now lives out of a 91 Ford pickup and says, I have a smartphone, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi is everywhere.
The rise of the mobile Internet has made a hobos life easier, Nuke says. But when I ask Huck about how he and fellow travelers use their smartphones, I get the sense that even for the digitally connected homeless, life is far from easy. I keep my phone off a lot, or in airplane mode, he says, because we can only charge up for a short timemaybe once a day, or sometimes it will be two to three days between charges, maybe an hour of charge. For Huck and his fellow itinerants, smartphone usage is measured in instants. We check Google Maps and then we turn it off, or we make a quick phone call and then we turn it off....
Piecemeal job-hunting sites like Craigslist are also required browsing if youre trying to make a living with no permanent place to call home. For the past 100 years of this lifestyle in America, we found our jobs by following seasonal schedules and asking around for jobs at farmers' markets and farming supply stores, looking at job ads in newspapers, asking door-to-door, says Huck, adding that things are done very differently today. I know thousands of hobos, and I don't know a single one that doesn't use Craigslist. It has completely changed how we find work.
Or maybe you have experienced it, thanks to the recent Great Recession that caused a spike in homelessnessespecially for familieswith its tidal wave of foreclosures. And if you have, theres a good chance you were probably one of the many homeless with a mobile device, a sight that has become increasingly common. The ubiquity of cheap phones and even cheaper data has prompted even longtime homeless to join the growing ranks of people with a cell connection but no house. The day I started on the road, I had a flip phone, an iPod, a TomTom GPS, an atlas, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi wasn't very easy to find, says a medic whos been a hobo for four years and asks me to identify him as Nuke. (I have a pretty decent amount of training and experience in treating combat trauma.) He now lives out of a 91 Ford pickup and says, I have a smartphone, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi is everywhere.
The rise of the mobile Internet has made a hobos life easier, Nuke says. But when I ask Huck about how he and fellow travelers use their smartphones, I get the sense that even for the digitally connected homeless, life is far from easy. I keep my phone off a lot, or in airplane mode, he says, because we can only charge up for a short timemaybe once a day, or sometimes it will be two to three days between charges, maybe an hour of charge. For Huck and his fellow itinerants, smartphone usage is measured in instants. We check Google Maps and then we turn it off, or we make a quick phone call and then we turn it off....
Piecemeal job-hunting sites like Craigslist are also required browsing if youre trying to make a living with no permanent place to call home. For the past 100 years of this lifestyle in America, we found our jobs by following seasonal schedules and asking around for jobs at farmers' markets and farming supply stores, looking at job ads in newspapers, asking door-to-door, says Huck, adding that things are done very differently today. I know thousands of hobos, and I don't know a single one that doesn't use Craigslist. It has completely changed how we find work.
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Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture (Original Post)
KamaAina
Apr 2015
OP
haikugal
(6,476 posts)1. This is horrible...
Being homeless is the worst thing, overall, that I know. Why can't we do better for our people?
Do those solar chargers for phones work, does anyone know? Something like that would be helpful for them.
I can't stand it.