[Noisebridge-discuss] Shelter and housing

[Liz Henry]

I do still think that people at NB could maybe meet to have a discussion 
about housing, what they are doing to cope with homelessness or marginal 
housing situations like SROs.  Since there are a bunch of people who are 
part of Noisebridge who face these problems might it help to have a day 
of discussion and brainstorming and trying to come up with ways for 
people to organize to help each other?

That is probably best done in person not on a mailing list.  And it 
would likely involve people feeling that they could trust the other 
people there with information about their lives and personal situations. 
It seems fraught to me for people, potentially, even to come to such a 
meeting to say Yeah I'm in a bad situation, as then, other people might 
be judgemental or target you as a homeless person who is a problem and 
sleeping at NB or whatever.

I shouldn't organize this discussion, but I would be happy to help make 
it happen, if anyone thinks it should and could happen...  I think it 
could work well as a peer support group.  Same for people's problems 
with alcoholism or substance abuse.

It seems like once in a difficult situation, it would be hard to find 
others to live with or rent with in a shared flat, to come up even 
collectively with the huge deposit and first and last month's rent, to 
get the previous-landlord references and credit checks landlords want, 
and prove employment and income if you don't have it!  I don't know how 
anyone does it.  I would think either by faking some of that 
documentation and reference, and hoping the actual credit-checking 
doesn't happen --- or, having one documentable/referenceful person to 
ride point and do the actual renting.  Then, as another dimension to 
things, you have to all trust and tolerate each other well enough to 
live together and merge finances to that extent, which might take some 
time to develop and would likely be a fragile trust... Given that one 
factor of being in that situation in the first place might be having 
already burned through all one's couchsurfing and friends helping options.

If it were me I would have a hell of a time tolerating organizational 
charity, social workers, religious people trying to be helpy and all the 
authoritarian bullshit that goes with that and I would certainly drink 
to cope with being stressed, cold, and alienated. So my sympathies. 
Anyway, though, lacking financial resources, the best thing we have is 
social resources and the network of other people at NB.  That's why I 
keep thinking, we should have a Hacker Housing Task Force.  Which might 
help address the problems people have rather than just dismissing them.

Doesn't it make anyone else a bit nauseated to be supporting Occupy on 
the one hand and then throwing people out of our community for having no 
where else to go?!

Could people who have been homeless and gotten out of it -- maybe even 
by banding together with others from NB -- talk about how they managed it?



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Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ