Homeless people living in national forests
August 22, 2016 issue, New York Times:
http://nyti.ms/2buAQWY
They used to be called "pioneers."
Before that, they were just people living there. Then someone started calling them indians or savages or native peoples or whatever other label.Originally Posted by dudeijuststarted
They used to be called "pioneers."
seems like this press makes it harder for trail head logistics hitch hikers! sorry, I know, first world problem...
Lazarus
Although I somehow doubt most homeless people choose to live in such a manner (not manor!), I made it a choice to live this way. Each year I watched more and more people doing so, whether by choice or circumstance. Public lands (Forest Service, BLM) enable it (for brief stints, anyway: two weeks in one place, generally), and tough times economically often force it. I camped and lived near Nederland and Ward for three years, both in summer and winter, taking the bus down to, and working in Boulder, saving most my income. Back then there were dozens of others doing this, men and women; I'd imagine there are more now. But there seems to be a distinct line between those trying to save money and those who don't, or won't, work. Mine existence was a Thoreau-like choice and it allowed for an early retirement and lots of travel, both of which I preferred over the nightmare that is the American Dream.
Restricting such encampment areas only forces people elsewhere. It certainly doesn't solve the problem, if indeed it is a problem. But they've done this in plenty of areas: Moab's surrounding BLM land, Estes Park (CO), Bend, OR, and elsewhere. Still, with just a ranger or two assigned to in some cases millions of acres, their job is futile and the numbers are only going to grow.
There is option for those who want to be legit and that's taking advantage of volunteering opportunities in many national parks and forests (I also expect other federal properties). I run into numerous folks in the whites that do some minimal volunteering in exchange for free camping spots. I met one person who drives around in a federal supplied pickup and checks the toilet paper dispensers in the trailhead parking lots in exchange for free season long camping. In other more remote campgrounds there are campground hosts who stay for free in exchange for managing the site, mostly meeting campers and keeping the outhouses swept. The FS is now setting up tables at popular hiking trailheads meeting and greeting hikers to make sure they have the right gear. Most of the folks running these are volunteers who get free camping for four hour per day commitment. Many of the folks I run into are from all over the US and do this as cheap way to see the country.
On the other hand I expect that if someone has substance abuse issues and are unable/unwilling to live up to commitments in exchange for a legit camp spot they probably aren't interested in the legit way and would rather just hide out in the woods. Unfortunately, many of the folks living like this tend to be less than environmentally conscious, generally the method of trash disposal is the woods and the bucket used as toilet in the article gets dumped on the ground. I haven't been out west but have encountered a few spots out in my area abandoned by transients and they can leave quite a blight. Its not a much of an issue year round I expect in northern NH as the cold weather and black fly season would drive most folks out of the woods.
This was a very interesting post. Thanks Uriah.
The more and I do the daily grind of going to work for someone else, in order to earn money to turn around and give it to someone else for my mortgage, car payment, utilities and entertainment, makes me consider living off the land. But alas, my 401K needs padding and my Navy (reserve) retirement doesn't kick in for 12 more years. Urgh.....hi ho, hi ho, its off to work I go.
Good post. "Thoreau-like Choice" explains it all. I spent 7 years homeless in the North Carolina mountains between 1980-87 but in fact I had excellent gear and managed to stealth camp all thru the County. Wherever I went I camped, including various long hitchhiking trips. I eventually "got legal" and built a tipi on 40 acres of private land with permission and didn't have to sleep behind cemetery tombstones or behind churches or in treelines anymore. The one mile trail I cut up to my tipi was outstanding.
But it takes all kinds to ruin it. People rolling in campers and RVs for example. We had one guy here in Monroe Cty TN who logged an acre and built a log cabin and was caught and banned from the national forest for life I guess.
Then there are the Pickup Hobos who drive from car camping spot to spot in their pickup trucks and live this way from retirement check to check. They keep moving every two weeks and it's a good system if you can't walk and like to be near other car campers living in their "mud homes".
One of the incentives I had back in 1980 to get some gear and live outside permanently was a miscreant landlord who warned me to get out of my apartment---I did not---and then he torched the house as an arson to get insurance money. I went to the court case as a witness and he got nothing. Should've got jail time.
Anyway, this event propelled me mercifully into the outdoors and under Miss Nature's sky. There's no better place to live.
Playing street music during my homeless years, 1981.
Last edited by Tipi Walter; 10-10-2016 at 16:41.
Check out the Mr. Money Mustache blog if you haven't already. Based on how you phrased your post I think you might find him helpful. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/...one-blog-post/
AT Flip Flop (HF to ME, HF to GA) Thru Hike 2023; LT End-to-Ender 2017; NH 48/48 2015-2021; 21 of 159usForests.com
nice pack.Good post. "Thoreau-like Choice" explains it all. I spent 7 years homeless in the North Carolina mountains between 1980-87 but in fact I had excellent gear and managed to stealth camp all thru the County. Wherever I went I camped, including various long hitchhiking trips. I eventually "got legal" and built a tipi on 40 acres of private land with permission and didn't have to sleep behind cemetery tombstones or behind churches or in treelines anymore. The one mile trail I cut up to my tipi was outstanding.
But it takes all kinds to ruin it. People rolling in campers and RVs for example. We had one guy here in Monroe Cty TN who logged an acre and built a log cabin and was caught and banned from the national forest for life I guess.
Then there are the Pickup Hobos who drive from car camping spot to spot in their pickup trucks and live this way from retirement check to check. They keep moving every two weeks and it's a good system if you can't walk and like to be near other car campers living in their "mud homes".
One of the incentives I had back in 1980 to get some gear and live outside permanently was a miscreant landlord who warned me to get out of my apartment---I did not---and then he torched the house as an arson to get insurance money. I went to the court case as a witness and he got nothing. Should've got jail time.
Anyway, this event propelled me mercifully into the outdoors and under Miss Nature's sky. There's no better place to live.
Playing street music during my homeless years, 1981.
Thank ye. It's my old warhorse North Face pack---seen here in action but from someone else's collection---(I still have the old faded thing and it's hanging up on a peg in the garage. It was used nonstop for 22 years until replaced by various internal frames).
I just wish some of these people weren't so trashy. Not only litter, but human feces, needles and all kinds of crap. Colorado has become a mecca for wanderers and it's even worse since the legal pot laws were passed.
I agree. But we shouldn't forget that the massive amounts of trash we generate as a society also goes somewhere. (Elsewhere!) It just tends to be a little more organized and a little less visible. Waste management, they call the industry!
Flush your toilet and voila...your poop is gone! Throw your junk in the waste bin and it's gone for good!
When I see human waste in the woods or here in the desert, be it feces or toilet paper or old camping stuff left behind, it doesn't make me think so much of the individual(s) who left it there, but that we're all just as responsible for generating it and having it shipped elsewhere, out of our life! The size of the municipal garbage bins lining any street on "garbage day" have only gotten bigger in the past few decades, so the problem itself is also only going to.
It's a pretty safe bet that almost every one of us would (and does) generate more garbage/waste/pollution/fumes when we're within society than we would on its fringes. It's all just concealed a little better.
We think it's bad with 7.3 billion of us, wait until we reach 12 billion etc. America is projected to be around 450 million by 2050, I guess our goal is to have over a billion consumers like China. Kiss what's left of wilderness goodbye.
A sad picture for sure, but all the more reason to enjoy it now.
It's interesting that so many of us do head out to enjoy the wild lands, but yet refrain from defending them. I'm certainly guilty of this, although I justify my behavior because I have no tie to the future, be it 2050 or even a little sooner. I'm happy to have been born when I was, with all the freedom and some of the land upon which to go get lost and ponder life's big mysteries.
The American Indians defended the wild lands and look what happened to them.
I was homeless off and on for almost a yr in Hawaii and for a yr in Nevada. I too chose to live that way but I also committed to work for periods, save more money than I already had(I was not a broke homeless person), and not rely on any public assistance, EBT, checks in the mailbox, disability claims, panhandling, staying at a shelter, etc. intertwining the lifestyle with multi-day hikes and volunteering at various locations and for various causes. I lived very frugally and very simply. Living this way was never a full time affair. I lived and worked at hostels on various occasions for example. It was never an intention to continue living this way. Most importantly my intentions were met by taking action. I was always transitioning to full time work, stable full time housing, and overall full time contributing to being a better citizen by paying taxes, adding to the economy, not resorting to being a criminal, not succumbing to drug addiction, etc.
As an avid hiker across the U.S. and doing many thru-hikes additionally I've had very ample opportunities to connect with homeless communities across the U.S. My heart goes out to these people. But, to suggest the vast majority are doing it mainly out of wanting a Thoreau like experience or because of a supposed "poor" economy ignoring bad decision making doesn't play into being homeless is being disingenuous.
The vast majority of homeless people no matter where I go in the U.S. have some kind of drug addiction or are involved in selling drugs(almost always to offset the cost of their own drug uses) ranging from alcohol, tobacco, weed, lots of methamphetamine, some crack, bath salts, and a fair share of heroin. There is a high level of intravenous illicit drug use. There is also a extremely high level of criminal behavior like theft in the homeless community. They not only steal from businesses but also from each other. Businesses can have substantial losses due to theft in homeless areas. Most do not want to or say they can't work. Most do not want to get ahead by sweat of their own brow. Of course, they are fine when they get ahead material or otherwise at the expense of others. There is a high degree of psychological disorders among the homeless with some homeless communities having a significant, 15% or more, number of ex veterans. EVERY homeless community I've observed overall followed this questionable habit of bad decision making and lack of personal responsibility considering the larger context of others, their community, and the environment by trashing the place with garbage, drug paraphernalia, including used syringes(heroin, meth, coke, bath salts), glass stems(from crack) and meth pipes, and feces and urine.
Some point to a lack of care in regards to goods and services for the homeless. I can't speak about that situation everywhere but I can unequivocally state in Hawaii and Reno Nevada they do exist. These services(legal , medical, dental, job sourcing, job offers, housing, food, EBT, phones, computers, transportation vouchers, make your own bicycle from a mountain of spare parts, etc are not utilized by the majority of homeless communities to transition out of being homeless. Actually, these services are used by the majority as further crutches to continue being a homeless addicted non gainfully employed psychologically questionably stable criminally prone society drop out that almost universally looks to someone else or something else as the root cause of their problems.
For example, the state of Hawaii built new modern 1 BR apartments for the homeless with available public transportation to downtown areas to maintain jobs FREE who desired to transition from the streets. Only catch was you had to pass a urine test and have no outstanding felony warrants. Some of the housing was still vacant over a yr after being built!
For example, at a homeless shelter in Nevada housing 250 plus men alone(not including the segregated female housing) Temp Job Service Companies offering PT jobs with the ability to also go full time would show up at the shelter after erecting signage at the shelter notifying that jobs would be available, often could not full his or her 6-20 persons needed for work requirement.
For example in Reno Nevada, Chicago Illinois, Newark New Jersey at the drug dealer houses, often located in old hotels, on the night before EBT card balances were refilled available at 12 a.m. lines of the drug addicted and cash strapped poor would line up and sleep in line to trade their EBT food money for pennies on the dollar in exchange for drugs.
It is not just me making these associations with the homeless either. There are some crossover characteristics to the uninitiated when comparing footloose frugal travelers/wanderers, LD hikers, and the homeless. With increasing regularity in many areas, well beyond the AT or LT, where there is not a known trail and substantial trail support I find myself having to convince others I'm just a dirty LD hiker not a homeless person. I find myself increasingly having to define myself to others by separating what I'm doing and who I am from the associations with being homeless.
So when people refer to the homeless as "pioneers" or the question arises should National Forests be open to the homeless I'm put off with the suggestion. I think there will always be a homeless population in the U.S., the Gov't can't be personally responsible for everyone's individual behavior, and I certainly don't assume to have all the answers to homelessness other than what the Brookings Institute offered:
1) Complete high school(at a minimum)
2) Maintain fun time employment
3) Don't have children out of wedlock
Single parent hood and the parallel rise of the welfare state are statistically heavily correlated with poverty.
While I agree on irresponsibility is irresponsibility no matter where it happens in regard to waste aggregation and I agree with you on the wasteful, consumption, and consumer driven U.S., AND ELSEWHERE, cultures modern day waste management is absolutely not just about removing it from one location and hiding it another location. Everything from electronics to, metals, plastics, wood, glass, etc can be used again. Even some among the homeless know this and are some of the moss avid Al can recyclers. Some(many?) I've spoken to in Hawaii choose to make this their job their purpose rather than resorting to stealing. Unfortunately many also use it to support drug habits. Leaving a bunch of human detritus in the woods as result of being homeless is no excuse for bagging up waste, AND AT LEAST spent food packaging and alcohol, throwing it in a dumpster. I've seen too many homeless people living in their own waste UNNECESSARILY. You can't excuse your own questionable behaviors by referring to the questionable behaviors of society and its ills. AGAIN, this comes down to what personal responsibility do people exhibit. WHAT level of personal responsibility do homeless communities exhibit???
This is what often irks many that are not homeless and more than a few, as seen here on this thread, that were homeless.
2) Maintain full time employment
Ha, not fun time employment. Employment can be fun though.
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