Kathy M.

I'm trying to get the feel for how a teenager would live on the street. I have been homeless, but it was as an adult, not a child. Well, I take that back, I was homeless as a teenager, but we managed to find a place with family (that I detested!), but still, it was a place.

I am wondering what websites might be out there that can give me a hand. My character is developing. I've put him in various situations, but my main curiosity is where he would sleep. I know how he would get food, I had to figure out what season it was, where he was living, but I let him take care of that for me. I thought it made the most sense for it to be summer, though I fully realize that kids are on the streets all year long.

I don't have a message and have no intent to place on in my story. I am more interested in the day to day events of my character, and at this point, I have not introduced another character. Developing one at a time is enough for me right now.

I'm interested in any and all ideas. I do have a friend who is a social worker, but I'm using her to read the final project...though I should probably pump her for information, yes?

Sorry for the post to be so long.
Kathy

Kathy M.

I mean I dn't have a desire to place a message in my story! It read on, but should have read one! Didn't see a way to fix it after it was posted.

Kazzepink

I watched a very sad documentory on homeless teenagers. They mostly lived under bridges where there is a cubby space between the bridge and the concrete and also in railroad tunnels. Total darkness under there and kids slept near the tracks with the rats, atop of newspapers. Some kids slept in railroad stations and underground foot tunnels. These kids not only stole food but went into dumpsters behind resturants and pizza places and donut shops and some of them were both female and male prostitutes. I wish I could recall the name but it was very interesting and sad.

Nazareth

Homeless in the country= fishing for dinner, going through garbage pails for sandwhiches that were only half eaten, eating the good parts off fruit thrown away, taking odd jobs that included meals as part of payments, mooching off friends that weren't homeless, illegally digging clams which were boiled in pots salvaged from dumpsites, using public bathroom facilities, crashing parties and gorging on free stuff, snatching tips off tables in resturaunts,shoplifting after you found out where cameras were located, breaking and entering to rob food pantries, smoking stolen cigarrettes (either from friends houses or from stores) to kill the hunger pains, smoking half smoked discarded cigarettes, going berry picking ALOT,dealing, using, finaggling throughout the day, stealing and trading wares usually for food or drugs, waking up cold and wet and sitting in resturaunts with coffee to warm up in mornings if you had spare change, LOTS of drinking (No matter how broke you were it seemed the booze never stopped flowing), running from the law, planning and sometimes committing semi major crimes, fights caused by nothing more than frustration, finding inventive ways to rip people off (once took a friends car to get drugs with an out-of-towner & dropped him off at McDonalds, took his money and then drove up road, stopped, smacked myself in face a few times,gave myself bloody lip and bruises, then went back picked him up, and drove back to town screamin and threatening to "get revenge" on the peeps that ripped me off),

A homeless persons days are filled with survival activities, more-so than other peoples lives. Alot of time is spent finaggling food out of people and taking odd jobs that didn't require commitments- LOTS of boring times doin nothin but hangin & shooting the crap with the other homeless kids-talkin tough, actin tough, runnin like heck when someone calls your bluff hehehe, taking stupid chances out of desperation, WALKING- LOTS and lots of walking- bein homeless is a hard life that will add years to a person real quick- there should be more than enough to expound on.

Kathy M.

How well I remember Sad thing is, it's so hard to stay clean when you're homeless, and therefore, other people are more likely to get hired first. I stayed in a shelter at night, but during the day, I had to fend for myself.

We have a problem with homeless teens, but when the news reports on it, they never report where the teens might spend the night. All I know is that we will be getting a shelter in a couple of weeks...before that? Probably bridges or something. Thanks for the help. I completely forgot about berry picking. (Perhaps that was deliberate on my part...and to this day, I can't stand to eat the type of berry I used to pick.)

Guineapiggy

I have mixed feelings on runaways.

Homelessness is disturbing, cruel and way too widespread, (And has far too many s' and e's in it.) my mum found herself in this nightmare at age seventeen... but some people aren't escaping abuse or without support. For some bizarre reason they feel justified to 'run away from home' to prove a point or be vindictive. Oddly enough this other extreme was my dad, who did this at age seventeen and then again numerous times. I can confirm he had good parents, people I now live with and they were well off, he was just being a spoiled brat. When you think that people usually only wind up in that situation because they fear for their life or have absolutely no recourse, it kind of makes you sick.
God knows what she saw in him... still, long time ago.

__________________
I'll sing along, yeah with every emergency. Just sing along, I'm the king of catastrophies. I'm so far gone that deep down inside I think it's fine by me that I'm my own worst enemy.

wyyrm

In the town I call home there's a large city park along the creek that runs through town and that's where a lot of the homeless population (teen and adult) sleeps, though I know of some that sleep in alleys and others that sleep near the administrative buildings. There used to be a nice park downtown with a raised pagoda/stage and people used to sleep under it and under the trees around it, but they've razed that park. So now the transient population has moved to a different park closer to the creek. Basically, it seems that anywhere dark will suffice, hopefully a little off the beaten path but sometimes not. Where homeless youth sleep depends on what's available, who's already got the choice spots, and how used to living outside they are.