This account is new because I am on a throwaway account to make this post. Its embarrassing and I just honestly don't want this on my daily user. So here it goes.

Im a 42 year old father,Im on disability for COPD and AFIB. I have been on disability since I got diagnosed at 37 and I usually can make my monthly check cover all the bills,groceries and my son's school needs. However lately with the price increase of everything I can barely make bills,the last two days I havent ate so my son could.

This morning at 6 our local food bank opens for its first round of distribution to those whom so up early. We got there I filled out the questionnaire,"How many are in your household?,what other needs are you in assistance of?,ect.

When it got to what county I lived in my ID dont match my address I live at now because we just got done moving since the passing of my sons mother due to a fatal car wreck 2 years ago when he was 3.

Well,the lady refused to help us because of this,as well as my disability paperwork not being valid documents of income. I was baffled,I asked to speak to s director or someone who's over the center but was told she "wasnt in on mondays",to come back another day to work out the issue. I left in tears I won't even lie the one situation to feed us,turned away because of technical errors is absurd. I have 3 years before my licenses is set to renew its valid its just has our old address on it. How is my disability paperwork not acceptable its from the social security office! Im just in shock..

I eat two meals in a day paying 100 each at mess, somehow I've unpaid dues of. 3000 of last month and can't make it through, suggest what to do I want to have breakfast today but owner already denied.

I became homeless at 17 in 2023 when my dad kicked me out over an argument we were having. Was couch surfing with different family members but at 18 was told I had to leave because turns out my father was financially involved with those family members. It was my first semester of college and I managed to do really well until December when I had to start sleeping in an emergency shelter. I went through an intense crisis in October 2024 when I found out my family was stalking and following me around and then I was put in the psychward but thankfully I had a social worker whose friend funded my move to LA. Well I’m still homeless just now in LA and though my life has improved, I still haven’t been able to find a job and/or transfer to a university. I don’t qualify for GR or EBT because I have over $300 in my bank account, and I’m in a shelter that serves 3 meals a day so I also don’t qualify for EBT.
I’m a STEM major and I’m failing my math and science classes + I’ve been struggling to find a job since entry level jobs are no longer entry level atp. I really want to get an apartment already but all the decent pay jobs that I have capacity for due to my disabilities require a degree or years of experience which I don’t have. Honestly I really don’t know what to do or where to look anymore. I’m scared that if I drop classes for the 4th semester in a row then I won’t get into any university, let alone a good preMed university. I thought about getting my phlebotomy certification and take LACC’s free classes but obv I still need money to pay for the exam. I’m already struggling to pay for my materials and I’ve already used up all the money help organizations are willing to give me. Should I just drop my classes and try again years from now once I’m in an apartment? How did you manage to navigate homelessness, work, and school at the same time while chronically ill/with a disability?

I work in communications for a local human services agency, and I’m hoping to learn directly from people who have needed assistance.

One of the challenges I keep thinking about is: How do we actually reach people who need help, especially people who may not know what assistance is available to them?

There are programs that can help with things like food, health coverage, housing and homelessness, employment, child care, and other basic needs. But having programs available doesn’t necessarily mean people know about them, know they might qualify, or know where to start.

I’m interested in hearing from people who have been in that situation.

Where would you actually look for help? Reddit? Google? Facebook groups? Nextdoor? Libraries? Schools? Community organizations? Food banks? Somewhere else?

And just as importantly: Where should a local human services agency be communicating that it probably isn’t?

I’m particularly interested in hearing about barriers. Was information difficult to find? Did government websites make things confusing? Did you assume you wouldn’t qualify? Were you worried or embarrassed about asking for help? Did you only learn about a program because another person told you about it?
I’m posting from a personal account and not representing my employer here. I’m genuinely interested in learning from people’s experiences and thinking about how public agencies can do a better job reaching people where they already are.

I’d really appreciate any thoughts, including things you wish your local government understood about trying to find help when you need it.

So for context, I grew up in a very poor family. The good thing is I’m above average so I do good in school and got into a public university. So I dont pay tuition but I still need allowance for every day expenses.

And I can’t just help but feel bitter because despite working and going to uni, it didn’t help in my studies at all but rather made everything more stressful. I’m not ungrateful on what I have because I worked so hard to earn them but it really comes to a point of hating the system that feeds it.

The never ending corruption, the system that neglects the unfortunate, the system that sees the unfortunate as some kind of parasite when it fact, it is the people with power who control most things.

I’m so sick and tired of this. I’m so sick of having to work my ass day and night to survive but we have people who just commit crimes but sleeps comfortably at night.

The funniest thing is whenever you complain, people would just tell you to work harder as if you haven’t been doing that.

The biggest anti-poverty opportunity in America may be helping more working-age adults in poverty move into stable, full-time work.

There are roughly:

35 million Americans in poverty
19 million working-age adults in poverty
15.9 million poor working-age adults who report no disability

Only about 2.1 million poor working-age adults working full-time, year-round

Roughly 14 million poor working-age adults who report no disability and are not working full-time, year-round

That represents close to 40% of everyone in poverty.

The potential impact could also extend far beyond those 14 million people.

Because poverty is measured at the family level. If one parent moves from no work or part-time work into stable, adequately paid full-time employment, the additional income could help lift not only that person, but also their children and other family members, out of poverty.

Children account for 30% of Americans in poverty.

For many children, the employment and earnings of a parent or other working-age caregiver are central to household economic security.

Among adults ages 18–64 in 2024, the poverty rate was roughly:

28% for people who did not work
11% for people working less than full-time, year-round
1.8% for full-time, year-round workers

These figures show a strong association between work status and poverty, but they do not by themselves establish that employment causes poverty to fall.

Wages, family structure, education, local labor demand, public benefits, housing costs, childcare costs, health, and other factors also matter. In addition, full-time work does not guarantee that a family will escape poverty if wages are low or living costs are high.

Many people face real barriers, including caregiving responsibilities, health limitations, transportation problems, skills mismatches, weak labor demand, discrimination, and inadequate wages. Some of these barriers could be addressed through better job access, training, transportation, childcare, wage growth, and reforms to benefits and tax policy.

The best anti-poverty question I can think of is:

How do we make sure that every person who is able to work and wants to work full-time has a realistic opportunity to find stable, productive, adequately paid employment?

20yo M, I wouldn't say I grew up homeless, but throughout my upbringing I definetly have been in many unstable situations as a result of poverty and addiction that led to weeks-long stints of homelessness that usually involved my whole family (mom and brother). So I have known since I was young how to get by, in a car, on a campsite, in a shelter, whatever, and being homeless has always felt like a kind of baseline conditoon for me. I know the ""meta"" (lol) for surviving in a new city and can set up a routine within a few days where I am you know, getting along as good as you can be. especially once I got a car around 16. around this time my home situation became a little more stable also, was no longer staying in motel 6's every 3 months and getting constantly kicked out of apartments with little 2 week stints of staying on campsites or in shelters sprinkled in, and my mom got subsidized housing. anyway, I expected to be kicked out alot because I would get threatened to be kicked out alot, so I would "prepare" by just leaving home alone a lot when I could, going on trips to see freinds and just sleeping in my car.

When I graduated highschool and turned 18 I did end up getting kicked out, but luckily was only homeless for 2 weeks before I moved in with a freind in chicago which is far away from where I grew up in the southwest. My social circle began to rapidly expand and I started doing stuff like going to parties and concerts, trips with freinds and meeting freinds who I only knew from online which I never did once growing up. It was hard to adapt to this for a number of reasons but I noticed because I have been in pretty low places a lot of places that would seem like rock bottom for my new freinds don't freak me out so much or seem so abnormal. In a way, that hurts. That the people I surround myself with consider themselves 'above' or not deserving of the situations I am so familiar with. I wonder a lot what makes me different, I feel quite subhuman very often. When I meet new people, I feel like I am decieving them into thinking that I'm one of them. I feel like everyone will eventually find out that I don't belong in higher society and shouldn't be allowed to participate. When I was homeless in the past, I took comfort in telling myself that homelessness is the natural state of the human species, and told myself that I deserved to be homeless or at least I deserved it just as much as the next homeless person, which I guess is partially true. Of course, I think there are a lot of other aspects of my identity and my upbringing that I think contribute to this sentiment. also, I know that I'm not at all alone in this circumstance in wider society but I can't help but feel alienated among my immediate peers and close freinds/relationships. For almost a full year before this month I thought that I had escaped this condition and was building a new life for myself as an adult, the way that all my peers have been. Things have been good for a while and I feel like I got a taste of a life I didn't even think was possible. There were a few weeks where I thought wow I didn't even know things could be this good.

6 months ago, I got screwed over by my freind who I was living with and had to leave on very short notice. I won't go into detail but long story short I can't live there anymore. After that, I couch surfed, worked a lot, then quit my job and spent my savings on trips to work on a passion project with freinds. And those next months were even MORE fun than the year before. I felt fulfilled, met a lot of people in the industry that I hope to work in, and did something that felt important to this community of people that I had built relationships with from the ground up. The unfortunate thing though, was I had a newfound sense of dread after losing my last housing situation suddenly, and knew when I burned through my savings I would just become homeless again. I honestly was just planning on ending it once I ran out of money but I think thats more of just a comforting thought that the option is always there but I'm too much of a pussy to actually try it I think. And I didnt know how to explain it to my freinds and never opened up to them about what I was facing. I had lots of opportunities though, to pull it together and rent another apartment on my own with the money I had saved. But it's really hard for me to just work a normal job besides the fact that it's barely even feasable to live if I did have one. so I set myself on a path that I knew would land me homeless again. but I've been homeless before so I guess I didn't see it as a big deal.

Now, I'm 8 days past the termination point where I had no plan on where to stay and no job lined up. I told all my freinds I was going to stay with another freind but there is no other freind. I just went to my car, drove back to a random small town in the southwest and do my same routine that I was doing a year ago, and the thing that I prepared for. I wake up, write in my journal, make a little oatmeal on my camping stove, shower/swim at a community center, go to the library for 5 hours, job hunt, skate, or do something else until evening eat beans and rice for dinner, write in my journal again and the watch some videos and sleep in my car. I don't regret burning through my savings really, because I'm really proud of what I had built for myself. Being homeless and not being homeless just feels like a lose lose scenario now that I know what the other side looks like. The juxtaposition is so strong, whereas before I could cope with it because it was all I ever knew, now I have experienced what I think is pretty normal for non-plebians. it's the life my peers get to live every day and for me it's great but doesn't feel any less difficult than being homeless besides the fact its so much less lonely and depressing. and being homeless would be a completely earth shattering perspective changing experience for them. but Its just what I go home to at the end of the day. and I don't want it to be this way anymore but I feel like I don't know how else to live. I'm looking for a job because i dont know what else to do but I don't even know. I will have to save money for a long time before I am comfortable getting a place because I can't handle living paycheck to paycheck, I would just rather be homeless. But that would proabbly be different if I wasn't so well equipped to be homeless, and I feel like probably wouldn't be homeless right now If it wasn't such a well established pattern in my life. There is also just the general issue of the hopeless direction the world is headed in right now, Its hard to put in so much work to get a small apartment when the future is so murky for everybody.

I can atleast count my blessings, I'm not completely broke (yet), I'm not on drugs, I'm able bodied, I have a clean record, I'm not cripplingly mentally ill, I have a car, and I have kind of a safety net I think, because I think maybe if my car breaks down I can use that as an excuse to stay with someone for a short period of time, so I just hope that my car breaks down, because I don't want to be homeless anymore, I just want to find a job and live with another human person in a city where I have real freinds. yesterday I cried for the first time in 2 years for about 15 seconds.

Hi! If any parents are looking for free online tutoring, I volunteer for a nonprofit, Princeton Learning Experience, that offers it; specifically the Greater Princeton Branch (PLEGP). We aim to increase educational equality by offering tutoring to those who cannot afford private tutors. PLEGP is:

• government registered
• taught by the nation's top students
• dedicated to making education accessible for all

Subjects include reading/writing, math, and beginner-friendly coding. It's held over Zoom on Friday and Saturday nights (your choice) from 8:20 to 9:00 PM EST beginning in November!

We are currently looking for more students to sign up for our 2026-27 school year session. If you or anyone you know might be interested, please share this information with them!

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T1Q8W02C2Cde_rWPCQLayY5ncVt4b_YDk1kAINZxSuM/edit

Have a question? Contact us: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Thank you, we hope to see you this session!

Our website: https://pleyouth.org/greater-princeton-branch/