Is the media source that published the "No to Narcan" story also tracking the spending of my money and disparaging me about that, watching the purchases that I document at the budgeting app that I have at my phone and judging me without having any idea what homeless life is like, despite my having already documented the previous 4 years that the conglomerate's abuse of me has forced me to be homeless?
I pay $170/month for storage that houses the couch, bureau, bed, desk, chair, stools and books that I had at my last apartment. The couch, bureau, desk and chair were used and donated to the Homeless Coalition warehouse, which is where I obtained them when I moved to the ill-fated apartment that I had from March 2013 to February 2014. The bed was a donation from a business that then seemed to hack the hidden, illegal cameras that were in that apartment, watched me in my sleep, and published ads in train stations referencing the voyeurism. The stools were purchased by the agency that placed me in that apartment, and which subsequently did nothing in response to my concerns that the apartment had hidden, illegal cameras.
When I was approved for the second apartment in 2016, I so dreaded that I'd be victimized by voyeurism and forced to move again that there were garbage bags full of papers and court documents from when I was evicted in 2014 that I never went through; the bags were moved to storage in February of 2014, moved from storage in March of 2016, and moved back to storage when I had to move back to the shelter at the end of May 2017.
Transportation is $85/month; that's the total for 4 weeks of paying $21.25/week for a train/bus pass.
My phone is almost $90/month. Buying a smartphone in 2014, from which I could film stalkers and harassers and publish the videos of them as soon as the incidents happened, immediately started to reduce the number of incidents per day that I was harassed and/or stalked. Before I had the smartphone, I had to film the incidents, of which there were hundreds every week, with a digital camera. Then I had to depend on public access computers to be able to publish a fraction of the total number of incidents that happened every day.
It costs at least $5 every time that I have to do my laundry; the Pine Street Inn does not have laundry facilities for guests of the shelter. Some of the day shelters have washers and driers, for which guests have to sign up a week or months in advance. I was permanently barred from Rosie's Place and from the Women's Lunch Place years ago, after being bullied until I couldn't take it anymore. On The Rise has a washer and drier, but my working relationship with that organization was destroyed by the organization's refusal to believe that voyeurism might ever have happened in On The Rise's shower room, by the organization's refusal to acknowledge that I might not be at fault for having been harassed at school last year, and for the organization's total failure to be of any help to me in saving my tenancy at the apartment from which I was forced to move this year. I'm not barred from On The Rise, but I have chosen to try not to have to spend any time there if I can help it, not wanting to be condescended to as if my chronic homelessness is my fault and as if nobody who works there ever had any responsibility to provide something other than a tepid defense to my being accused of being crazy by any of the people in various situations who have abused me and lied about it. Being victim-blamed by anyone is painful; being victim-blamed by people who are underpaid and undertrained to support you does not reduce that pain.
Most of the rest of the money that I spend every month is for food. Even if I had one of the high-school-sized lockers at a shelter, for which homeless people have to be on waiting lists for months, it's against shelter rules to have food in those lockers.
Since neither refrigeration nor food storage nor cooking facilities are regularly available to me, all of the food that I buy has to be either food that doesn't need to be cooked or prepared food. Also, since I have to buy something to be able to sit somewhere that has electricity to charge my phone, and I have to buy something to be able to use a restroom, every day, that "rent" is expensive for the things that people who have never been homeless take for granted, such as electrical sockets and toilets that aren't pay-per-use.
This is the bag that I carry on my back all day, every day:
It's less full than it usually is, because I'm at a laundromat and my clothes are in a machine. It probably weighs between 25 and 30 pounds; that's average for what homeless people have to carry every day.
No code for the picture; I can't help what the floor of the laundromat looks like.
The garbage bags are to wrap my backpack in at night, when I have to put the backpack behind the front desk at the shelter. There is a sign next to the front desk that says that the shelter isn't responsible for lost or stolen items, so if a less-than-scrupulous staff person wanted to steal from my backpack, there would be nothing I could do about it. Even the lockers all have locks on them for which a staff person has the key.
The garbage bags are also for me to be able to have a disposable bag in which to carry the things that I'll need for the 10-minute shower that all of the guests of the shelter have to take every night, to store the clothes that I wore that day, and the clothes that I'll wear tomorrow.
The last function that the garbage bags serve is to prevent the water from the tank top and shorts that I wear into the shower every night from wetting everything else in my backpack during the day. I put the wet, cold tanktop and shorts on every night to preserve what I can of my privacy while showering at the shelter, in case there are hidden, illegal cameras in the showers and the restrooms. I hunch beneath the robe given to me by the shelter each night; that's how I put the wet, cold shorts on. Then I put the wet, cold tanktop on over my shirt, and I take off the shirt that I wore that day, trying not to stretch or tear the shirt and trying not to expose my chest. When I get out of the shower, I put the shelter-issued scrub top on over the wet tanktop and I take off the tanktop. Then I put the small towel given to me by the shelter around my waist. Then I put on the robe. Then I take the wet shorts off. All of that can take at least 5 minutes of the 10 minutes that I have in the shower stall. Guests can be issued a temporary Suspension of Services (meaning that they can't sleep at the shelter the night after the suspension is issued) for taking too long in the shower stalls.
Although it's never pleasant to put on wet, cold clothing, it is especially unpleasant to do that during the winter, after being outside for much of the day. If there are hidden, illegal cameras in the shower rooms at the Pine Street Inn, installed there by unscrupulous staff who have followed the directives of corporations such as Apple and some of the phone companies who have had billboards promoting voyeurism on the building of the women's side of the Pine Street Inn for years, then the conglomerate already watched me putting the tanktop and shorts on and taking them off every night for years when I was homeless before, and those observations never stopped the conglomerate from victim-blaming me, accusing me of wanting or deserving to have my rights violated, and promoting my being victimized by voyeurism everywhere.
I buy all of my clothing at used clothing stores or bargain department stores. People who did not read the page that I published about being stalked and harassed by a security guard the last time that I went to a Good Will store can, although why I haven't stopped thinking that eventually the conglomerate will stop attacking me for being alive, I don't know.
Copyright L. Kochman, July 8, 2017 @ 10:53 a.m.
