Title: Dear HN,<p>Apologies in advance for posting something non-technical and personal, but I have no other place online to ask.<p>I am having an emergency. I have been homeless in Los Angeles for the past 2 years. Prior to this, I was a developer for over 10 years. Mostly I worked at small startups.  And let me just get the stereotypes out of the way: I don&#x27;t do drugs, I don&#x27;t drink, I&#x27;m not a criminal, and I&#x27;m not mentally ill. I&#x27;m just a spectacularly unlucky coder who worked for a series of not so great startups that failed, slowly ran out of money and savings between jobs, and fell through the cracks to become totally stranded living on the streets. I have no family to ask for help--only-child, parents deceased. The only reason I have survived this long was by working part-time on 2 remote contracting gigs, but I was paid sub-minimum wage. It&#x27;s extremely difficult to do remote development work without electricity nor WiFi. The Public Library and Starbucks have been life savers.<p>I am now down to my last $40 dollars and I am panicking.  That&#x27;s it. I expect to run out of food in about 4 days. Then I guess it&#x27;s the end for me. But I refuse to lay on the sidewalk and starve while pedestrians step over me. I&#x27;m afraid I am going to be pushed into doing something dire that there is no coming back from. I wish it were otherwise, but that&#x27;s the one thing I still have control over, so I&#x27;ll do it on my own terms.<p>The nearest food bank to where I camp is over a 10 mile walk away, but what they provide requires refrigeration and a stove. You&#x27;d think there would be more food banks for the homeless in the 2nd biggest city in America, which is also home to over 20 billionaires. Food stamps are not an option for me because they tell me I don&#x27;t qualify, due to the new Federal rule change (Thanks Trump). Local assistance from the city welfare office is needlessly complicated and I have been shocked to discover just how little is actually available.
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