Motel Living and Slowly Dying
It&#x27;s very well written, but feels a little like it doesn&#x27;t quite make the point it set out to make.  It&#x27;s a good read from the perspective of a richness of language and insight into a lifestyle many here will not have familiarity with. But, I don&#x27;t know, when I was homeless, a hotel stay was a brief foray back into civilization. It was a chance to get a proper shower in a proper bathroom facility, unlike the homeless showers back in downtown San Diego that I was all too happy to leave behind. It was a chance to watch a TV like normal people do.<p>It sits a bit uncomfortably with me that the meaning (of hotel stays) for those living precariously is cast in such negative terms. Perhaps that seems necessary to motivate people to try to do something about the problem, but I am not so sure that works. The pity with which other people clearly saw me when I was on the street rarely motivated anyone to help me, though I was only asking for help with figuring out how to effectively make money online. The pity itself seemed to be a barrier to the connections and useful information I desired. The pity seemed rather corrosive to my finances and not some means to channel assistance my way.<p>While I can understand the strong feelings people have about how galling our high rates of homelessness are, I am not so convinced that this framing is particularly helpful to some cause of trying to make headway against such things.