Dana, 46, and Calista, 43, are two women in Florida who turned to the subreddit while considering possible layoffs due to long-term unemployment.
Calista tells WIRED that she’s applied to more than a thousand full-time positions since losing her remote job in February 2024 but can’t get an interview. He says he is three months behind on rent. “I’ve never been around homelessness like this before. It’s a new experience,” he says. “It’s really helpful to see stories from other people, to see things they’ve tried, just that camaraderie.”
Dana, who has extensive work experience in software development, says she has been laid off four times since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, most recently in November, in part due to the rise of AI. A single mother has discussed the possibility of living in a tent with her son, who recently graduated from high school. “A lot of people are in similar situations,” Dana says of the stories she’s read online. “It’s actually been more helpful from a mental standpoint. I don’t feel alone.” This is contrary, he says, to the stigma of poverty that he feels in his city.
Politicians and commentators who view homeless people as drug addicts—like former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who ran a failed mayoral campaign in Los Angeles that branded them “thugs” on “super meth”—they misrepresent the issues at play, says Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Program on Homelessness and Housing at UC San Francisco.
“What we’re seeing in the number of people experiencing homelessness is not that we’re suddenly getting this increase in people with mental health or substance use problems,” he says. “What we have is that the rent is too high.”
The brutal ways homeless people are portrayed in the media add to the “heavy burden of homelessness,” Kushel continues, and groups like r/almosthomeless challenge those narratives and make people feel visible.
Keith, 35, of South Carolina, says he tried to kill himself in 2023 after a long battle with alcoholism. He tells how he survived jumping off a bridge but broke his back. After getting a spinal fusion, he found it difficult to work or do anything physical because of his injury, and eventually became homeless. He started sleeping in the forest outside the hospital where he says he sought help from time to time. “I just stayed there, like trying to get into the mental health department or something like that,” Keith says. “They’ll just reject you.”
Later, Keith says, he found a position at a Salvation Army shelter, got a job at a gas station, and in January made the transition to a studio apartment, settling down and “building something that resembled a normal life,” he says. But recently he has begun to worry that he is “watching years of progress disappear in slow motion.” A series of restaurant jobs, including washing dishes and prep work, have proven impossible for her back problem, and she has avoided further treatment for fear of cost. Now he expects to be evicted, and fears returning to the homeless life.
