"Some facts about homeless people"

SOME FACTS ABOUT HOMELESS PEOPLE

1. A professor at Princeton found via research that our brains sometimes process images of people who are poor or homeless as if they are not humans, but just things.

2. There is a legendary hobo rock climber known as ‘Chongo’ who, while illegally living inside Yosemite National Park for almost a decade, made a life by scavenging food and writing a book called “The Homeless Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”.

3. During 1920s to 30s there was a homeless man named Michael Malloy who lived in New York. He survived being intentionally fed Antifreeze, Turpentine, Rat poison, being left in -14 degree weather and hit by a tax. His nickname became “Mike the Durable”

4. Many regions in the US, most recently being the state of Hawaii, have tried solving their homeless problem by providing one-way plane tickets out of the area.

5. There’s a whole generation of “Homeless” Japanese youth who live and sleep solely in Internet Cafés.

6. In North Carolina, a 59-year-old man homeless once held up a bank for $1 with the purpose of being sent to prison to get free healthcare.

7. In 2012, a homeless woman in Calgary, Alberta found a purse with $10,400 in it and turned it into the police.

8. Before Sylvester Stallone sold the script for “Rocky”, he was homeless and sold his dog for $50. A week later, he sold the script and bought his dog back for $3000.

9. There has been a National Hobo Convention in Iowa where a hobo is crowned King (and sometimes Queen).

10. 23% of the homeless in the US are veterans. 45% of them have a diagnosable mental illness and 67% of them have served 3 or more tours.

11. Paula Corb and her two daughters lost their home and have lived in their minivan for four years. They did laundry in a church, went to the bathroom at gas stations, and did their studies under street lamps.

12. In 2005, documentary film-makers gave a homeless man $100,000, and followed him to see what he would do with the money. Six months later, he was completely broke and back in the same place he was before the windfall.

13. At least 30 US cities have criminalized feeding the homeless

14. In Gothenburg, Sweden you can stay at the Faktum Hotels. However, it does not have its own building and rooms: guests are offered a choice of one of ten places where homeless sleep. For example, you can book a place in a sleeping bag under a tree in a city Park or under a bridge or in an abandoned factory. All the money raised by the hotel goes to help the real homeless.