Homeless people in Alaska? (Anchorage, Fairbanks: motel, find a job, voucher)

[rppearso]

I am just a few months away from being homeless, I can relate to the unemployed professional on here, we keep focusing on the natives and people holding signs but even in the letters to santa thread kids are asking for basic nessecities. Jobs are not all around for thoes willing to work sorry to break that to everyone, I was almost laid off in may and kept my job but started looking for a new job because the lay offs were to close for comfort and have not even had one interview since then. Working fast food is for high school and college kids living with mom and dad, 9$ an hour is not even close to enough to support yourself, it might by food but will not buy you rent or keep you from freezing to death. I have come to the realization that if I am laid off here I will definitly have to go state side if not out of country to work as an engineer, the jobs just are not here, it takes a very high income in alaska to maintain any sort of quality of life here. Working for 9$ an hour to feed yourself and hope you dont freeze to death is not good enough. We need more well paying jobs for people otherwise anchorage is going to disolve.

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by rppearso

I am just a few months away from being homeless, I can relate to the unemployed professional on here, we keep focusing on the natives and people holding signs but even in the letters to santa thread kids are asking for basic nessecities. Jobs are not all around for thoes willing to work sorry to break that to everyone, I was almost laid off in may and kept my job but started looking for a new job because the lay offs were to close for comfort and have not even had one interview since then. Working fast food is for high school and college kids living with mom and dad, 9$ an hour is not even close to enough to support yourself, it might by food but will not buy you rent or keep you from freezing to death. I have come to the realization that if I am laid off here I will definitly have to go state side if not out of country to work as an engineer, the jobs just are not here, it takes a very high income in alaska to maintain any sort of quality of life here. Working for 9$ an hour to feed yourself and hope you dont freeze to death is not good enough. We need more well paying jobs for people otherwise anchorage is going to disolve.

If you are a well educated Engineer, then look at starting you own company and market yourself in your field.

The word "Can't" gets thrown around a lot when people are fully able to
do something about being out of a job. I have had to do some pretty low rated jobs to get by in my youth. Started some companies and did pretty well and sold them later on. There is always a job that can be found if you look.

When you leave though, my PFD goes up!

Good luck in your choice.

[Huckleberry3911948]

Originally Posted by lonewolf39

i currently am a homeless person not cause of my own reasonings but cause i got layed off and then didnt have the money to continue paying rent and feeding myself. I have applyed to many different jobs in the last few months trying to get a job so i wont have to live in the cold this winter, but from the way the economy is ill be lucky to get something. The worst thing about being homeless is that you know that your dad is also homeless and now his son is also homeless but not for the same reasons. Well enjoy your homes everyone that makes fun of homeless people cause someday you might be out were i am and start wanting help and you wont get it.

been there done that (albeit not in dead winter in alaska). but what makes me different is the experience was so traumatic & repulsive to me i took steps to make sure it did not ever happen again.
not so for many many i know and have known, they adjust and remain in it.

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by rppearso

I am just a few months away from being homeless, I can relate to the unemployed professional on here, we keep focusing on the natives and people holding signs but even in the letters to santa thread kids are asking for basic nessecities. Jobs are not all around for thoes willing to work sorry to break that to everyone, I was almost laid off in may and kept my job but started looking for a new job because the lay offs were to close for comfort and have not even had one interview since then. Working fast food is for high school and college kids living with mom and dad, 9$ an hour is not even close to enough to support yourself, it might by food but will not buy you rent or keep you from freezing to death. I have come to the realization that if I am laid off here I will definitly have to go state side if not out of country to work as an engineer, the jobs just are not here, it takes a very high income in alaska to maintain any sort of quality of life here. Working for 9$ an hour to feed yourself and hope you dont freeze to death is not good enough. We need more well paying jobs for people otherwise anchorage is going to disolve.

Apparently you are still working; it sounds like you are anticipating being laid off.

Look, if you really are an engineer, you've got job skills that are in demand.

I know you're young, but as I said in another thread, a lot of us here have lived through recessions before. We did what we had to do and survived.

[warptman]

Met, he is buying too many beers. That's all he's complaining about, how spendy it is to get a pitcher of it.

[oneforthebooks]

I can say something to this subject I recon.

Hmmm hard to talk about but here goes... Bad decisions in hind site and then to know I was going to be homeless I brought myself and everything I needed to buy over the counter property in Ak, so i could homestead. After running and driving and running and driving some more, it came to pass that the state of AK had no clue what properties were for sale and what were'nt for sale. I realy mean that. It was the DNR office and the website that sent me to a property I looked for days for plate and easment tree's found them finally in the snow and all and then went back to enter into the contract only to find that the DNR had sold the property 1 1/2 years ago even though four days earlier it was available on there site and concured by the office at the office.

It burned my resources to neel. I passed the zero barrier of no return about a week ago. I have managed to stay in a hotel (cheaper than most and the cheapest I could find) for the last couple days as to try to get my thoughts about me, take a shower and try to find someway to survive. I have been in my truck and officially homeless now for some 24 days.

I was a in entertainment in los angeles (use to work livestock in MT) and I have fans in over 120 countries on all 7 contenants. This could happen to anyone. Like I said I made poor choices. Wrongfully convicted in 07' of a crime I didn't committ , I set out in civil littigation to be exhonorated and get back the money I had lost thru the criminal portion. Thousandsssssss of dollars later I found myself getting an appollogy and that was it. As that appollogy was set to come the economy dealt me a terrible blow and work ran out cold. struggeling to pay rent and car payments everything happen so quick. I always wanted to homestead Alaska and had the know how, so I sold everything and headed north in a daunting journey

First of all I am here because of my choices and second because of circumstances beyond my control and third because of the economy. With only winter clothes and no phone for prospective employers, no address and truck days or even minutes from being repo'd, what does a person do?

I have been to the shelters and i have to say, I wouldn't stay there. I don't do drugs and I don't drink. I have an education that I can no longer use because of a car accident (kid rear ended me and made me physically in elegible) which also at the same time ended me re-entering the millitary as an officer that I was days (lieterally) from signing a contract to do.

Now I find myself here in Anchorage with my dog a truck full of everything i own (that could get taken at any minute) and a big wow... I love alaska though

I have family and friends in the lower 48 but they are all as strapped as the rest of the country so monetary help is not possible, and even I were to get out of ALaska I still would have no place to stay LOLOL

I recon in this situation people like myself anyway, start to feel hopeless and ashamed that we have gotten to a point where it is this bad. Homeless shelters are scary places feeled with drug addicts and alcholics, and mental issues. that is not to say that there are not some average people there but come on lets get real. I have been to the st. francis shelter in Anchorage and i will take the brass highway before living there. In the 15 minutes I was there 90% of the people i saw I never would want to be around much less sleep next to and have to sleep with one eye open. I'm not trying to be mean but I just choose not to be around people that use drugs or abuse alcohol. Then where does my dog go. As big a pain in the ass it is to have a dog and be homeless because now you have to mouths to feed, I think he is the only thing that has kept me sane and not pulled a one way ticket to the big endless sleep.

I still have some things to pawn and still have my truck for now and a hundred or so dollars, so I recon the big endless sleep will have to wait for another day.

I have tried to use my old education to get a job and I was told by an expert that do to my physical issue, it was gonna be difficult or next to impossible but I have them working on it anyway out of hap chance. During that conversation though things were said to me and it woke me up real quick. Homeless people reach a point when they no longer obviously have address's or phones, and at this point it becomes a hundred fold more difficult to get a job. No shower, maybe an alrm of some sort to wake you for work. No phone to be called into work or address for w-4's r anything like that. No money at first to clean your clothes. So, you start to get real and the reality is, how many jobs are there in walking distance to a shelter. If you don't go to the shelter then where do you do laundry or what do you use as a phone.

pay phones are a ***** to find in ALaksa... That is from experience....

I think people want to care about homeless people, but they want to care as long as it's not a major influence in their life. I mean who knows what you're getting yourself into if you were to take a homeless person in and try to help get them on track right? Is that person a rapist a murder, a wanted felon, a drug addict, a thief that will rob your house the first time they are alone, an aggressive or not alcholic, or is the person sorta normal like me and just down. You can't tell ahy? Oh well... anyway thats my two cents

it was good to talk about it i guess

[Rance]

You can't find a dish washing job or anything? I've had to lower m7y standards on more than one occasion as far as work. I'm not too proud. 9 or 10 bucks an hour is way better than spending 9 or 10 bucks a day and no way to replenish it.

[arctichomesteader]

I know the DNR has at times misplaced paperwork so land was listed as available when in fact it had sold and the paperwork had been misplaced...but not that often. I had no problem buying 20 acres from the DNR, I can't imagine you burned up all your resources just looking at land unless A) you were flying out to bush property all over or B) you didn't go up with enough to begin with.

Secondly, pinch your pennies and get a trapping license...and scrounge up some wire for snares and get to work somewhere. Beavers are an easy way to start, if you sell them in the round or green, re-invest some of what they sell for, for more equipment...or buy a handful of 110 conibears (Duke brand are a few bucks each new) and get some marten, they sell for decent prices still...

If you can't find any work at all that is...

There's money around you but it comes in the form of work...

[blueflames50]

sorry that you have landed in this situation and I hope that in the future others read this. This is exactly why the people on this forum say what they do when posters think it is the land of money and future wealth....that they can just pack up and land in Alaska and everything is gonna be just fine.
As Rance said...any job or two with money coming in is better than no money at all. Hope things turn around for you. Best of luck

[Grannysroost]

It is December, winter in AK...You are living in your truck with everything you own due to not being able to find DNR land to buy to homestead?...Now back to it is December in Alaska...If you could buy the land, might I ask how you intended to live, what to live in, how to pay for necessary supplies needed to even begin to build a shelter, food, pay for heat, etc.? Somehow this does not compute...