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It sounds as though you were homeless by your choice, not circumstances. If you had a drug problem it’s not obvious. Not abusing drugs also makes a big difference in staying clean and dressing better. If you were a student, wanting to live the vagabond life is fairly common. I used to dream about hitching around Europe, but never did, although a friend hitchhiked all over Israel when she was in college. Now that’s adventure.
Living that kind of life is way different from a lot of the homeless you see around Olympia. On one street corner, there is usually a homeless man, either crazy or really drugged out. I saw him yesterday, he was sitting on the ground, yelling and failing his arms around. Someone like that has no chance of either enjoying the vagabond life or helping himself.
The homeless problem is spreading, although they seem to favor the PNW more than the warmer south. I’m always surprised they all don’t head south to San Diego for the winter. Spending the winter up here in a cold, leaky tent, seems like they are doing it the hard way.
Well, I don't know if it was a preferred choice as much as just getting used to it.
I have found that there are advantages and drawbacks to practically every situation, it mostly depends on what particular drawbacks or advantages for the individual.
Back about 1989 I had a house in West Covina Ca. I was paying off, had a pretty good job as an electronic tech/ automation specialist at a place I'd been at 5 years...
Then we started losing contracts, we made parts for all the PC hard drive companies, Connors, Seagate, MiniScribe, IBM, HP, DEC...
And we went from 240 employees down to 45 in less than 2 years, I was laid off. (Overseas labor, Dominican Republic, at the time labor was 25 cents an hour.)
I struggled to keep my house, the mortgage company was trying to work with me, but after 6 months it was going to go down in foreclosure, I did manage to cash out with about $3000, the "market" was bad then,
In the end I lost my home, my possessions, even my dog.
So, I tarried for several months in El Monte Ca, a depressed area where lots of homeless dwell, looking for just any kind of job but not finding.
I was in the military and had done a lot of travelling, I had been just about everywhere except the PNW and figured maybe I would give it a try, camp outside Boeing until they gave me a job.
Well, every time Boeing lays off 10,000 employees there's 10,000 out there with fresh resumes looking for my job!
So I took whatever job I could get, did a few months at Elephant car wash downtown, worked in restaurants, etc.
One day I was going for a job interview for an electro-mechanical tech in Factoria.
I saw a large wooded area next to Coal Creek Parkway: "It looks like a man could live in there." and that's what I did, fortunately the bus line took me right to my job at the Warwick hotel downtown, I would work til 11 pm and take the last bus to my camp.
One day I had a day off and decided to take the bus line all the way to the end and discovered Issaquah, my favorite small town in America and moved there.
Took casual labor jobs, hung around enough to start becoming a "townie" knew just about everyone.
At this time I was camping at the edge of town and doing landscaping with a friend, but eventually I bought a rake and started my own company, went around knocking on doors and quickly moved up to doing apartments.
Nowadays I have two crews of three, six employees and I make about $30 an hour in my business.
I consider myself "semi-retired," I get out with the guys every so often, I specialize in removing small, but stubborn tree stumps.
No, it's just like the South. It's exactly the same. In fact, no need for southerners to come here, they are better off staying where they are. We have trash and homeless everywhere. Appalachia is the real nirvana.
This is a very ignorant and elitist post here. So I guess now Washington can put up a sign saying "Southerners go HOME!"
Clearly you know nothing about the south or the smokies. Parts of these areas (not all) are as equally undesirable if not more so than the undesirable areas of the PNW. I would like to see YOU move there and see how long you last with those bigoted views of the smokies being a paradise all around.
Meanwhile I will encourage any other southerner who wants to come here to move. Wa is a great place (aside from the homeless problem in metro areas) with beautiful views that are quite different from the east. I also plan to stay here as long as I like thank you very much.
Also if you are an LGBT, Christian not belonging to a church, atheist or agnostic, Vegetarian/Vegan, health nut, Liberal or any combination of those, you WILL NOT have a good time in those places. Trust me I know.
Also if you are an LGBT, Christian not belonging to a church, atheist or agnostic, Vegetarian/Vegan, health nut, Liberal or any combination of those, you WILL NOT have a good time in those places. Trust me I know.
You mean only the rural South, because Atlanta is South of the Smokies, and yet it has an enormous gay population and votes solidly democratic.
Well, I don't know if it was a preferred choice as much as just getting used to it.
I have found that there are advantages and drawbacks to practically every situation, it mostly depends on what particular drawbacks or advantages for the individual.
Back about 1989 I had a house in West Covina Ca. I was paying off, had a pretty good job as an electronic tech/ automation specialist at a place I'd been at 5 years...
Then we started losing contracts, we made parts for all the PC hard drive companies, Connors, Seagate, MiniScribe, IBM, HP, DEC...
And we went from 240 employees down to 45 in less than 2 years, I was laid off. (Overseas labor, Dominican Republic, at the time labor was 25 cents an hour.)
I struggled to keep my house, the mortgage company was trying to work with me, but after 6 months it was going to go down in foreclosure, I did manage to cash out with about $3000, the "market" was bad then,
In the end I lost my home, my possessions, even my dog.
So, I tarried for several months in El Monte Ca, a depressed area where lots of homeless dwell, looking for just any kind of job but not finding.
I was in the military and had done a lot of travelling, I had been just about everywhere except the PNW and figured maybe I would give it a try, camp outside Boeing until they gave me a job.
Well, every time Boeing lays off 10,000 employees there's 10,000 out there with fresh resumes looking for my job!
So I took whatever job I could get, did a few months at Elephant car wash downtown, worked in restaurants, etc.
One day I was going for a job interview for an electro-mechanical tech in Factoria.
I saw a large wooded area next to Coal Creek Parkway: "It looks like a man could live in there." and that's what I did, fortunately the bus line took me right to my job at the Warwick hotel downtown, I would work til 11 pm and take the last bus to my camp.
One day I had a day off and decided to take the bus line all the way to the end and discovered Issaquah, my favorite small town in America and moved there.
Took casual labor jobs, hung around enough to start becoming a "townie" knew just about everyone.
At this time I was camping at the edge of town and doing landscaping with a friend, but eventually I bought a rake and started my own company, went around knocking on doors and quickly moved up to doing apartments.
Nowadays I have two crews of three, six employees and I make about $30 an hour in my business.
I consider myself "semi-retired," I get out with the guys every so often, I specialize in removing small, but stubborn tree stumps.
Thx
Interesting story Thx! You weren’t a student but your life circumstances changed for the worse. It’s unfortunate but things worked out all right for you. I also lived in Covina at that time and had a job in El Monte, I worked in a vet’s office. You’re right, El Monte was definitely seedy but Covina is a nice area or was, haven’t been back there in awhile.
Issaquah is a world of difference compared to Olympia and the rural areas where I live. Olympia has exploded with homeless recently and outlying areas have litter from the camps and trashy country yards. Not everyone of course, but enough people move to the country to do what they want to do.
Your job is good for being outdoors, which is a great thing about living here, because you always want to be outdoors. Issaquah is very nice, you picked an excellent location, one of my favorites.
You mean only the rural South, because Atlanta is South of the Smokies, and yet it has an enormous gay population and votes solidly democratic.
Nope. My hometown is a large military hometown with a huge college and yet everything I've said applies to it. And a lot of other non-rural not necessarily big cities.
Atlanta is a different animal. Same for Nashville too.
This is a very ignorant and elitist post here. So I guess now Washington can put up a sign saying "Southerners go HOME!"
Clearly you know nothing about the south or the smokies. Parts of these areas (not all) are as equally undesirable if not more so than the undesirable areas of the PNW. I would like to see YOU move there and see how long you last with those bigoted views of the smokies being a paradise all around.
Meanwhile I will encourage any other southerner who wants to come here to move. Wa is a great place (aside from the homeless problem in metro areas) with beautiful views that are quite different from the east. I also plan to stay here as long as I like thank you very much.
Also if you are an LGBT, Christian not belonging to a church, atheist or agnostic, Vegetarian/Vegan, health nut, Liberal or any combination of those, you WILL NOT have a good time in those places. Trust me I know.
That’s a good idea, let’s overrun Washington with people from the south! On these threads, when someone mentions moving to Washington, locals jump in with helpful advise on everything from restaurants to places to live. If anything negative is mentioned, it’s always the rain.
When people move here and find out for themselves about the negatives, Seattle Freeze, homeless, drug problems and they mention it, then the attitude is ‘if you don’t like it, go home’. I don’t get it, why all the helpful advise, if you tell the person six months later to leave? I guess people are just expected to suck it up and never say a bad word about Washington. Jeff is not from Washington, so locals should write and tell him to leave, they don’t like what Amazon has done for the economy here.
The smokies are far from a paradise and as far as scenic beauty, Washington is hard to beat. But no place is perfect and newcomers have earned the right to criticize by contributing to the economy and paying taxes. If someone wants to move to the south, they can criticize away. Doesn’t bother me at all.
Interesting story Thx! You weren’t a student but your life circumstances changed for the worse. It’s unfortunate but things worked out all right for you. I also lived in Covina at that time and had a job in El Monte, I worked in a vet’s office. You’re right, El Monte was definitely seedy but Covina is a nice area or was, haven’t been back there in awhile.
Issaquah is a world of difference compared to Olympia and the rural areas where I live. Olympia has exploded with homeless recently and outlying areas have litter from the camps and trashy country yards. Not everyone of course, but enough people move to the country to do what they want to do.
Your job is good for being outdoors, which is a great thing about living here, because you always want to be outdoors. Issaquah is very nice, you picked an excellent location, one of my favorites.
Well, it's quite a small world after all!
My house was in West Covina, right off Workman Ave, but I did attend Covina High and they are both pretty nice towns, middle-class "bedroom" cities.
I had a job in El Monte as an electronics tech at Birtcher Bio-medical, the last job I had in Cali was in Rosemead.
Came up here in 1991, and I should clarify that I was homeless on and off for 12 years, every so often I would rent a motel for a week or find a shared housing sitch that inevitably would go bad after a couple months for one reason or another.
I made enough to live in say Chinatown and commute to my jobs in Issaquah each day, but I guess I preferred to save the money and the hassle and eventually found a room in the old Grand Central hotel there on Sunset Way in Issaquah about 2003, that's when I considered my homeless odyssey finished.
Nowadays I live closer to Maple Valley.
My retirement property is closer to you guys in Lilliwaup, between the canal and the forest.
I toy with the idea of going back to So. Cal and taking a small tour of the places I lived and worked, but so far I just do it on Google Earth.
You know, in West Covina you could get a ticket for parking a car on your lawn, you stack up any junk at all and the city was on you the next day.
My house was in West Covina, right off Workman Ave, but I did attend Covina High and they are both pretty nice towns, middle-class "bedroom" cities.
I had a job in El Monte as an electronics tech at Birtcher Bio-medical, the last job I had in Cali was in Rosemead.
Came up here in 1991, and I should clarify that I was homeless on and off for 12 years, every so often I would rent a motel for a week or find a shared housing sitch that inevitably would go bad after a couple months for one reason or another.
I made enough to live in say Chinatown and commute to my jobs in Issaquah each day, but I guess I preferred to save the money and the hassle and eventually found a room in the old Grand Central hotel there on Sunset Way in Issaquah about 2003, that's when I considered my homeless odyssey finished.
Nowadays I live closer to Maple Valley.
My retirement property is closer to you guys in Lilliwaup, between the canal and the forest.
I toy with the idea of going back to So. Cal and taking a small tour of the places I lived and worked, but so far I just do it on Google Earth.
You know, in West Covina you could get a ticket for parking a car on your lawn, you stack up any junk at all and the city was on you the next day.
Are there no good laws for this in Olympia?
Thx
Rosemead was the exit I took to get to work. Small world indeed. Yes, the valley was a much more desirable and affordable place to live than downtown. I remember shopping in the garment district one day and saw a homeless man standing there and eating out of a trash can. Coming from a clean, quiet town in the south, it was an eye opener.
It sounds as though you made some good decisions for yourself by moving from Issaquah to Maple Valley. That’s another place I wish I had looked at more before deciding to live here. The canal area is also very scenic, I took lots of pictures of the water.
In the CA neighborhood, houses were well kept and no one dumped used beds in the front yard, lol. Olympia doesn’t seem to have much in the way of an ordinance for trash dumping. I told my dentist about the trash dumping in areas around the county. Turns out, he lived in Olympia across the street from some meth heads and had the same problem. He lucked out though, the cops came and arrested them and he could stop worrying about his kids coming in contact with them, plus the landlord came and cleaned up the house and yard. Cops are out here sometimes, but things go on as usual.
I know about the ordinance about cars on grass, I kept my house nice and neat, did my yard every week, no trash or junk whatsoever, I decide to wash my car one day and figured I would hose it off thoroughly on a dry patch on my lawn.
I'm hosing off the car and not three minutes in a West Covina cop stops: "Hey, you can't park a car on the lawn!"
Like another poster said, it is more of an urban - rural divide. The culture in Issaquah or Kirkland will be very different from rural Arlington or Sedro Wooley.
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