My Squidoo Lenses, Every Click Helps!

[Kylyssa]

Thank you!

And thank you once again to Chancy for posting an Ask an Atheist module to Reddit!

[glintofpewter]

Writing about your homeless experience. I was moved.

[Kylyssa]

I have some new Squidoo lenses.  Some are weird.  
Anyway, here they are for your viewing pleasure:
How to Make a Fondant Trilobite
How to Make Fondant Seashells
How to Make Fondant Starfish
How to Make a Sandy Beach Cake
Kylyssa's Love Poetry
Atheist Spirituality

[Kylyssa]

A new lens about my struggle with American health care and government agencies - My Own Health Care Crisis.

[Kylyssa]

Let's see, I haven't updated this thread in a while and I have a bunch of new stuff and I've overhauled some older ones.

Some Reasons People Become Homeless, Including Religion
Why Homeless People Don't Use Shelters
From Your Hand to the Homeless - Low cost gifts you can give to homeless people.
Some Solutions to the Problem of Homelessness
How I've Coped with Asperger Syndrome
Sometimes I Get A Little Short - Short-short fiction stories on assorted topics by yours truly.
Recipes for a Holiday Feast - Some of my favorite recipe creations including truffled mashed potatoes with hollandaise and Romano cheese and bourbon glazed sweet potatoes.

[SSY]

From Your Hand to the Homeless - Low cost gifts you can give to homeless people.

I once gave a homeless guy a sandwich and a pint of milk, which caused him to start swearing at me and threatening violence, kind of destroyed my faith in the whole charity thing.

[Whitney]

I found your Aspergers lens very informative because I have friends who have children with Aspergers.  I think I can understand what they are going through better now.   I also have had issues in social situations but not to the extent of not understanding emotions and found it interesting that others have had to study proper conduct too.

I think homeless outreach is something the North Texas Church of Freethought is wanting to add to their charitable outreach program.  However, we are not sure how to go about it.  As SSY, pointed out, I have also had more than one crazy homeless person randomly start yelling at me...but I also know at least some of them are just down on their luck.  Kylyssa, what is the best way to help aside from gathering helpful items.  We want to help those who need a leg up but not enable those who have gotten lazy.  I also think safety is a concern since homeless people get forced to have to stay in bad areas and some of them do have very severe mental health issues.  Anyway, if you could help us outline a program it would be great!

[Kylyssa]

As SSY, pointed out, I have also had more than one crazy homeless person randomly start yelling at me...

Crazy is exactly the word.  Perhaps that's a place to start because many, if not most, homeless people are mentally ill.  

I didn't start out mentally ill (Asperger's is considered a learning disability or developmental disorder, not a mental illness though arguably the molestation in childhood may have made me mentally ill but that's another story) but I certainly became mentally ill.  Just ponder how many assaults, rapes, and humiliations combined with chronic sleep deprivation, reasonable fearfulness and aches and pains from healing breaks it would take to knock you off your rocker.  Once I experienced almost complete dissociative disorder I was incapable of helping myself out of homelessness until I recovered to some degree.  I theorize that if I'd gotten treatment for my autism in the first place, I'd never have wound up homeless.  In hindsight, with a lot of education, treatment and experience behind me, I can think of a half dozen things I could have differently at different points in time which would have kept me off the street.

Mental health programs and educational programs might be the place to focus efforts.  There are few available low cost or free non-religious mental health services available.  This could be a letter writing campaign and activism project rather than a directly providing the services project.

Check your local ordinances about homeless people.  Some cities have laws making sleeping outside criminal and ticket homeless people or arrest them with the conviction or offense hampering or negating their ability to collect services or use government poverty assistance programs.  In some cities it's illegal to serve more than 20 homeless people at your facility.  Others have laws against services for the homeless being within a thousand yards (over half of a mile!) of each other.  Become outspoken against these laws and regulations.  

Here's another suggestion - you could try for specific intervention for homeless homosexual teens and young adults.  Most of them are on the street because their families disowned them for their homosexuality and either abused them into leaving or kicked them out directly.  I took in over a dozen of these kids over the years and they never gave me any serious problems.  If they get caught quick enough they can be pretty easy to help because they usually aren't mentally ill to start with, they just have shitty families.

Literacy programs and resume writing services/job application help are two good areas to help homeless people, too.  It serves as a sort of self-filter because people seeking those services are willing to help themselves and sane enough to comprehend that those things are valuable.  I've put up cards for free resume service and job application assistance at homeless shelters, food banks, and soup kitchens.  It's something even, I, as a disabled person, can do to help.

Other (low risk) things you can do include printing lists of local poverty services (food banks, job banks, human resources, free clinics, etc.) plus suggestions on where local homeless people can access the internet for free to access services and apply for jobs.  Some churches have been printing out a modified version of my page on what to buy if you're homeless to give to homeless people to give them a quick and dirty rough plan to escape homelessness.  It works well to give these lists out with a goody bag of some kind or even just a candy bar or granola.  

These are just my rough thoughts on the idea, based on things I've done.

[Miss Anthrope]

How is your experience with Squidoo? Would you recommend it heartily (only heartily will do, haha)?; maybe I'll start an account eventually to do a serious blog to keep some balance with my humor blog.

I did some clicking for you, hope your endeavor goes well for you! I'll bookmark your blog and be sure to do more future clicking. I liked your article about being homeless, btw.

[Kylyssa]

I would recommend Squidoo heartily.  It's easy to use and it's a neat platform for people who'd like to keep multiple blogs or who aren't great with HTML.  You can just write 500 - 2000 words on a subject, break it up in chunks using the provided modules and add photos using the provided tools and you're in business.

You can write formally or informally about almost any subject as long as it is not an "adult" topic.

[Miss Anthrope]

I would recommend Squidoo heartily.  It's easy to use and it's a neat platform for people who'd like to keep multiple blogs or who aren't great with HTML.  You can just write 500 - 2000 words on a subject, break it up in chunks using the provided modules and add photos using the provided tools and you're in business.

You can write formally or informally about almost any subject as long as it is not an "adult" topic.

[Kylyssa]

And here are my two latest lenses:
How You Can Help the Homeless Without Spending a Dime
Homeless on Squidoo[/url]

[Kylyssa]

Hot off the press -
Why Don't Homeless People Just Get Jobs?

[Kylyssa]

New today - Answers to Questions about Homelessness.

Please help me out a bit folks and ask me some questions about homelessness.

[Kylyssa]

Hot off the press on the Ever Project - The Best Ways to Help the Homeless written in response to a reader question from McQ on my last lens.