Quote:
Originally Posted by Delkaetre
BtS - Dunno what sort of homeless people you know, but even some people *with* homes that I know don't have iPhones, laptops and MP3 players.
I'd go so far as to say that the flatscreen TV and iphone owning populace is the minority.
And, of course, there's the concept of relative poverty, often ignored by the sort of people who say "well, you have food and a roof so stop bitching".
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I'd also like to know where all these Iphone and flatscreen owning poor people live so I can move there. Our income, at a little over $30k a year, is considered lower middle class, we have no children and yet I'm typing this on a computer built last century and don't have any flatscreen TVs.
As for homeless with cell phones, yeah they exist. I've been one of them. Then again, I had the cell phone before I was homeless. It was a prepaid model and I kept a few bucks on it so that I had a phone number to put down on job applications and calling friends to see if I could take a shower or crash at their place for the night. You should also know that not everyone who is friends with someone homeless is homeless themselves. Some are pretty young or, for the most part, broke themselves. Being as poor people are generally pretty helpful to others in need, they tend to give their friends things like that old pre-paid cell phone that they don't need any more because they or, especially among the younger ones, their parents purchased them a new one.
And lets not forget that there's organisations in existence that take cell phones as donations and get them rigged up so they can only dial 911. These phones are then given to vulnerable populations like the homeless and battered women to try and ensure they have a means of calling for emergency assistance. It started out as for battered women but, as cell phones became common, pay phones have become rare and people saw the need for the homeless. I've also seen organisations that helped the homeless have functional cell phones in order to receive call backs for jobs.
All this is assuming the cell phone is functional for calls at all. Making calls isn't the only reason to have a cell phone. Even with no minutes that hand me down or found cell phone makes a nice, portable, alarm clock.