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[muttcatt]

There is a lot of teen homelessness in ann arbor.  i only say this because 3 kids asked me for money today.  They were all around 15 or 16.  It is hard to convince anyone that you are starving though when you are wearing a clean Pixies t shirt and there is styling gel in your hair.  
The longevity of the Pixies baffles me.  also the Violent Fems.

Comments

[chinese_jenny]

great idea! the best sleep i ever get always feels guilty-- when know i should be doing something other than sleeping.

[muttcatt]

same here. why are the guilty pleasures always the best?

[lullabyisblue]

Eh, I don't know. If you talked to them and found out they were actually homeless, mayhaps, but I've known kids who purposely bounced around downtown AA asking for money (which they'd generally get fairly easily) and go back home to the exurbs at night. I'm sure it exists, but... yeah.

When I was in high school, I met an awful lot of homeless kids in downtown Royal Oak (shh, it used to be decent). My friend and I would just end up chilling and playing hackey sack with a bunch of 'em that used to hang out on Main street in the evenings. Lots of good free conversation and times, as we were generally broke as well and pretty much all suburb nighttime entertainment cost money otherwise.

Although when RO got yuppiefied, the cops more or less harrassed the kids out of the downtown area.

[muttcatt]

I don't know anything about the mean, mean streets of Royal Oak, but no. these kids were absolutely Not homeless. they were well dressed, well fed.

[ghost_explosion]

there's a lot of legitimate homeless teens in royal oak, as well as the fake ones. what makes me annoyed is the kids who beg for money who have tons of tattoos and piercings...they should have saved their $$ and bought food instead of a tattoo.

but what if these kids really are homeless? i'm going to hell in a handbasket.

[muttcatt]

there is a big difference between people who are homeless because society has abandoned them, and those that are couch surfing for a week to piss off dad. Having been a squatter myself for a time. . . these were the latter.

[ghost_explosion]

oh ps. to the above comment: the reason for the homelessness of teens in r.o. is that there are two shelters : the judson center and the sanctuary (where i work), and kids run here to either get to those places, or they leave those places and have no where to go.