It's Close To Impossible to Be Homeless In Houston Without Breaking The Law
It's mid-afternoon underneath the U.S. 59 overpass in Midtown and Spencer Stevens is cooking chicken on his grill. His breakfast eggs is beside him in a carton, and the pan he used to cook them rests atop some bricks. He in a comfy office chair outside the tent where he sleeps at night. Being homeless, he said, is like being in the reality TV show Survivor.
You have to be self-sufficient out here, or you will not make it, Stevens said. The people that come out and feed, they bring sack lunches sometimes, which consists of bologna sandwiches. But if you want to eat the things that you want to eat, for your own survival, you have to have a grill.
Stevens became homeless a year and a half ago after losing his job as a forklifter around the same time he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Having the heart disease has essentially barred him from doing any other similar manual labor jobs, he said, because he can't pass the physical. He says he believes that the city will help him with housing, as it has thousands of others like him since 2012, and he is now on the waiting list.
http://www.houstonpress.com/news/all-the-ways-homeless-people-can-be-arrested-and-jailed-in-houston-9376854