Aloha all,
I am in a boarding home on Oahu. I pay $750 a month and share a room with another person like myself.
It’s a long story of how I got here. I was living in Thailand for six months and my mom sold her home and gave me notice to vacate while I was away in Thailand.
Having bought a non-refundable ticket to Hawaii I decided to come back here. I used to live on the Big Island, now I am on Oahu in this boarding house.
Luckily, I was able to fly back and get my car, desktop pc, and a few laptops I have. It’s weird having a car and electronics while a lot of the people here seem borderline homeless.
I was in a mental health crisis center where they do not let me use the computer, go on the Internet, or really leave. The maximum you can stay at one of these places is 10 days. My tens days were coming up and my options where the streets or Department of Human Services homeless shelter.
A kind wonderful nurse asked me what I was going to do. And I told her I was thinking of going back to the Big Island and living in my car. She called her friend who runs boarding houses and got me in one.
I am so grateful that I am not on the streets. However, there are five people currently in this one apartment unit, bedbugs are eating me alive, and one of my roommates likes to take dump with the bathroom door wide open. I think another is incontinent. These are kind souls but it does get kind of depressing. The boarding home is an apartment building in the middle of all this industrial warehouses and stuff. The area is called Kahili and supposedly it’s a very tough neighborhood, I guess like Compton?
I hate saying this but I was kind of counting on Hawaii being super generous and humanitarian compared to the rest of the USA. I thought I would come here and throw myself on the mercy of the welfare system. I do get EBT. I also get $1125 from SSDI which I hear is a lot from social workers. My case manager is working on getting me into group homes which cost a third of my income. However, these are highly in demand. I think she might have wanted me on the streets so I could qualify as a priority for those.
Hawaii is generous and they have a big heart. I went through something similar on the Big Island and was looked over quite well from the social workers. I think if I found myself in Los Angeles they might not care if I died in the street.
But… I have myself thinking, should I have just tried to stay in Thailand? My rent with utilities was $370 a month. Life was good and easy there. Despite the low cost I did not end up saving money but spending above my means. I have no discipline there and I probably caught herpes and yeast infection in SE Asia. However, I wonder if I could possibly get an online job. I have tried so hard to get a remote job but have only really made it to the interview stages. I figured Honolulu would be good because I can apply for in-person jobs where I am not competing that much with the rest of the planet. Plus, I have a contact at the Chamber of Commerce who refers my profile to employers for jobs and internships.
Still, I am living so poorly. I pay more money to live with people who you might find on skid row, no offense to them. There’s roaches and bed bugs.
I have full on Medicare and Medicaid in Hawaii. I even have special long term care which qualifies me for certain things like group homes and long term case management.
What would you do in my situation? I only have around 8k USD in the bank. If I go to Thailand my quality of life goes up but then I have to get a remote job. Teaching isn’t a stable option for me.
Or I can tough it out in Honolulu, get an IT job and work my way to remote or build some kind of life here.
I wish I was more entrepreneurial. When I’m abroad I meet people younger than myself with businesses or great careers. I have spent the last nine years in the rural Big Island where you are lucky if you can get a job at Target.
I am (well, was) a programmer. Then the war happened. The country is semi-ruined, borders are closed. And you know what? After being able to demobilize, I went as a worker to the factory (an IT job is very difficult to get).
Life is ok.
Stable income solves like 90% of life problems. What stops you from getting any job available and just start fixing your life in a more or less comfortable tempo?
I have gotten a job at Office Depot pending background investigation. Today I applied for Best Buy.
A lot of people seem homeless in Hawaii because it is a very high cost of living state. Most people struggle. It is not the place to choose to live if you are poor. Have you applied for public housing? It will take 4+ years to get housing that way, but that is the way someone who lives on social security is supposed to afford housing. That is good news because otherwise you would be fucked without social security + savings. For instance, I am not allowed to have more than $2k total of all of my assets or I just lose all of my benefits lol (there’s ABLE accounts but they are so restrictive you would have to put most of your money in a special needs trust that is expensive to setup. Plus all your money and assets gets taken by the state when you die).
A place like Hawaii will not have a lot of resources for the poor and disabled, despite what you think. Have you heard of Native Hawaiians being priced out of paradise (I assume you have since you spent 9 years there, so this is a reminder that this is the reality)? Many people end up leaving to somewhere more affordable. I understand you used to live what sounds comfortably in Hawaii, but in your situation I would have looked to somewhere more affordable, especially if you did not have HUD public housing already (which can be transferred state to state). Maybe you can brainstorm with your case worker about this. It does not have to be Thailand, but another state that is more affordable is what I would consider.
Edit: I used websites like this to find open section 8 waiting lists, hopefully this helps. Btw it took me 4 years to get public housing because I had to get on the waitlist to the waitlist which took a few months to open up and then 2 years on that until I actually made it on the actual waitlist and then 2 years on the actual waitlist to get approved for public housing.
https://affordablehousinghub.org/open-waiting-lists/section-8-waiting-lists
