Hola! Mi nombre es Anonimo. I'm not a web developer, graphic artist or anything close to an expert on homeless services.

The icons used on this site were almost exclusively created by Luis Prado for the Noun Project, which bills itself as the world's "most diverse and extensive collection of icons and mission-driven photos". My role was limited to coloring in-between the lines & the occasional re-mix to better illustrate a point. The app I'm using to design this site is a web app called Framer that sits in a browser tab on my laptop. I use Pixelmator to color & edit graphics even though it isn't really designed for that because I haven't got around to figuring out how to use Figma yet.

I'm 62 years-old & currently (December 1, 2024) homeless for the first time in my adult life due to a bunch of things at once, only some of which were beyond my control. I think I have a great plan for a great future that has a nice balance of a roof over my head with all the necessities, & service to the community.

I'm in Georgia partly because it's one of just a tiny handful of states that offer free for-credit tuition at any college or trade school in the state university system to residents over 62 & I'm working on certifications in solar panel & heat pump system design –& partly because I don't have airfare to California where I will probably have to move in order to use these skills after the current tax credits are cut by the new administration.

My current threshold for not being homeless is a rented EV that I can use to drive for Uber Rides & Delivery with a camp mode button for heating & cooling, a mattress that fits in the sub trunk, a $60 IKEA induction cooktop electricity to keep my devices charged so I can work on my certifications & other websites when I'm not driving.

A Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 or 9, Nissan Arriya, Volvo EX30, EX40, EX90, Tesla Model 3 or S will work for ride sharing. A Hyundai Kona, Kia Niro, Chevy Bolt, or Nissan Leaf or Mini Cooper E won't because of the slow charging & limited range.

My step up vehicle would be something that I own that can pull double duty car sharing, personal transportation and interim housing. The only new EV that looks like it might be priced where I dcould get to it is the Volvo EX30, but it's a great time to buy light used EV's. More likely though is a 2007-8 BMW X3 or 5.

My step up home would be something like a $35,000 Microhaus with the $10,000 off-grid package & a trailer that can I live in for a while and then Airbnb. My step up step up home is a $120,000 Pebble that will also become an Airbnb. My next step is would be a tiny modular home on wheels that design & build myself with chickens & a hydroponic micro farm.

A car

My reason for wanting to create a site like this is based on fragmented.

In fact, I couldn't even find out conclusively whether there were warming centers in Fulton or city of Atlanta two nights ago for a homeless guy on a train who was asking because the trains were going to be shutting down in three hours and he didn't know where he was going to go. He looked scared and like he was no stranger to the life.

I knew about Dekalb County's program only because I was in Decatur library earlier that day when they announced that anyone in need of transportation to a warming center should go down to the parking garage and talk to Mr. White, who was there with a cargo van shuttling people back and forth because "I was out of town yesterday and people had to walk to Avondale Station and catch the bus and I didn't want them to have to do all that."

It's five blocks, if even that, to Decatur Library to Avondale Station and Decatur Station is right across the street from the library, but also true that a disturbing percentage of the Decatur homeless population consists of people in wheelchairs.

Give that man a medal for caring that much. You can't teach that energy. After talking to him for a couple of minutes and telling him what I was trying to do with this website, I went back to the second floor and spent at least thirty minutes trying to compile information about warming centers for the entire metro area.

I coudn't even find information for Fulton & city of Atlanta.

I eventually found information from  years-old stories on multiple local news stations that led me  to believe that the threshold in Fulton & ATL is 32º, meaning that those centers wouldn't be operational, since Friday temperatures weren't predicted to dip below 38º. I relayed this to the man on the train and gave him a couple numbers that he already had and suggested he go to downtown Decatur.

Down & Out in Paris & London

He got off at Peachtree Center Station. I hope he's ok. He's probably ok. While it was technically cold & windy enough for a human to die of hypothermia, it was mathematically unlikely in the space of a few hours. He had a puffer coat and skull cap and a backpack large enough to contain a sleeping bag or blanket.

He's probably ok, but what's going to happen 6-12 months into this new administration's austerity plan?

My larger point though isn't about politics or the heroic efforts of a few special people like Mr White. It's that this toothless, gentle-seeming man on the train should have been able to search for and know his options, not take the word of a random stranger who was far from certain.

It's not a "Here's a bed in my house and clean sheets. Help yourself to anything in the fridge" level request. It's a banner announcement somewhere on a taxpayer-funded website that's just sitting waiting to be filled with  content.

That's not that much to ask or to demand from a society that still cares enough about minimizing human suffering to legally mandate emergency room treatment should someone be hit by a bus regardless of their ability to pay despite pressure from vocal tax paying citizens that aren't even slightly conflicted about insisting that the proper response is to "Let them die." They learned not to say it out loud.

That's not really a shot at the city of Atlanta or Fulton County. All government websites everywhere suck partly because good design costs money and partly because they almost always are limited to a list of approved vendors who work hard to get on those lists specifically in order to not have to work as hard at designing good websites. That was a cheap shot and probably unfair.

And yet, here I was on a train with this guy who just wanted to stay warm for a few hours unable to tell him with any degree of certainty whether he would have to go to another county where he might be in even worse shape if I was wrong.

That's as good an explantation as anything as to why I think a site like this is both necessary & needs to come from an entity outside of government or the 5013c charity world.

It's not a shot. There are just too many entities in this space that have neither the time, budget or human capital to manage a resource like this. And even if they did, they aren't going to be able to provide as much information as a private crowd-sourced website that included  factual information about government & non-profit resources and a message board (NEW IDEA) enabling unsheltered people (& their allies) to leave helpful tips, warnings, personal stories and advice for fellow travelers.

This isn't a new idea. Entire books have been written about the "hobo code" system of signs and symbols used by itinerant travelers in the post-Great Depression years. You can also check out Mad Men S1E8 of the same name. As a further point about why something like this is necessary, I was able to find both an webpage detailing history of hobo code, and the name, episode, air date and plot synopsis of an episode I last saw over a decade ago in the space of two minutes, by googling "hobo code" but couldn't find out whether warming centers were open in the 37th largest city in the United States in an hour.

I don't know what this website is, much less what it can be, and managing it isn't part of even my three month plan. But I believe in it and have had just enough encounters with people who got it hook line and sinker even though they weren't sure if they would be allowed to by their supervisors, to believe it will happen one way or another.

It's going to need volunteers and it's going to have to be something that's both useful and used by the people it's designed for or what's the point?

The best way to do that in my opinion is to make it accurate, easy to use powered by the people it seeks to inform. If done right, it can be both personally empowering like a powerful, authoritative voice from people that most people would rather not have to think about, and an actual way out of homelessness.

I'm not a website designer or a graphic artist, just an extremely ADHD guy with pretensions of grandeur in more or less constant search of tools to get things done. There are monetizable GTD mechanisms now that didn't exist even three years ago with thousands of plug-ins, templates & tutorials.

The app I'm using to design this is called Framer & isn't even an app in the traditional sense. It's a web app that operates as a tab in a browser and can be used to design a completely custom website from scratch without writing a single line of code, and can be hosted for free. 

Figma is a web-based design & prototyping tool that can replicate most everything in Adobe Creative Suite.

My 89 year-old extremely computer-phobic mom learned Zoom during COVID & now gives daily sermons to other little old ladies who aren't able to drive to church.

I don't know how all this fits together, but I do know the power that comes from truthful storytelling, collective sharing and networking.

I also know from years of working with fellow well-intentioned liberals on well-intentioned liberal things that not everyone who wants to "help" "the less fortunate" is interested in empowering them, and that, more than anything is what I want to change.

I've worked with and on behalf of the homeless for years and thought I knew, only to found out that much of what I thought was true was nothing more than humble bragging and back patting.

Everyone everywhere is sincerely doing the best they can with what they have, but doesn't mean it's working the way it's supposed to. We need to do more. We need to expect more from ourselves. We need to have Mr. White level energy every time we go to work regardless of whether we get paid, but especially if we get paid.

That's really all I've got now, except to say that there's about a 50/50 chance I'll delete this page tomorrow, and nothing about this site will look or function the he same two months from now.  If you're interested in being part of this journey, the contact form will be on all the pages by Tuesday, if not tomorrow. But it's on the home page now and was working just fine this morning.

Have a blessed and warm day and thanks for reading through all this.