Where to Live when you have no Home....

I am travelling for business this week and I was approached in the parking lot of my hotel my a homeless person who needed exactly $11.54 in order to get back home. (This exact amount of change is definitely an entirely different blog entry in itself...an entry in the "Idiots guide to being a street person" I am pretty sure)
Okay come back now.....turn the thermostat down a bit. I am not calling people without jobs and homes idiots by any means, many of them are brilliant, but I am sure that there is an unwritten handguide to being homeless out there somewhere. No matter where you go they all use the same little tricks and stories. I figured they all have to be written down somewhere in an "Idiots guide".
So now that I have clarified that I am "down with the homeless", the point of this entry was actually to talk about one thing that completely bewilders me.

After I was approached by the $11.54 guy (by the way, the guy with me reminded the exact change guy that he used that same story on hims 2 months ago in another parking lot and the guy said that he has been stranded for exactly 42 days and looking for that exact amount of change for that long :)) You gotta love how quickly they pull this stuff out of their hats. Anyway.........sheesh.

So we were talking and both of us were totally stumped as to whyanyone that is homeless would be in Vernon BC, let alone anywhere in Canada really. We both decided that if we were homeless we would head straight for Florida, Southern California or maybe even Arizona. Why would you want to be homeless anywhere that it snows at all?? Some of you might say...well not everyone likes the sun and warmth, some people love the snow, love to ski and sled, etc etc.......Yeah well we are talking about homeless people here. There is no skiing, no sledding, there is only surviving. I am sure some of them might love the snow, but do you think anyone likes sleeping in it on the street??

I am sure that some people reading this might think....."You idiot!! how are they supposed to travel?? How do Canadian homeless cross borders. Maybe they do not want to leave their hometowns." Well believe it or not, I am not one of these high and mighty "Damn homeless people"....uh..people. In all my interactions with homeless in different cities I have noticed that the majority of them all came from somewhere else. They are not native to the area they "live". You may also say, "how are they supposed to get into the states without a work permit?" That question sort of answers itself dont you think? WORK Permit. I know it sounds shitty of me, but not many of these people are actively looking for jobs in silicon valley and most the "jobs" they do stumble into don't exactly require a work permit. So my question is this.....

Why stop in places like Vernon, Vancouver (yes it is one of the only cities in Canada where it does not snow, but it gets COLD and WET WET WET) San Francisco (huge homeless population), Salt Lake City, Minnesota........Seriously. They all got to these places somehow, why not keep going and make it to Arizona or Florida??
Maybe it is just me, but if I am living on the streets I do not want the chance of freezing to death thrown into the equation.

So since I have surely pissed off some homeless advocates.
Let me clarify that I just do not understand why people that are professional homeless people, beggars and such, would want to be living on the streets in the snow and cold.

Keep it chilly....