She can't afford getting enough to eat (!!!), her only phone has a broken touch screen, barely works, her car is slowly dying and dangerous to drive. She has been building and rebuilding a computer at home from discraded parts and it keeps failing.
I am honestly at a loss. She seems smart, really interested, has projects which i find promising and interesting on her GitHub. She has an technical understanding of things and is able to find root causes for strange problems not in her area of expertise. Due to homeschooling and religious upbringing i think she has been denied a formal education. She seems to deeply care about how things work, isn't afraid to learn obscure skills (which is how we met) and cares about building tools which make resources observable and accessable. I have been trying to help her put a resume together by "pair programming" her resume on my PC and me sharing the screen over discord.
Do you have any resources, know any resources, ... anything i could do to help her?
A working laptop, a used phone, an interview for a remote junior position, damn even a big box of hygene products and food would help her. I as a university student am not in a position to support her financially and i am not local enough to meaningfully help. As far as i can tell this fate is through no fault of her own.
I can be reached at johann-tobias(at)xn--schg-noa.de .
My impression is that the US goverment can't really be relied on to help people dig themselves out of such holes. Those social programs are designed to prevent people from starving not put people in a position where they are able to efficiently be able to contribute to society.
I am not aware of substance abuse issues. There is psychological baggage though related to parental abuse and being trans.
Edit: Yeah i should really sleep now.
We don't know her situation, and even if she is using drugs, there are many functional addicts.
If she's capable of working, it'd be nice if someone in the area offered her something like contract to hire, where they could then see for themselves if she's capable of succeeding in the field (I am in Canada and on the verge of struggling myself, despite also not having substance issues, otherwise I'd offer to help).
The real problem right now is a lack of a social safety net, in addition to hiring being incredibly tight (and she's not exactly in a tech hotspot). Trans people also face a lot of discrimination and often are trying to overcome multiple life challenges simultaneously, which compound.
Have you considered reaching out to some of the very prominent trans software bloggers who might be sympathetic and also be able to offer better resources?
I don't feel like it's appropriate to name names, but if you'd like I can email you the blogs of a few people who would certainly be widely recognized as staff-level, and might be open to helping your friend.
edit: since you mentioned she is currently housed at least, it will be much easier for her to turn things around if she is able to find work before that situation changes. Though this is really complicated by her having no work device right now. Can she get a loan to tide her over for the next few weeks? If not, maybe she'd be comfortable setting up a gofundme or similar?
Getting back on her feet will get much harder if she has to do it while homeless.
If you haven't seen i wrote about some code i was she had on her GitHub and we discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672617
Is that the real problem here? Unemployment in the United States is incredibly low and those who want to find good work for good pay are able to.
Otherwise, please consider how trans people might be limited by obstacles that cis people don't even realize exist.
It sounds like most of the short-term emergency things could be fixed with a more steady income stream. [ $30K ] a year in a low cost of living area goes a long way compared to being homeless. It makes the car run, gets a Chromebook, plays for a cell phone plan with tethering.
I'm a programmer. I love it. As a teen I did manufacturing for six months, and I hated it. So I certainly understand grabbing a low skill job right doesn't look attractive, but it would stop the financial bleeding, and prevent things from getting out of hand while they find a software dev job.
On the immediate food side, I don't know about Chattanooga, but my town has super tiny food banks all over. There's not one centralized organization, and almost all of them are stocked at any one time. The are mom's on Facebook groups who keep track of them, and restock when low. (Some are as simple as a fridge on the side of a building, or a little library style box on a pole.) Most aren't listed on google. Not sure how to find them outside of asking around. Chattanooga has nine food banks listed on google. Odds are that they aren't all out of stock.
Good luck to both of you.
I imagine there are better paying jobs but I do think that $40k is not an immediately accessible thing. Though to your point 15 seems in line with what’s on indeed for Chattanooga, many jobs are under that line as well (cashier stuff for $11 or $12), so it might be worth adjusting your preconceptions about the yearly wages that these positons offer.
But even so 30K is still a huge difference from having to scrap for food, or make a computer from spare parts. Changed post from $40K to $30K.
In Germany we have a word "Scheinselbständigkeit". People are formally self-employed/independent contractor which are actually totally dependent and this is used to circumvent social security protections.
I think something like that might be going on here.
You are 100% right that it's hard to get a decent job in the US without connections and/or experience, especially in this economy and especially without formal education. Ideally there is some grant which will let someone like her go through high school and college, but I really have no idea. You will have to look for places like https://www.reddit/r/povertyfinance for people who understand poverty better much than I do.
Is she asking you for money?
the amount of people willing to send complete strangers money over the internet is mind-blowing. check out /r/scams, and be amazed.
I can afford to give away the cost of a meal at a restaurant or other small equivalent once in a while without it making a material difference to my own finances.
Always be wary of giving away money, but sometimes a little money is the best help that can be provided.
Please be cautious and avoid sending money.
The computer architecture is funky so it makes installing some distros a pain in the butt.
It was something like a 64-bit EFI bootloader for a 32-bit OS. The combo just doesn't work without compiling your own kernel. It's pretty uncommon. No biggie for someone that does C++ or embedded systems though.
Anyway, I'll shoot you an email with some pics and you can let me know what you think.
> Public computers and WiFi are available at all five branches of the Chattanooga Public Library. Access to the computers is limited to 2 hours per day if other patrons are waiting. Reservations can be made for the next available computer by phone or in person.
If the have tech skills I would think they could get a basic job easily.
> If the have tech skills I would think they could get a basic job easily.
One would think so naively. I am working towards trying to help her find a job. I have not been at it for long. If you have some insight where i might help her find a basic job making use of her embedded/backend C, C++ skills developing cross platform {Linux, Windows} x {ARM, x86_64} emulator writing tools which work as library and as application with integrated LUA interpreters i would be thankful. It doesn't have to be that specific but that might give people an idea what flame she is cooking with.
[1] https://wiki.chattlab.org/joining_steps [2] https://wiki.chattlab.org/membership
It’s probably safe to assume most places are “trans friendly” these days — nobody wants the twitter mob[0] after them for <whatever>.
[0] Is that even a thing anymore or did all the dogpilers move to a more “friendly” place?
—edit—
And before I get dogpiled I should say that I mean regular people don’t care not politically motivated health care debates like in other comments.
The psychological pressure we trans people are under in red states is breathtaking. Many of us are losing our health care. This is not a minor thing for us -- speaking personally, I'd rather die.
Even if it hasn't happened directly to her, it will have happened to her friends. We all talk. It's hard not to empathize with one another. I myself feel like I'm a tiny leaf on a river of grief, most days.
Just today, another one of us was shot in Atlanta.
Your friend needs to get to a sanctuary state. Someplace like California or Washington.
This will be very difficult. But we're literally now refugees.
Watch what happens to us. Learn what lives in the heart of the America. Disgust is appropriate.
They don't take it as serious as they should. However atleast the orders how to deal with trans peoples seem respectful of their status and some of the complications.
[1] https://fragdenstaat.de/anfrage/bewertung-der-menschenrechts...
But unless her friends are also moving its a hard sell. Her living situation won't be much better if at all, it could even be worse because everything is also more expensive and she knows no-one.
> Darüber hinaus wurden in verschiedenen Bundesstaaten Dutzende von Gesetzentwürfen eingebracht, die darauf abzielten, den Zugang zu gender-bestätigender Gesundheitsversorgung ("gender-affirming healthcare") für trans Jugendliche einzuschränken. [1]
Which i would loosely translate: Different states introduced dozens of law proposals which aim to reduce access to gender-affirming health care for trans teenagers.
In 2023 a lot more stuff has happened [2] and might be in preperation.
Gender-affirming care is as far as the data suggests the best way to treat ICD-10 F64.0 and sub categories. Denying people those treatments to a legitimate and internationally recognized diagnosis is depriving them health care. Health care is a human right [3].
[1] https://www.amnesty.de/informieren/amnesty-report/usa-2022#s...
[2] https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclu...
[3] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publicat...
They're pushing to ban gender-affirming care, usually focusing on minors but some of the bans are for people up to age 26, and they're making noise about restricting or banning it for adults too.
And then there's the fact that dozens of red states have banned health care for trans youth.
We will die by the dozen. By our own hand; by gunshot. 'Death before detransition,' as we say.
But you will remember who really pulled the trigger, and who did nothing. It can and should haunt you.
