Of course this type of list is subjective to whoever is living there, but having been houseless in cities around the U.S, these are the top 5 I have personally experienced. If you end up without a place in one of these towns, you might want to leave:
1: SAN FRANCISCO, CA
San Francisco will actually most likely get it's own blog post on how awful it is to be homeless there. There's a common misconception about San Francisco with home/houseless people that have never been there, especially younger teens who are running away, that it is some homeless sanctuary of lovely flower power hippies where every one is calm, nice, helps you out, smoking weed, and listening to music. In the collective months I had lived there, I can literally think of two people I have met who could be considered even remotely close to this description. San Francisco for home/houseless or traveling people is described as the Lost City of Gold, and when you show up it's a porta potty.
One of the worst, and by far the most dangerous part of the city is how violent it is. My friend was stabbed front of a hospital as he was on his way to see his wife giving birth, my ex got stabbed with a wine bottle after trying to help someone being jumped, I've had a cop point his gun at me and told me he'd shoot me if I didn't leave, my friends have been robbed at gunpoint in Golden Gate Park, my friend was hospitalized after his was head stomped in the street and these are just attacks close to me. I can only imagine the amount of homeless attacks that I don't know about, recently I heard a man was beat and hung in a tree above the spot I used to sleep.
It'll definitely have to get it's own post because there's just too much to list here. In summary, the cops are extremely violent and don't follow procedures, you will never get enough food to be full in this city, you will only make enough money not to die, you will never have any dry items, you will almost always be cold, the homeless people who actually live there get territorial as fuck, you will get sick, and if you don't work your ass off to get out, you will get stuck.
2: SEATTLE, WA
I have only been to Seattle once for one week but that week was what showed me I should never go back. As you can see from the picture above, it is damn near impossible for home/houseless people to find a place to sleep that is not in direct public view, and for those of you who haven't done it, it is very hard to sleep when you can feel strangers staring at you. Some people think the only reason for "tent cities" or encampments are because people don't want to look at them, and this is definitely a factor but people also want privacy. Just because they don't have a door to close and shut out the world from there private lives doesn't mean they don't have any boundaries they want to keep from people. The first night my bestie and I were there, we walked up and down those huge steep hills until we literally couldn't walk any further and we stopped at the train tracks.
Apparently, there was a man who thought this area of the tracks was his territory and having never been there we just lied down and went to sleep. Maybe 30 minutes after this I wake up to a over 6 foot man threating to kick my 5'3 best friend Jessica* in the face, she still had her arms in her sleeping bag so she couldn't even defend her face. Of course when I jolted up both my weapons slid down my sleeping bag and I knew if I had reached for one he would see and attack her. Luckily after a lot of ass kissing and agreeing to leave we were able to make it out unharmed and we slept sitting up on the sidewalk that night.
After a night of being shot with fire hose intensity sprinklers in the park, we decided we needed to leave immediately as we started walking we realized we wouldn't get anywhere worth going by the time night came so we crashed under a bridge. When we woke up Jessica was missing her new glass pipe, her smiley chain weapon, and her journal. We walked nearly 30 miles into Tacoma by sunset. If it were not for the fact that the HempFest festival was happening while we were there , we would not have been able to get food at all, the only remotely positive thing that happened was having a lady straight up ignore us when we told her she dropped her wallet so we got dibs on it (I returned her I.D, I'm not fucking awful).
3: EL PASO, TX
Like Calexico , Mexicali, or pretty much any other border towns, this may be a completely different city to those who are fluent Spanish speakers but if you are solely English, El Paso is one of the hardest cities in the U.S to navigate through homeless. Jessica and I had gotten there by train from Tucson, AZ with a dude we were 99% sure was a serial killer and her girlfriend at the time. There is only one place in this whole city we were able to make money at, and after our own personal drama with some other houseless people and we separated from our group, we couldn't make money there anymore without a fight. With the only 20-ish dollars we had left, possibly kindest man we could have met, gave us a pizza, pasta, 2-liter of soda, garlic bread, and salads for 10 dollars. I am confident if we weren't blessed with that man helping us out, we may not have made it out of that city.
One okay thing about this city is it was not the hardest thing to find a place to sleep. The reason for this is there is so many other things going on with border patrol, the police, the train bulls, they could give a fuck less about you sleeping in a hidden place. If you do catch the attention of the cops, you are in for some shit. After 1 full day without finding food or money, we were getting desperate and since neither of us are fluent Spanish speakers, not only were we trying and failing to say we need in food or money in a respectful way, but we couldn't even get anyone to tell us where a shelter or church was. After we hid all our stuff in the bushes, Jessica and I walked into the police station to ask for help. We've heard a million times if you are underage and homeless they'll help you get somewhere, that was a big mistake apparently.
We told the cop at the front desk we only had 6 dollars to our name and asked if she knew where we could get help to leave, not a few seconds later a cop slams the door from the back open and starts screaming for us to leave, and that we were asking her for money. We tried to explain we were telling her that's how much we had, we weren't asking her for money. Of course, cops can never admit when they're wrong and once an officer puts their hand on their gun I know that's my cue to leave. After about 3 days of not eating, we finally saw an open bi-lingual church, went inside and after we explained our situation, this super kind woman from the church was able to help us buy tickets to Dallas. With the rare exception of a few kind people, it was nearly impossible to get anything in this city besides decent sleeping spots. Food is insanely hard to find, you can only make money in one spot (near the train tracks), it is extremely difficult to communicate for English only speakers, and the cops are either ignoring you or against you.
4: PORTLAND, OR
This city is said to be super "progressive" view but if how they treat the homeless is any indicator of their inclusivity and understanding, they are a long way away. Looking back at my stay there I got most of my survival calories from drinking booze because in this city it is far easier to find drugs or alcohol than it is to find food. Like El Paso, it isn't the hardest thing to find a place to sleep in Portland. Generally people are so used to seeing home/houseless people sleeping right in public view, there isn't that much time in officers day to make every person sleeping out there move. While Jessica and I were there, we slept on either the Burnside Bridge or the one next to it from morning until 4 p.m, which is just insane to me not only that no one called the cops, but people were walking and jogging around us with absolutely no thought given to us.
There are a few nice people out there but most of the Portland residents will either completely ignore you or hate you. While I was there I had an experience with a guy who worked at gas station that tried to poison me when I asked him to fill up my water, I should have guessed when he took it to the back to fill it but lesson learned. Within 30 seconds to a few minutes, I was violently puking and terribly sick from just a few sips of that water, so you have to be wary of people like that. I hate to be general, but a lot of the home/houseless people out there aren't just people that happen to be home/houseless now due to there circumstances like losing a job or traveling, a lot of them are either legit criminals or have mental health problems that can result in violent outbursts, which are obviously two different situations but you really have to protect yourself on the street. My friend was assaulted out there and it was awful.
I hate to be general with this as well, but a lot of the people there be kind of scandalous and only working towards themselves. Heroin is a huge thing in Portland and people on that whether they're your friends or not can totally fuck you over, so be careful of that too. If you absolutely need to go, just try to make sure that you at least spange or get money before you go because it is a bitch to get money or food there, be extra careful, don't be super trusting with people that you meet there, keep your guard up keep your safety first and make sure you know how to protect yourself.
5: KLAMATH FALLS, OR
This isolated town in Oregon's biggest attraction is the Walmart, which is also pretty much the only place you can make money. I was having an awful time in KFalls and like I said the beginning this list of subjective but regardless of how I was feeling during this time, it would still be on my top 5 worst cities to be homeless in. Jessica and I had gotten there because the person that drove us totally misunderstood the direction that we needed to go and drove us to this super isolated town. After we tried to walk out that night, we settled on just staying in a large field that was near the Walmart there. Thank G-d we had nice sleeping bags because when we woke up that morning we had frost all over us, everything was frozen around us. We later separated from the group we were with, tried to hitchhike out and we're only able to make it 13 miles before we were forced to turn around.
After we came back to Klamath Falls from the little city we made it to, we were dropped back off on the opposite side of town. There's a huge river that flows through both sides of town (Klamath River) and very few bridges that you can cross it with. We ended up walking probably around 10 miles through a 2-mile city just trying to find a way to cross the bridge and get back to the Walmart, which was the only place that we were able to make money. We were so close to getting a ride out by a guy but when he ended up flaking on us, the cops found us and forced us to walk the 10 miles that we had walked the previous day back into the outskirts of the city, meaning we had to do the same walk the next day to get back in.
Thanks to an independent delivery truck driver who offered us a ride, we were able to get to Medford which is a bigger city west of Klamath Falls and we were able to get a long ride able out from there. As long as you can get close to the Walmart it's not too bad as far as food and money to survive, you're not going to get anything extra though, the cops are really rude and will make you leave the city limits to sleep, which like I said is a fucking walk to get in and out, some of the people are nice but they are not very helpful. If you aren't at least a semi-experienced train rider, you're gonna be a little trapped, so just pray for someone to help you get out.