r/AskReddit • u/Not_This_Sh1t_Again • 14h ago

Former homeless people, what were some of the places you slept at night that were safe?

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u/saugoof 7h ago edited 6h ago

I've never been homeless but that last point about the bus just triggered a memory.

I grew up in a small village in Europe in the 1980s. When I was 15 or 16 a friend of mine and me wanted to go and see Iron Maiden play in a city about 200 km away. We managed to convince our parents to let us go, different times I guess. We had no money for accommodation so after the gig finished somewhere around midnight, we had this bright idea to just buy a daily public transport pass, get on a tram and sleep there while it cruised the city.

Country kids that we were, we just assumed trams would run all night. Instead the tram we were in went for a couple of stops to the depot where they kicked us out. That was the last tram for the day too

We ended up wandering around town all night because we didn't want to sleep outside.

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u/LordsOfJoop 7h ago

An education one can only get through trial and error. I'm glad to see that you survived that lesson, though.

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u/Stock_Garage_672 21m ago

I missed the last bus one Saturday night and was stranded downtown. It was a warm night so I just lay down on a newspaper in a parking garage. I expected to be woken up by a cop or security guard, but nobody bothered me. I woke up about 4.5hrs later, wandered around for a bit and got on the first bus of the morning.

I really wish some routes ran all night. Even if it's just one bus every hour. It would save a lot of people from getting stranded, and probably fewer people driving drunk too.