Didn’t know your Walter, but a family member of mine was a corrections officer at a small town jail in Podunk Tennessee. 17k people in the whole county, and each winter the jail would triple their numbers for this exact reason. First snow’s coming, time to buy 50 bucks of booze and get lodging for the winter. Fucking horrible people have to do that. I’ve been desperate. Like, living in a shack with no plumbing, no electric, and by the grace of God and some clever shop lifting a propane heater to keep 4 of us warm in 110 square feet in -26 degrees level of desperate. I can’t imagine being so desperate as to willingly go to jail. Which just shows despite all that, how fucking lucky I am. I worked in commissary, family members have been jailers and cops. It’s better than freezing to death, of course, but no one should ever have to make that choice. Housing is a right, and our laws need to catch the fuck up with that.
Didn’t know your Walter, but a family member of mine was a corrections officer at a small town jail in Podunk Tennessee. 17k people in the whole county, and each winter the jail would triple their numbers for this exact reason. First snow’s coming, time to buy 50 bucks of booze and get lodging for the winter. Fucking horrible people have to do that. I’ve been desperate. Like, living in a shack with no plumbing, no electric, and by the grace of God and some clever shop lifting a propane heater to keep 4 of us warm in 110 square feet in -26 degrees level of desperate. I can’t imagine being so desperate as to willingly go to jail. Which just shows despite all that, how fucking lucky I am. I worked in commissary, family members have been jailers and cops. It’s better than freezing to death, of course, but no one should ever have to make that choice. Housing is a right, and our laws need to catch the fuck up with that.