Spend Three Days Living Like a Seattle Homeless Person for the Low, Low Price of $2000

Via Clutch, news of “sub-Urban Adventures,” one man’s Seattle company offering you the opportunity to “Experience the Gritty Underbelly of Seattle” for $2000. The mastermind behind this obviously terrible idea states that he spent two months living on the streets of Seattle as a way to explore cost-cutting and “practic[e] a form of minimalism.”

I learned that homelessness is nothing to fear; albeit nothing to aspire to either. In 3 days I will give you a crash tour of the homeless life style. You will gain a new respect for the folks that are forced into this existence. You will see the seedy side of Seattle in a new light and have an experience that you will never forget. Embrace the Adventure!

What a person might do with his or her sincere desire to understand poverty is a complicated issue; this story reminds me of another recent one from the New York Times, about a white middle-class South African family who spent a month living in a 100-square-foot shack in a squatter camp. Somewhat inevitably, a severe local backlash emerged despite the family’s ostensibly sincere intentions. There are plenty of people who might attribute my own experience in the Peace Corps as a similar sort of “let’s try on poverty” simple-mindedness, and I’m conscious both of the fact that I wanted to understand what it was like to live poor and also that I was consistently grateful to know the experience was finite. That tension often made me (and made me feel like) a huge asshole.

There is only one question that matters to me personally when I try to understand ventures that toe the line of poverty tourism: is there a better use for the person in question’s time and money? In the case of this Seattle business, the answer is clearly yes. Anyone thinking about doing this — anyone excited about the prospect of getting a “homeless name” and a “homeless look” and a custom “homeless life story” — could donate their $2000 to a homeless shelter, volunteer there every Sunday for a year, and surely end up with a much deeper understanding of what all of this means.

But anyway, only men are even considered for this tour (which you have to personally interview for beforehand): the homeless shelter that “Adventurers” will be visiting is male-only.

[Clutch]