What should come first: food or rent?

[smahala1991]

The age old question

[Cynicaldreamer]

If you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, your physiological needs come first: food, water, shelter, and safety.

Unfortunately both of which you listed falls into that category. So you have to ask yourself, what is more essential to live: food, or a place to stay? Realistically the answer is food; you have to eat to live. If you are smart, savvy, or have friends and family, you can stay with them as a temporary means of shelter. Worse case, stay at a homeless shelter, most of which offer food and protection.

[provokeesmokee]

I'm going rent.

Actually looking to slash my food budget as I find some local grocery co-ops and low cost options, and will probably add in fasting if I need to lessen it even more.

in my opinion, I'm ok with less food but still having a comfy place to live for me and my cat. Plus I work from home, so no home, harder to work.

[NathanDavis]

pay your rent...

you can always find alternatives with food spending, while you rent will never go cheaper, lol

now, if you're starving... then your problems are bigger than these two things alone

[BoopBoopBeep]

Rent. Largely a fixed cost. You can eat ramen noodles and shop at the food pantry if you have to because it's a lean month, but don't pay rent and you're getting evicted. You have no wiggle room there..

[Static_In_The_Attic]

Unless you own a tent, you need a roof over your head & if you need something to eat visit a food pantry or a soup kitchen or something like that.

[magiusX26]

food. you can survive without a place yo live but not eithout food. furthermore, you can work towards funding rent a lot easier if you are not ovetly hungry/starving.

[WhitneySnow]

I don’t know. They’re both really important. But I think usually they give you a grace period to pay your rent, like it’s not due right on the first. So maybe food?

[Jamie05rhs]

Wrong answer; sorry.

[WhitneySnow]

@Jamie05rhs how do you know? They both seem equally important to me.

[Jamie05rhs]

@WhitneySnow If you don't pay the rent, they can evict you. Then you will have to sleep outside.

[WhitneySnow]

@Jamie05rhs but if you don’t eat you’ll starve. That’s just as bad.

Honestly I can’t conceive of not having enough money to do either but they both sound really bad. That’s all I’m saying.

[Jamie05rhs]

@WhitneySnow Actually, a human being can go a long time without starving. And here in the West we're fat anyway. So we have plenty of reserves to live off of. Trust me; you'll be fine.

[Jamie05rhs]

Fasting is good for the body, also.

[AviatorTom]

Food is more important. If you're behind on your rent, you may eventually get evicted, but today's laws are so strict, it's very hard for a landlord to evict someone

[exitseven]

Food. By the time you can get evicted we will be a burning cinder in space.

[Titanic1912]

Rent so that you can stay another month. Put away some money for rent, put some away for groceries and then use the rest for whatever else is important, like car insurance and the other bills.

[GoodGuyBreakingBad]

Well, utility companies want their money and don't care about the rent, yes it's horrible but that happens my way.

[KostasKouvalis]

You can survive without rent. You can't survive without food

[alice55]

It's actually rent the most important cause you get free food in France when you're poor so by choosing rent you get both. If you chose food then you get kicked out and become homeless so you get neither, become sick and others homeless people are going to attack you (most homeless in France are mentally ill people, druggies and alcoholic, you definitely don't want to be homeless here). Also you can survive years while eating shitty cheap food.

[KostasKouvalis]

@alice55 I didn't think of it like that. You always think about every scenario/detail. ^_^

[alice55]

Yes ^^

[magiusX26]

@alice55 that is a niche answer to a generalized question. outside of france (or any other place that has that kind of mentality/laws/social programs) its actually food.

[alice55]

@magiusX26 No it's actually rent, you can't survive outside especially in winter and under the hot sun of summer. It's always rent. If you have a rent you can find a new job if you don't and are homeless you can't also you can survive years on cheap food, you can also easily steal food or eat out of trash can. Even can ask your neighbour for eggs under the guise of making a cake.

Outside there's only druggies, violent people, thief, mentally ill and others people who just love kicking and beating up homeless for fun. Definitely better to be angry and safe in a house. If you don't have a house you can't get help neither get money from the government for help you lose all of your rights when you become homeless.

[KostasKouvalis]

@magiusX26 That's ALSO a good point. I don't know how many countries actually have food stamp programs. But certainly in parts of Africa and South Asia, I think most people would take food over housing.

[magiusX26]

@ alice wrong. i spent all this past winter as homeless. many homeless have survived weather issues since time inmemorial but succumbed to starvation. history alone can prove you wrong.

[KostasKouvalis]

@alice55 In FIRST world countries, YES! But in THIRD world countries, it doesn't work that way. In third world countries, someone can just built themselves a shack out of scrap and the government won't bother them, but in developed countries, the government will come tear it down for zoning and code violations. This is why you don't see as many people on the street in third world countries. They live in informal settlements and don't pay any rent

[KostasKouvalis]

@magiusX26 I think they go hand in hand though. If he's a fatass, he's more likely to resist cold weather, then if he's malnourished. And body fat can keep you alive for quite some time.

[magiusX26]

as to thr building a shelter part, plenty fo that or find other ways of getting out of bad weather conditions to survive. as to being homeless and getting a job, i have watched (and done it myself) countless homeless people have full legitimate careers including those strung out on drugs and having mental problems. alsp my prrvioys employment was in an area filled with homeless people who did not syruggle due to sheltering issues but did struggle with food issues. it was a resturaunt, we fed them and put them to work on small odd jobs when their mental and drug issues did not interfere.

[alice55]

@magiusX26 Definitely not the same as in my country, here people avoid homeless people like the plague, homeless also steal others homeless people stuff, they all keep a dog with them to protect themselves (they also feed the dog before themselves),
Nobody feed homeless people here because they get disease and are chased, the food of the restaurant get sold at very cheap price for avoiding putting it in trash, also here you can only get free food if you have a home (if you're homeless you can't get the free food because you need a paper saying you're too poor to get food for yourself and this paper can only get delivered by letter at your house).
There's no shelter only exist in extremely harsh condition of winter and no homeless people go there cause the open hours doesn't suit them and alcohol is forbidden. (hours is you have to get out at 6 am and no dog allowed neither are all of their stuff). There's too very limited places.
They're also the first one who get killed and attacked when druggies are around. The homeless women get raped and police don't give a shit about the homeless being killed, raped or even beaten, they just kick them out since they're allowed nowhere and nobody want to be near them.

[magiusX26]

@alice55 i did not say a homeless shelter i said shelter as in the general term "a place to stay, get out of the weather" such as a cave, storm drain, convieniance store, bus shelter, parking garage, etc. all are a shelter.

[magiusX26]

as for the homeless not getting free food in france, your own statements lend towards proving you wrong as they show the homeless survive and without food they would not. maybe not everywhere gives thrm food but at least some people/places do or you would have homeless dead bodies in streets somewhere and/oryour population of homeless would literally starve its self to death. also if france (a 1st world country) were to let people starve like your statements try to suggest, then they would be kicked out of the UN and sanctioned into mear nothingness.

[KostasKouvalis]

@alice55 yeah, people used to feed them and give them money, but then they discovered a lot of them were just buying beer or weren't as homeless as they claimed, and a lot of them now are very aggressive. My professor said some homeless people chased her and her class out of the city square saying it was THEIR area. And another one would always shit in front of the Mapping building. Homeless people used to genuinely be down on their luck. Some of them would even steal something just to end up in prison for the winter, but now a lot of them are just druggies or lazies who don't want to work. And yeah, majority of crimes involving homeless both as the victims and the perpetrators go unresolved.

[alice55]

@magiusX26 They're not shelter and they're forbidden from getting in there, they get kicked out of it.
Homeless usually stay in forest.
France actually do nothing for homeless except kick them out, you don't know my country so don't try to act all high and mighty. Sometime they give them soup on harsh winter days but that's it, those mostly survive out of their alcohol and stuff they find in people trash can, nobody give them food just some cents sometime.
Also it been decade since I have seen one, police make sure they're out of the ways of people because they bring disease.
Also some people more than 15 years ago gave tents to homeless people and the police took them and destroyed them.

It's in French but you can translate it basically they destroyed and stole all the stuff of an homeless person because they thoughts it was making their city look dirty : www.leparisien.fr/.../...df-15-03-2018-7609089.php

And homeless people do get food but only on cold months the others they have to get i themselves alone.

[alice55]

They chose to be outside for the most part or are just mentally ill, most of them live in squats and of course those place are disgusting and full of disease, they also refuse to go into shelter made for them because they have to get out at 6 am and that's too early for them and all of them are either druggies, alcoholic, mentally ill or chose to live there.

[KostasKouvalis]

In Portland the city was giving them free drugs and food, so of course they don't want to get off the streets.

[alice55]

I saw video of Portland, that's really horrible what's happening them, it's crazy, they're going to get a new black plague if they continue this ways. It's also happening in Vancouver. In France homeless get kicked out and their squat get burned down to avoids this kind of situation.
Portland look like cities in zombie movie or apocalyptic movies.

[LiamJHayden]

For the most part housing. A lot of charities have food banks but housing can be a pain to get.

[Sparkie460]

Winter is coming so for a nice warm place to stay I'd choose rent. You can go to food pantries for food

[Jamie05rhs]

Rent; duh. Even the homeless have food. But they're still homeless.

[taurusman]

Rent because you’ll have nowhere to cook your food if you don’t pay rent

[artgorgeous]

Food. Because you can't live without food.

[Nikki1989]

Rent. You need somewhere to live, right?

[alice55]

rent of course

[CrimsonAngel09]

Eh... rent.

[msc545]

Food if u need it

[Pink2000]

Rent.