Castara

I know quite a lot of people own land and have homes in SL etc. but I'd still like to hear what you think *giggles*
Back when I started in SL I did a little bit of land squatting. I was clueless then why LL didn't provide homes for us (it's SL anyway, it's natural that we have homes.) After figuring out why I was getting ejected from lands quite a little I decided to stay in a sorority house (The one that used to be on Noob Island.) After a whole lot of changes etc., the sorority house turned into a skybox and that was around the time I 'left' SL 'for good'.
When I came back, I went back to being homeless, but I had a second account, got a job there, earned a few thousands of L$ and rented a skybox as Castara.

So now... after returning from Christmas and New Year, my skybox expired (uhoh, shopping sprees are bad!) and I'm homeless again (Yay!)

But for the homeless people - how do you deal with the lack of private space for yourself? Personally, I don't, lol, but it kinda gets frustrating when you don't have your own personal area, even a small room would do good. Once I was changing in one of the changing rooms in a mall only to get an IM saying 'nice bod'. That creeped me out.

So what are your experiences?

P.S. Had to say this, lol, was in a sandbox once, some guy rezzed a skybox and a bed and brought a newbie girl there. I happened to be in a skybox nearby running up a DIY photo studio - and let's just say curiosity killed the ...

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Tara's Max

Naiki

I was a Hobo puppy for years. All I actually owned was a wee 500$ puppy avatar and a wonky fedora. Despite everything I currently own I am still kinda a Hobo... I sometimes build a home but never use it....

Suggestion for free home, grab a job for someone who gives you a free changing room?

Matty Luminos

I've been homeless for over a year but as a member of the Virtual Ability group, I was able to set home at VAI Sanctuary. There's no actual homes there, but there's a sandbox and a changing room, and it's very quiet.

Two other places I know that allow group members to set home, and provide changing facilities, are the NCI at Kuula, and The Shelter in Isabel. Kuula is a little better than the Shelter IMO because it provides a sandbox whereas the Shelter doesn't.

It might also be worth experimenting with some of the store and club groups you belong to; occasionally a landowner will (accidentally or on purpose) allow members of announcement groups to set home on their land.

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Grid Strom

Ahhh the good old homeless sandbox days How i miss them.
Activate shields, check.
Armor, check.
Anti Greif Vehicle Check.

I'm set lets build!

Darnk Yun

Yay for being homeless!

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Ahaha, such a simpleton. It'z so much fun playing jokez on you. I waz only here to see how she waz doing, but I had fun while I waz at it. So long, Sere, au revoir, mon ami! Pleaze dream of moi every night! Oui! ~ Harle

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Brianna Ort

We've been down this discussion before. I just keep landmarks of every space that looks promising (build with no return and apparently low traffic) and camp out in one for working on my look. Someone moves in, I move on.

DanielRavenNest

I didn't have land the first few months I was in SL, while I was learning to build and busy picking money trees to buy my first set of textures. Since then the only times I have been homeless are short intervals like when the sim I was renting land on got sold, and the new owner kicked everyone out with 1 day's notice.

These days you can get a premium account on the annual rate of $72 a year, and collect $60 worth of weekly stipend, so the net cost is $1 month. Mainland can be had for negligible purchase price, and with the arrival of mesh, you can build twice as much detail for the same Land Impact (the new name for prim count).

Since I have several older premium accounts that get the higher stipend rates, Linden Lab pays me $1.45 a month net for my mainland parcel, so I may as well keep it, since it's not costing anything. If someone just needs a changing room or spot to unpack boxes, they are welcome to contact me.

Castara

Homelessness can be fun and frustrating, imo.
I'm pretty curious as to how the homeless people deal with having little personal space - I know newbies have a tendency to 'squat'...

Sid Nagy

Most sims are so empty these days, nobody will notice you'll be there for hours. If you don't want to play mom and daddy, practically the whole world is yours. Last week I traveled a continent with my bike, my scanner only catched 4 or 5 people during the whole trip. I actually met no one in person.
You can change clothes in the middle of the streets without being noticed.

eku Zhong

there are new generations of squatters out there...
the other day while looking at the mktplace.. i clicked the slurl to see the item in SL..
and lo and behold... her store was across several abandoned and for sale mainland parcels..
getting curiouser... i went through her listings ... and all in all she is squatting on more than one full region of abandoned mainland..
all with rez/build permissions turned OFF... so shes using some kind of an exploit.

i can understand ppl 'borrowing' abandoned land with build switched on .. for a brief period.. but this woman is firmly ensconced and doing biz on free land.

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Kara Spengler

Lots of groups do. I allow set to home on my house plot as well. It seems pretty silly not to ... unless you have ban lines up anyone can log in to any grid address or tp there. If someone abuses that fact the solution is quite simple .... ban them.

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Kara Spengler

My favourite was when a newbie announced he was going to be my neighbour and put a home on the plot next to me. When I told him he could not do that (meaning it was set to no-build) he got all defensive and asked who would stop him. I realised he did not want an explanation and left him to it.

After he discovered his freebie stuff would not rez he eventually wandered away in disgust.

Castara

This reminded me of something that happened on my old account, back when I was still with the sorority.

This girl from the sorority posted in group chat if we wanted to have a house, and I got curious so I went to check it out. She rezzed a premade house, unfurnished and stuff, and made me roommates with another lady. We started decorating the house and all, and I furnished the house and built a toilet.

Some time later I came back online on SL to find everything gone and all the things returned to my inventory. It confused me for a moment, and my roommate contacted me for a bit and said she spoke to the girl (I haven't heard from her since.) and apparently everything's gone. I was even more confused (blame my noobish mind) and then I didn't get it until I had my second account when I slowly figured out that she was building on abandoned land and we were basically squatting there the whole time.

It was nice to have a roommate and a house for a bit, to be honest. Kind of miss that.

And then there was the huge catastrophe of "Why was I ejected from my own land?" back when I was a serious noob. I earned a few L$ from camping and stuff at that time, and then I stumbled across 1L$ land. Seems too good to be true, now that I look at it, but back then I thought it meant that the land was all mine for 1L$ and so I bought it down. A few days later, some spanish guy ejected me and banned me from the land and all my stuff were returned.

I've learnt my lesson. Big time.

Darnk Yun

I've been mainly using the area Josh gave me as a hangout .

Hmmm... that reminds me, I need to get to making something new there.

Marianne Little

I'm homeless by choiche. I just have so little SL time, I will not spend that sitting in a virtual home. I always log in to get some stuff, change outfit, try to be good and sort inventory a bit, delete stuff from old hunts. If I like what I wear, I take pictures. I never feel that I need to have a place as home.

I do miss decorating, I once had a large plot with lots of prims. But it was frustrating too, when I had all set just as I wanted. I was looking at it and wondering what to do now. The land was just sitting there with all my stuff rezzed just as I like it, looking good. Yes, now it is pretty - but what now?

Maybe it is because I am so fed up with domestic chores in RL, I just need to flutter around and try on clothes in SL.

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Brenda Connolly

In 2008 I cancelled my Premium, then a month or so later I cancelled my SL account totally. My self imposed exile lasted 3 weeks, I ponied up 10 bucks and came back. I didn't want to own any land or have any financial commitment to SL so I was homeless. I enjoyed it. I never had trouble finding an empty space spmewhere to change clothes or just be alone while I worked on inventory. I don't build so rezzing wasn't a priority, but it was never hard finding empty spots with build on. Several groups I belong to had areas for rezzing and changing rooms available and friends always were willing to offer their homes as a crash or "playroom". I went from being homeless to a "serial renter". I'd wander about and find a nice rental house or apt, stay for a while, then move on. It was fun.

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Castara

I can use my remaining unspent money to rent a skybox for around two more weeks, but I'm saving my money for more splurging :S

I don't know why but decorating and furnishing a house of your own seems so appealing. I guess it's the 'your own style' bit because you get what you want in your house. Back in the days I intruded upon a house and it felt really homely. No one would be in the sim whenever I came on, so I just went around and had my share of fun in the house. The couple owning it had pictures of their wedding and everything. I shed a tear at the memories.

SLShapeshifter

I don't have the steadiest of incomes, so I couldn't exactly pony up any rent. So I just log in where I logged out last.

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Anya Ristow

In 2006 it was quite a challenge to find a place that was empty. With a lot of map hopping I eventually found a whole sim that was empty except for one large building, with no people in it, and it stayed that way for perhaps a couple months. I called it my personal dressing room. Coolest experience ever in SL was when I invited a few friends, who were amazed at the open space, and another group came with vehicles and had combat. I haven't since seen such good combat.

Nowadays it's easy to find empty space. Even empty space with building enabled. Find a couple and landmark them. Just remember to clean up when you leave.

I'm also finding public sandboxes empty these days.

Beebo Brink

I spent my first few weeks in SL landless, mostly through confusion. I couldn't figure out why every time I checked out a First Land parcel, people IM'd me offering to pay me double or more for the parcel. It all seemed so furtive and shady that I shied away from buying at all. (I didn't know that the going rate for land was so high that if I'd sold my First Land, I probably would not have been able to find anything nearly that affordable again.) By the time I decided to just go ahead and buy, First Land was canceled.

Anyway, during that time I found a couple of sims that tended to stay empty, so I would try on skin and clothing there. I still remember how naughty I felt the first time I stood naked in the middle of a sim while cycling through a batch of skin demos.

For a few weeks I was able to rent a cabin for L$50 a month in a parcel that was set up to help noobs. That was really useful for learning the basics of rezzing objects and moving them... then trying to find them after I'd flung them away. That was my first taste of having a place to call home, so when the parcel changed hands I finally just bought my own land.

I love owning land -- I currently rent a homestead and pay tier on about 2k of mainland -- but if I ever ended up homeless in SL, I could manage so much better now that I know all the ins and outs of land perms, rezzing in sand boxes. Several of my alts are pretty much homeless since I tend to keep them away from my normal routine and they do just fine.

As an aside, after finding homeless women changing clothes in the bushes around the Duchess, I added a Ladies Changing room as a skybox. So if you're need of a quick place with privacy, drop by the Duchess bar, click on the Ladies Room sign on the back door, and you can TP up to the skybox. Keep a LM if you find the space useful.

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Noob: "okay.... im in a house with cages and people in gags and the door just locked and i cant get out :c"

Ann Otoole

I find it cute that some people take all their clothes off and then wear the next outfit.

Roderick Vaughn

I swore when I started that I wouldn't spend any RL money on SL. Then I gave in and bought about a tenner's worth of L$, but I swore I wouldn't make it a regular thing and I wouldn't get land.

I started renting a place this week. It's costing me nearly a whole pound a week.

Shiloh Lyric

It's not really your "own" personal space, but Skidz Partz has sandbox skyboxes that you can use for hours at a time if you want to. I'm not sure what time limit they have on auto return, but I've been there before unpacking, trying on clothes and sorting inventory for long periods of time. Since it's individual skyboxes, it's pretty private and I've never been bothered there. I imagine that you could set up furniture, but you'd have to collect it all before you leave and then set it up again when you go back.

You can't necessarily log back into the same place, although last location will take you to the store. If you want to check it out, just search for Skidz Partz and from the teleport point, walk a bit to the step, and the teleports to the skyboxes are outside and to the left around the corner. It's at least a private place to unpack purchases and change.

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Originally Posted by Beebo Brink DO NOT LINK THE CLUMP!!!

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Brenda Connolly

I do. And to make it even better, I dress and undress the same way I do in RL, one item at a time.

Tyche Shepherd

I do that as well , but I also do like the way I can take my underwear off before removing my outer clothes

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