Hmmm, Cody Lundine (Dave Canterbury’s survival partner) makes a decent living demonstrating and teaching wilderness survival. I think there’s a niche for almost anything, provided you’re good enough.

@Jack “unfortunately for people in their 40’sand 50’s it gets hard to learn this new stuff, you have a mental block that it is even possible”
I disagree very much. The mental block isn’t like you think. I have a friend in Australia who saw a need to use her tech/secretary type skills from home, working for herself, she got a successful home business up and running and started the first online/school/community for virtual assistants. She is doing well, smart thinking scaling up her business that way.
Another friend after her and her husband were laid off, various health issues in family, house repoed, is making money as a social media consultant, not yet to where they were before things got back, but it is helping and she gets better at what she does.
A friend who works from home, taking care of her disabled husband, her mother who just passed away, she has her own web design business, in fact I know several in that age group who have started such businesses, some with more success than others.
Another friend, very non-techy, first to admit, has a journalism background. She has learned to run her own wordpress site, create and sell products there using paypal. She has a blog talk radio show, and local radio show. Using her media background she helps small businesses get media exposure, this past month she started her own local television show. A big jump for her.
Another friend learned a new skill, making the most beautiful handcrafted wooden pens, bought a website, set up booths at tradeshows. However, not enough $ for her time and she is searching for a new niche.
Another friend quite a bit older than that, retired teacher, who started her own successful herb farm, business is growing, this year she added a nursery, and occasionally has herb/farming classes on her land. She is active in internet forums, on facebook, blogs, has virtual assistant take care of her site and newsletter.
A retiree, made good money in the timber business, bought a franchise, took all his time, little return, part of his business was nutritional supplements. Something he got into when he and his wife decided to get in better shape as retirees. Clients would come in from out of town, ask if they could have stuff shipped to them. I remember talking to him as he was wondering if feasible, I said sure, have a website. He did, it took off, he closed the franchise. His web business slowed down as competition increased. He started a seo business as he learned things which brought traffic to his website.
I will admit that some have a mental block that they can do something like running their own website, but they are willing to learn, and seeing others do it give them hope and they jump right in. One lady contacted me, she wanted to be able to take care of her site like the lady who started her own TV show did, but was concerned she couldn’t do anything that techie until her friend with the TV show admitted how little she once knew.
Another friend went into the house staging business in CA, she was bookkeeper, but realized she could never make more than the hours she had in a day. Her specialty became going in and untrashing repo’s, because of her online presence, mainly places realtors hang out, she was contacted by a news network, who was doing a feature on trashed homes, wanting their camera crew to follow her crew cleaning up a bad one. She hadn’t been in business long, but she quickly had t-shirts with business name and number on the back made up in a day or 2’s time, and the exposure brought her much more business.
Not all these friends are rich, some doing better than others, biggest challenge is not learning these new skills but how to market, sale, make it profitable.
I could easily find more examples, they are there.
No matter what age you can always learn new stuff. If you quit learning new stuff, you’d lose passion for life, and who in their right mind or not, would want to live that way!

What’s disturbing to me about the “homeless man story” is the antagonistic attitude of the person who reported it. If perhaps he had treated the guy with a little humanity and civility, things wouldn’t have escalated and he wouldn’t have to get all afraid.

Long ago I was friends with a man who lived on the street. He said that one of the things that was so difficult was people looking right through you like you didn’t exist. His name was Bobby, and he was a WWII veteran, and he was a kind, funny, smart and upstanding gentleman. He taught me about what it was like to be on the streets in the 80’s.

Even if I don’t have money to offer, I always make eye contact and say something friendly when approached (sometimes I’ll make the first contact), and I’ve never been in fear of an attack. Ever.

You know what? Being homeless doesn’t make a person a criminal, dangerous or scum. Treating someone who is living such a difficult life like they are scum is just plain wrong, and says more about you.

I’m agnostic, but I grew up in a very Christian household and the importance of this issue was brought to my attention at a very early age. There but for the grace of god, etc. Think about it. Be NICE. What does it cost you? Things are BAD out there for a lot of folks. Gratuitous hostility is never the right thing.