He says to call him Mike, though his real name is much more lyrical, brought with him from the Eastern European country where he was born. He has been homeless for three years now, and hates it, most especially the constant theft and confiscation of everything a person values. Sometimes it’s staff at the shelter who take people’s things, like the sewing machine a friend had seized. “They don’t want us to have any personal happiness, it seems.” Sometimes it’s another person living homeless who is the thief. Mike gets a twinkle in his eye when he sees that I have never heard the term “farming,” which is what people out there call it when someone is under deep sedation from the poisoned opioid supply and is fleeced for everything with value in their possession while they’re unconscious. “There, I told you something new!” he says. The people doing the farming justify their own actions with stories of how they too lost everything multiple times in the previous week, says Mike, and how they really need what they’ve taken. “We’re starting over every day, with constant setbacks. Every day is just survival.”