This is shaping up to be a character story, where the inner journey of the protagonist is the main focus. It also will have a strong milieu element, but the milieu is there mostly to lead the character's inner journey. For such a story to work, you have to paint the starting point of this character in vivid and believable detail. We need to understand him, sympathize with even his most unlovable characteristics. We need to see the world, our world, as he sees it.

I'm going to work with Don on appealing to the readers from the get-go. He's got the pathos for readers to sympathize with (the last, painful dollar) and the humor (okay, maybe he's not that funny, but he's trying with the "Honey, I'm home!").

I'm thinking I can cram in some more sympathy-inspiring aspect to his interaction with the world in the first 13. He's resourceful and thrifty, hard-working and sober, and very, very bitter. I'm not sure yet how to exploit the narrator's pov to make Don more sympathetic, but I'll read up around the site and beyond.

One of the characteristics that always struck me was that the long-term homeless seem to have given up hope. They've settled into their routines, and they have no hope that life will ever change. Bitterness is usually found with the newly homeless... young people thrust into the streets through loss of job, loss of family, drugs and alcohol. But the old-timers who have many years -- sometimes 10 years or more -- on the streets, have developed a sense of apathy about life or anything improving. They are often very subdued, and apologetic about bothering you. It's heart-wrenching in a way that is hard to explain.