Among my problems for many years now, has been that of being homeless.

As a child, I felt it intuitively, even when I had shelter... And it's taken me the experience of being without a shelter now, that I've finally began to realize what a home is, and what homelessness means.

Per chance, is there anyone here who's ever been homeless, or is presently homeless?

You may need to go through more of Tycho's posts to grasp this.

Pole tycho. What happened? Homelessness can happen to anyone. One major misfortune and one is done in. Don't you have any relatives in Nairobi (I assume that's your location from what you've listed) that can host you? Pole tena.

Home can be argued to have at least six or seven dimensions of meaning, identified
by the ‘key signifiers’ of shelter, hearth, heart, privacy, roots, abode and (possibly) paradise.
Each of these signifiers can be explicated in terms of its wider symbolic meaning (its ‘general
connotation’), its evocation of a specific sense of security, and its characteristic mode
of relating to oneself and to others. The selection of the signifiers is supported by Watson and Austerberry’s (1986) empirical findings - for example, ‘shelter’ corresponds to decent
‘material conditions’, ‘hearth’ corresponds to ‘emotional and physical well-being’, ‘heart’
to ‘loving and caring social relations’, ‘privacy’ to ‘control and privacy’, and ‘abode’ to ‘livinghleeping place’. Two signifiers have been added to these, however, namely ‘roots’
(which corresponds to a sense of individual identity) and ‘paradise’ (which connotes ‘ideal
home’ as distinct from the home of everyday life). Taken together, all these signifiers
comprise the meaning of home.