Homeless Man Finds HIs Old Bank Account After 3 Years Of Living On The Street

Independent- A man who was homeless for three years found a bank account that he had completely forgotten about with enough money to allow him to put down a deposit on a house.

John Helinski, 62, lived in cardboard boxes by a bus stop in Tampa, a city on the west coast of Florida and said that he had become “invisible”.

He told ABC News that he just “managed on his own” for the whole period and slept under benches so that no one would see him.

The account was unearthed when police and social security workers attempted to find temporary accommodation for Helinski, who was born in Poland, in a homeless shelter.

Helinski assumed that he had nothing to fall back on but all the while he had been receiving Social Security benefits which, it transpired, were enough to put down a deposit on a home.




​Look, I know on the surface that the life of this old ass bum doesn't provide too much to be envious of. Talk about forever unclean. Dude has been living in a box in Tampa. My man has seen some shit. I shutter to think how hard it would be to live in a house in Florida and not become a viral news story. The friendly confines of a a refrigerator box can't exactly prove to be much of a quarantine from society. 

With that said, I am kind of jealous. Is there any better feeling than finding something you thought you lost. Finding one of my favorite t-shirts stuck at the bottom of my drawer will make my day. If I find my missing flip-flop under the coffee table I won't leave my apartment in shoes in for a week. Hell, even the occasional sum of money. Nothing beats sticking your hand in a pair of newly washed pants and pulling out a shriveled up $5 bill. It's one of the few unexpected joys in life. Imagine living on the street and giving up on life then someone just finds your lost bank account? That contains enough to purchase a house!?!? Now granted, the Tampa real estate market is isn't exactly a stunning display of architecture. That's probably the reason his bank account contained enough to buy a house in the first place. However, a box is a box and a house is a house, and no matter how great or shitty either is, one is undoutedly better than the other. It's all relative. Talk about moving on up. This guy's one room shanty might as well be a deeeeluxe apartment in the skkkkyyyyy. Short of winning the Powerball, you or I will never have as significant a change in lifestyle as Hobo Helinski is about to experience, and I for one, am a little bit envious.

Good for this guy, despite having like 3.5 teeth he undoubtedly had a better day than all of us. I still don't quite understand how you forget about a bank account. Only real explanation is that he is a recovering alcoholic, and by recovering I mean he spent 3 years not being able to afford it. I've done a lot of dumb shit drunk, but I am pretty sure opening up a bank account and then forgetting about it the next morning will never be one of them. If I spent 25 minutes on the street in the Tampa I would be more likely to imagine bank accounts that I never opened than forget about ones that already existed. I would just be running up in random banks dropping my name with confidence and hoping for the best.