In your humble opinion, are the majority of the homeless people responsible for the situation they are in? IOW: do they deserve to be homeless, because it is their personal failure or do they not, because they are a victim of the circumstances (the reasons they are where they are are largely out of their control)? Have you ever talked to homeless people? Are they really just “bad people” and “will never change” or are they hardworking individuals who’ve just had a punch by life that they were unable to stand after?
Answering in good faith as someone recovering from homelessness, knowing this post is so severely downvoted and will probably be removed or ignored.
No.
For this and the rest of your questions there are 5 main types of ‘homeless’ and all categories below often find themselves into multiple of these categories the longer they are homeless.
Archetype 1, The Victim: Nearly all homeless technically fall into this category, but I’m going to define this as you did, ‘victim of circumstances outside of their control.’ All homeless start out like this. Either from being born mentally ill and no longer having care, losing a job, losing a house, running away from abusive parents, running away from other domestic violence, being a part of the foster care system, or getting addicted to drugs (most commonly through the opioid epidemic.) But to further clarify and deal with annoying people:
Archetype 2, The Mentally ill: American society specifically is not built to handle those that cannot help themselves. It is so violently against the chronically ill and mentally ill, that the majority of those suffering from severe illness of any type will end up homeless at some point during their lives (including ‘couch surfing’ as homeless). Most homeless people will eventually become mentally ill if they stay on the streets longer than six months. Given the lack of available reasonable resources to get out of homelessness, this is a large minority of The Victims.
Archetype 3, The Druggie: Drug addiction is a disease, a disease you are either genetically predisposed to, or not. It can start as a choice, but does not always start as a choice. Stopping is not a choice most can physically make. This, like all addictions, will only end when it is ended. Barring arguably divine intervention only hitting rock bottom and staying there can truly ‘cure’ someone of drug addiction. So once they reach the end of their grace with their loved ones and friends, they’re still alive, but cannot maintain enough free floating cash to maintain a home (if they could even qualify)
Archetype 4, The Victim, but old: In many parts of the country you cannot get a job past a certain age, you will be discriminated against. And it will be done automatically in a plausibly deniable way. This gap usually exists between 55 and 62. This is the age you are most like to become homeless for the first time as of 2020. You get laid off, you get fired, you get constructively let go, you don’t have social security, you don’t have a good enough body for general labor, you will be discriminated against severely by pretty much everyone hiring… and then you end up homeless. And until you get your social security, you will stay homeless, as older people (before social security age) are usually at the bottom of the list for grants (specifically older white men have the least available options and programs to help them out of homelessness).
Archetype 5, (Rare) (Epic) (Legendary) The Actually Prefers Homeless: Easily the 0.001% of homeless people. These are never the ones you have ever seen on a broadcast or news report, except when they rarely get caught. They don’t and won’t ever fully fit into society, as they fundamentally reject the concept. Everyone else can and has been cured before, this is the only archetype that ‘deserves’ to be homeless, because it is genuinely the only thing they want in life.
Thank you for bringing such a well thought out answer to a topic so often lacking serious understanding of society’s failures and the cascade of struggles. Irl I make a point to acknowledge that I’ve been homeless (very briefly) and housing insecure when these topics come up because so many people think of homeless people as fundamentally alien, and I hope that by being open about such experiences I can help them understand that homelessness is something even someone like me can have experienced
This is a really well thought out reply and thank you for bringing the empathy and knowledge this topic needs.
First, sorry for the late reply, this did not show up in my notifications for some reason.
Mental illness, specifically disorders, is any category of psychiatric illness that interferes with daily life. I used it in two ways. Many who develop a severe mental illness, say schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, clinical depression, and even cases like mild to severe autism, will end up homeless. Sometimes this is arguably a choice, as in their disorders lead them to act in ways that others perceive as a voluntary action, which supports the far-right narrative you’re basing your argument on. Most of the time this is not a choice.
Additionally, the severe stress of homelessness has been well documented to cause PTS in otherwise mentally healthy people. This then can cascade into other mental illness, which can lead people to either use drugs to calm themselves (as medical care is out of the question), or can result in the ‘voluntary’ choice of not seeking help after enough rejections. This is where the myth of ‘they don’t want help they want to keep doing drugs,’ lie comes from. People with severe PTSD from homelessness that have found a way to cope with the damage that state of being has done to their brain. When you are in survival mode constantly and find something to give you peace, whatever it may be, that is what your brain will fervently keep trying to get even if it is illogical or in other words bad for you in the long run. Which leads us to:
And in some select cases, they’re right. But they’re also not capable of understanding the concept of choice.
If I force you into labor at an early age, force you to work unsafely in such a way as to cause chronic pain, and then force healthcare costs to be unobtainable for you; you are left with a few choices: Drink yourself to sleep so you don’t feel the pain, seek drugs so you don’t feel the pain, or kill yourself to stop the pain. Pain management isn’t covered in ER visits unless you’re having a heart attack from it or have gone into shock. Most Americans cannot afford anything but ER visits, because ERs cannot legally turn you down.
So do you have an actual choice in that scenario? Because half of working Americans by the age of 30 find themselves in that scenario. Nearly all drug addicts found themselves in similar scenarios.
If you want to stop drug addiction and abuse, and homelessness, then the solution is universal healthcare including mental health care, AND WORKER PROTECTIONS INCLUDING MINIMUM WAGE BEING SET TO THE COST OF LIVING.
Why are you arguing for them then? Addiction is well documented, it’s not like we don’t have any information on how drug dependence happens or how it influences people’s decisions.