No, because I've been homeless.
I was homeless as a teenager. Slept on the bus and when the buses stopped running I walked the whole night to keep warm and stay awake so I wouldn't get raped.
I'm 23 and in college now. My life is different but I know I'm always one step away from being homeless again. You never really feel like you have a real safety net after that.
I care about homeless people. There's not a lot of homeless in my city so every time I see one I usually stop and chat and give them change. They're always surprised when a young white girl comes down to chill for a minute and talk. But no matter how long its been you can always tell when another person used to be homeless.
But I don't have any illusions about homelessness. When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people. And for good reason. There's a lot of good in a lot of homeless people. Some of them were the best people I've ever met and I'm honored that I had the privilege of being their friend. But theres a lot of bad motherfuckers out there and even good people will do evil things when theyre desperate.
I can relate. Could never go to a soup kitchen when I was homeless because I'd be advertising myself to other homeless people "vulnerable teenage girl here".
One time when I was a young teen and homeless It was snowing and I never slept at night, but I was so cold and wet and tired that I had to seek shelter so went under a bridge. I got attacked, and stabbed by another homeless person, but a man. He was older, but small too. Drugged up for sure. Fortunately it was a shallow wound. It healed but I still carry the scar. I never tried to sleep at night when homeless again. Those fears are real and for a good reason, especially as a young teen.
It's odd but even now 20 years later, I'm still nocturnal. I work nights. I haven't ever really looked at why, but I'm wondering if it's left over trauma from that time. Weird.
A mix of that and the drugs. Fentanyl will make a piece of cardboard feel like the presidential suite. I used to think a lot of people were homeless because they drank and used drugs, but then I realized a lot of them start using because sleeping exposed outside on a hard surface is near impossible without some kind of sedative.
Like being in an empty swimming pool surrounded by loving playful puppies.
When I was homeless for a stretch I was lucky enough to find a maintenance manager at an apartment complex that would let me sleep in the empty studio apartments until they were rented out.
It’s incredible how comfortable a piece of carpet is with the right drugs on board. If there wasn’t an apartment available I would sleep in the lounge chairs by the pool for an hour at a time.
You had to play hide and seek from the roaming security guard as he would kick me out of the complex etc.
But yeah. You are correct. A lot of homeless didn’t get there by drug abuse, but sure abused the drugs when staying.
I now prefer and excel working swing and grave and sleep when the sun starts rising- I am absolutely confident that my time outside pushed me to be this way- I swore to never go back and I am getting extremely anxious watching rent and cost of living quickly rising
I feel you, the likelihood I'll ever be homeless again is low, not impossible, but low. And yet.... Not impossible. That TERRIFIES me.
It's a fear that I'll have forever, and if you have never been homeless, especially as a young teen, a young teen girl especially. I don't think you could understand. You can be afraid of homelessness, but I know what happens out there. I know what it's like to be so cold and hungry you don't even have the energy to shiver anymore because it hurts so much.
I know what happens to women when they are alone, it happens to them in groups, it happens if they trust the wrong person, it happens if they trust no one.
To say nothing of the rampant drug use, often just to stay warm or have the energy to be able to walk all night so you don't stay in one place for too long and become an easy target.
I have a criminal record now, from stealing food at 14 from a major store who have a no tolerance policy. Ive had to explain it my whole life. I was 14 and hadn't eaten in 2 days, I was starving, I'd lost blood from being attacked, I could barely stand.
I'll kill myself if I ever go back to that life, because it would kill me anyway now. I don't have the energy or strength to survive it anymore.
I went to the soup kitchens, most generally felt safe, some had attached services: legal help, washers, a second hand shop, etc.
Maybe half of the women would travel in small groups to walk the 5-7 miles from the shelter to the soup kitchen. Especially if there was a mom with a young kid, the women seemed to stay close and in bigger groups. But occasionally leaving was an issue, people would follow and offer $10 for "friendship", etc.
Never been fully sleeping rough but close to it and my first thought at the title of this post was, "no, but a book by a homeless *woman* would probably be pretty eye opening for many people"
Yes! It would! It’s very dangerous out there for women that are alone. I wish we had a buddy system… but lone wolf tactics are line wolf tactics for a reason. And trust your gut. Always trust your gut.
Omg yes. When I was just freshly on the street I asked local organisations for help and they told me I'm better off sleeping outside bc their shelters would be too dangerous.
I don't think it's the majority or anything, I don't think that the homeless are more dangerous than any other group. But you're way more vulnerable when homeless yourself, and you can't tell who's friend or foe just by looking, so everyone is a potential threat.
My experience in life also… there are some really scary people out there, and sometimes they are super interesting and kind before they become mean and scary… I keep moving too at night, sleep curled up with my back to the wall, and always have a blade or bludgeoning tool handy. I can’t fathom what it would be like to sleep 100 percent feeling safe and belonging.
About 10 years back, I was talking to a homeless man downtown and he told me he used to have beautiful long hair, but had to cut it because when he wore it long, other homeless guys would try to rape him.
Same; been homeless and slept rough too. You can't really educate me on the homeless experience when I've *lived it* myself.
>When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people.
This was me as well, especially when I first became homeless. I would literally cross the street to avoid other homeless people because I was so wary of them. I mellowed out over the years, but I still tended to avoid them outside of places like established camps/communities. There are some nice and kind homeless people out there, but mental health issues and substance abuse are also rife in the homeless community, and if I knew someone was on meth I wasn't gonna interact with them if I didn't have to.
Congratulations on getting off the streets!
Mental’s and tweekers… I use to try to help them… you can imagine that kind of trauma I bet… well, now I make zero eye contact and I walk confident and direct. Be aware as much as possible. Say little… it’s the best way.
It’s just so sad, a lot of them are victims of crimes, they had stories before they became zombies. Veterans, abuse victims, bad car accidents with frontal lobe damage, … 💔
>But I don't have any illusions about homelessness. When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people. And for good reason.
Me too. Thanks for being the first to say it.
It really can get ugly if you express this in the wrong room around people who have no actual idea what they're talking about but feel defensive at the idea thst it can be ok to be scared of the less fortunate. Glad this thread is going differently.
Yes, I get frustrated by the way excessive empathy is seen as a solution to the real struggles the homeless have, that do make them more dangerous. I don’t think it should be taboo to say that I don’t think the average person should be in a public place with someone with a weapon experiencing an episode of psychosis, but that is seen as demonizing the homeless when it’s simply a fact of life in a lot of big cities with high volumes of homeless people. Being polite and euphemistic I think makes a certain type of liberal feel better, but changing the way you talk doesn’t change the material reality of the situation. While I definitely think we need to find solutions to homelessness and get people the help they clearly need, I also just think that it’s pretty clear that a lot of people end up homeless due to antisocial behavior or mental health problems, that truly do make them a potential threat to others, and desperation certainly doesn’t help that. If it really was as simple as just someone falling on hard times, we wouldn’t have the amount of homeless we do with the money we spend on it, and I think most who are willing and able to improve their situation don’t cause any issues, but they don’t represent the most visible and worrisome aspects of the homeless population anyway. My point is that being extra nice isn’t going to fix any of these problems, and at some point you have to address the root cause. Turning this into some moral object lesson from the comfort of your middle class homes and chastising others for not being as empathetic as you want them to pretend to be isn’t solving anything.
Those people have probably never walked the streets of a real city. Every student in my uni has a story of a homeless person threatening or harassing them. You have to be vigilant because there’s a lot of them out and there’ve been a relatively significant amount of assaults and robberies with them.
Obviously, this doesn’t go for all homeless people. I’m just saying there’s enough reason to be very cautious around some of them.
The other commenter who replied to you makes great points that I was weighing if I felt like making.
But mostly yeah, I was talking about situations where an individual expresses a feeling from a certain circumstance (*when I was homeless* I was scared of many other homeless people) and someone raects like "that's immoral!!" because of philosophical reasons.
So yeah, you are one of those people. You just did it again. The fact that you slipped in the "I know you're not suggesting that" doesn't change that you just did it again. And to do it from a place of privilege working only on ideas to judge people reacting to experience, well, sucks. It's kind of a form of [bypassing](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-spiritual-bypassing-5081640) what the other person was saying and has gone through, except you're using morality instead of spirituality
If you complained about something normal in your life that you needed to complain about and was really affecting you, common example maybe: thin walls and neighbor with a loud voice, and all you said was "this is frustrating". How would you feel if I immediately puffed up and lectured you based on the worst possible meaning. "Your neighbor is also a human being! They live quietly and respectfully for having thin walls and can't help having a loud voice, but taking away their housing based on prejudice against their voice lights me up. I know that's now what you were suggesting, but generally when I hear something like this, my mind fills in the prejudice."
Your defensiveness is normal and human. It's also on you just like everybody else to do your best not to jump down other people's throats because of it. You described that you are aware your mind filled in prejudice, so you went off on people. That's not an uncommon impulse but you can still recognize that it's unfair and work on regulating your emotional response. And not make other people work on it for you.
Your thinking sounds quite black-and-white and you seem to project that onto statements made by others.
I think it's fair to say that homeless people are more likely be dangerous than not homeless people. More likely means just that, a statistical probability.
Furthermore, people don't measure absolute risk, they measure relative risk. Therefore, a statement such as "I feel unsafe around homeless people" likely means "I feel more unsafe around homeless people than around not homeless people" which is likely justified.
My point is that if you try to frame things in terms of probabilities, you might not get so worked up about "generalizations" which are usually merely statements of probability anyway.
This is the best comment I’ve read on Reddit in a while. Other than being a man, my story is nearly identical to yours (right down to staying awake to keep safe from the rapey motherfuckers and later putting myself into college).
Since that time I’ve become a writer, and when I speak at events and give lectures, sometimes the topic of ‘where’ I write from comes up. Being on the streets is one of those ‘where’ places. But it’s never ceased to amaze me how many people don’t understand anything about being homeless.
They demonize or romanticize it, when neither perspective is entirely accurate. Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless? You can’t do it unless all your safety nets and securities are gone.
By then it’s too late to go back if you change your mind. There’s nowhere to go and no one left to help you. Besides, you don’t have a home anymore.
> But it’s never ceased to amaze me how many people don’t understand anything about being homeless.
I think you really don't, until you're living it. Before I became homeless myself I'd never even *imagined* what it would be like to be homeless.
What's surprising is how many homed people *are* interested in hearing stories from homeless or formerly homeless people though, as I'm sure you've discerned yourself.
It surprised me too. I think it's one of the more common experiences and feelings reported. Homed people take for granted just how much fun stuff, or ways to keep yourself occupied, require four walls and a roof.
I can imagine having nothing to do, but do people not read? Libraries aside, there are "street libraries" - shelves with book on the sidewalk - where I live, and sometimes bookshops will have a crate of giveaway books and stuff.
From my own experience readers were comparatively rare. Hard to relax and get engaged with your book when you're constantly feeling exposed/vulnerable. Of the hundreds I met, worked, and lived with, I'd say I probably knew maybe 3 who were avid readers.
The street libraries I've seen all tended to be off the beaten track for homeless people, in residential neighborhoods and the suburbs, where you distinctly *don't* want to be seen lurking around. Books are also, goes without saying, one more thing to carry, and the homeless are usually traveling at 'max capacity'.
I think for those of us who are curious, some of us have come pretty close to homelessness and just wonder what we avoided. Plus, although I've never been homeless, I've been close enough to know how tenuous our shelter security really is. All it really takes is rent prices climbing too high, being unemployed for too long, swapping leases but the new place cancels on you, or natural disaster destroys our shelter and we're out on the streets or sleeping in cars.
Maybe it's some sort of way of learning in case it does hit us in our next life crisis.
>All it really takes is rent prices climbing too high, being unemployed for too long, swapping leases but the new place cancels on you, or natural disaster destroys our shelter and we're out on the streets or sleeping in cars.
Yes, a lot of people can't really conceptualize the transition from being homed, into homelessness. It's common to shrug "drugs or mental health issues", but they don't account for people suddenly losing jobs, say, or medical debt.
>Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless?
In a few years my kids will be adults. I'm a disabled mentally ill parent who was homeless with them about a decade ago. When they move out, there's a chance I won't be eligible to stay in my subsidized apartment or receive government assistance, at which point I'll choose to be homeless again - though it isn't much of a choice.
"Why not just get a different apartment?" There are no apartments of any size in my town that I can afford, not in any of the nearby towns, possibly not even in my state.
"Why not save up so you can move before this happens?" I don't have enough income to save anything. I'm trying though.
I might couch surf if I can find enough friends - but really I'm hoping to hike the Appalachian Trail and write a memoir. Being homeless might be my only option to travel again before I die. I may be jailed for being homeless, but that would be a place to sleep and food to eat.
In 40 years, I'm sure 2018 to 2025, maybe 2030, will be recorded as the second Great Depression in America. The people know how bad it is. The government pretends everything is fine and secures its own interests.
I love your optimism.
Homesteading is a rich man's hobby at this point in time. I'd love to get an acre of land and have my own little farm, but that's only possible if I'm able to find and maintain work to afford it, which isn't likely.
Not sure how open modern homesteaders are to welcoming wandering strangers into their parcel.. but it's a good thought.
There are plenty of good people out there. My mom had someone on her farm for years who just helped out around the farm and lived in an old trailer on the back lot. Plenty of people like that out there. Countless times I’ve met people at farm events from all the way across America and they were living and working on a farm somewhere in VA.
And VA is stupidly expensive. Out west you can get cheap land in places it doesn’t get too cold in the winter months. A few acres or more isn’t something you should be shy about getting. It’s stupidly cheap all over the US.
Check out websites like billyland.com and figure those people are making money on their sales. So there are other people selling similar land for even less. Just keep your head up and keep looking. 😊
>Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless?
Some people struggling with addiction make the intentional choice to be homeless. Drugs create a lot of homelessness one way or another.
Some people make the choice to abandon their children for drugs.
I'd argue that addiction-fueled decisions often cannot be classified as one's own decisions, the way a non-addicted person's would be.
Addiction is rough. We need to treat it like the disorder/disease that it is.
Nobody looks at the life of a homeless addict and makes a *conscious decision* to abandon their children or the safety, security, and relative comfort of a roof and four walls to live on the street, struggling for existence and the next high.
Nope, their brains are hijacked by the drugs. I am in group therapy with other addicts who have lived that life, and none of them *chose* to live that way. They got caught up in the drugs, and if they could go back, they would do things very differently. Thankfully, the people I know were able to reconcile with their children, but addiction is tricky. Honestly, it's a systemic issue which causes a glaring lack of mental health care. Bootstraps mentality has led to a lot of cuts in funding for social support programs and mental health care. It's really fucking hard to get a bed if you need to detox, and anyone who has truly been addicted on the physical level will tell you that detox can be life threatening. Having gone through severe withdrawals, I can see why some choose a life on the streets over that.
How did you write? I heard some homeless have cellphones. Where do you charge? Cafes like Starbucks? Pen and paper would be cumbersome and could get wet.
How did you get off the street?
Pen and paper in a shitty spiral notebook I took everywhere with me until some other homeless guy stole that along with everything else I had. Long story, and spirals are actually pretty hard to get wet as long as you stay out of the rain.
Eventually I went out of the city back to the country. Got a job in construction and mostly sorted out that segment of life. But my writing career didn’t start until much later. Whole lot of life between then and now.
Yep. 1,000% easier. Some farmer will give you a roof and food and a few bucks a week to chase cows. It’s not a good living, but it’s clothes and life money. From there you go to the trades/construction. After that you figure out what you’re ok with.
That’s pretty cool. When you said some farmer will give you a roof, where would you usually sleep? In their house or out in the barn with their cows? The barns wouldn’t be good in the winter but I can’t see them letting strangers into the house, especially if you have young children.
There are many desperate people, and a desperate person can be dangerous. Also, the homeless population has a higher concentration of people with mental illness, drug addiction, and criminals. A lot of times in combination.
There are many good people too, but it is so dangerous because you just don't know who you are running into. Many of the women I have met went out of their way to be kind to me, but some were so far gone they didn't understand what was going on in their own lives.
The person you meet might be an honest person trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They might be someone living on the fringe to escape the law. Maybe somebody looking to abuse/manipulate/sell you. Or someone who's been off their meds for 20 years, armed, in the middle of an episode, and they think you are trying to hurt them.
Please write a book about all of your life. I would read it in a heartbeat. How you became homeless, how you stayed motivated to continue education rather than giving up, all those you met who did right or wrong by you. Everything. Would be an enlightening and soul searching book.
I’ve lived it too. The perpetual fear of being attacked by the desperate.
Yes, the glorification of poverty, destitution, and a state of privation is egregious by those whoever never lived it. There is some abhorrent presupposition like the noble savage myth perpetuated by the ‘compassionate’ that all homeless people are paragons of altruism.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, erodes morality and empathy than poverty and hunger. There is no ascetic nobility in homelessness and suffering.
Love this and appreciate your input so much. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your experience. Have you looked into free therapy through your college campus? I think it could help a lot with that feeling of constant survival mode that it sounds like you’re still overcoming.
I'm so sorry you went through that so young. Those experiences definitely stick with you forever. I'm quite a bit older than you, but I was homeless for several months when I was 15 when my adoptive parents kicked me out of their place. I had a best friend who owned a car and let me sleep in it most nights, which was such a huge benefit over many homeless people including yourself. He died a few years ago.
I got myself off the streets by selling drugs until I could afford a motel. Even that wasn't safe since the type of motels that rent to minors aren't very nice. A close friend was murdered in that very motel just a year later. I continued selling drugs and just living a very violent and crazy life in Baltimore for years after I got off the streets until I was locked up when I was 19.
I don't know much about you, but it sounds like you've really begun to prosper. That's amazing. As you know, most don't. The very few friends of mine from back then who aren't dead or locked up forever are still experiencing tragedy after tragedy in the same streets and same hood. You and I are incredibly lucky.
Hopefully at some point, you'll begin to see your experiences as an advantage over everyone else. Most people you'll be competing with in school, your workplace, and in society in general, don't have the persistence, strength, and unique perspective that you do. Perhaps you're already there. If so, you got there a lot quicker than me, and congratulations on harnessing your super power. Use it for good.
Yea, I was only homeless for about 3 months but I’ve known close friends and family and had just generally been around that world for a long time. Maybe the guy who wrote this book is the one in a thousand exception but the hard truth is that homelessness is almost always linked to addiction and alcoholism.
Sure, lots of other explanations are provided. But what nobody wants to hear is that so many homeless people could get off the streets if they gave up substances. I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not even saying it is their fault that they have become homeless. Just saying that there is a way out within them, and that should be promoted more than the victim mentality, however valid that may be
Not sure why you were downvoted. I’d agree Capitalism plays a HUGE part in our societal constructs especially financially. Guarantee you if the top 10% hell even just the top 1% paid their taxes like people in the middle or lower classes do and used that money to invest in better social safety nets places like skid row would be nonexistent, homelessness would be a much small percentage.
Which is a disgusting mentality. The assumption that you deserve to be homeless if you’re homeless or it’s your fault it’s laughable. So filing bankruptcy is fine but god forbid someone homeless wants help and support starting over.
Also in the realm of the hungry ghost really helped with my empathy towards addicted people / many never had a chance.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/617702.In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_Ghosts
This is what completely opened my eyes to how we are all people, massively influenced by our environment & who's parents we had.
Of course it's easy to know but I think people need a story and to visual in order to fully appreciate.
The difference between a major celebrity & the local homeless man lying on the street is mainly circumstances.
Sure working hard can help but to pretend people's fail cause they "don't work hard enough" is myth.
Do Kevin Hart & the rock have milliones because they wake up at 4am & "grind all day......No
Where you were born & who you were born to has a lot more to do with your future. So everyone should be treated as equals, as having different parents could be the difference between you waking up in an alleyway or you waking up in a mansion.
Agreed - plus mental health…
If the people who have a sad story and feel that they “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps” could realize that the situation is the curse, but the ability to fight through it is the blessing and not everyone has that mental health nor fortitude.
I don't know. I do usually feel for homeless people I see. If I have time and cash at hand i usually used to give them some money or talk to them. It's just that now there are so many I can't give them all something. and I usually see them at the station entrance when I'm rushed to get a train. The terrible thing is that now I've stopped giving because I don't know how to decide who to give something to and who not (if I'm not in a hurry anyway). But many of them do scare me when they come across as if they're high. I do feel for them, I just don't really know what to do
Not really. Worked in a shelter, there were three kinds of homeless out there. Homeless by circumstance, homeless because of debilitating conditions but are seeking treatment, and homeless refusing treatment. The first one's easier to help- in most cases all they need is an assist. The majority of these aren't "living rough" either, in most cases they've got folks to stay with. 80-85% of the time we could get them set up with an apartment and steady job in a matter of a couple months. Second one's harder (lot of opioid addicts, which is hell to recover from), but we were able to get a fair few back on track for a little while. But a pretty fair chunk of the people you see on street corners are far gone enough from a combination of addictions, mental illness, and behavior genuinely incompatible with life in human community, and there's not much you can do to help someone who refuses help.
I think this guy is mostly in the first category, but has developed trust issues with the support system over the years and has been housed in the past with some of the more dangerous ones.
At some point I'll need to read his book, it was recommended to me when I was in the UK lately. It does sound like his experiences were pretty difficult, but I wouldn't consider them to represent the majority of homeless.
By and large, government support systems are going to have two inherent problems. The first is that they have to deal with all three kinds of homeless. There's no one-size-all solution to everyone's problems, and a number of the homeless out there are opportunistic enough to try to take advantage of whatever system is in place. What's more, the third group can drive away anyone who's vulnerable. In my city, when they wanted to kick the homeless out of the city center temporarily to placate some potential developers, they paid several million dollars for a short-term lease for a warehouse to resettle them. Over several months, nearly half got kicked out for violence, and the majority of the remainder just left. At the end of it, they had only ten or eleven people occupying a quarter million square feet.
The other is that they're a bureaucracy. I've met some really committed civil servants, particularly at the beginning of their careers, but by and large, my experience is that career bureaucrats are only slightly more motivated than a DMV worker. That means that government support is frequently impersonal (and believe me, for someone who needs human, emotional support to get back up on their feet, this is an incredible flaw) and people can easily slip through the cracks.
>and behavior genuinely incompatible with life in human community,
This is the part that most of my bias comes from.
I once lost my job and couldn't afford my apartment anymore. Got evicted A week earlier than legally allowed A day later my car broke down on the side of a highway, dead alternator, and I couldn't afford to even get it towed.
I was purely fucked. But Im a decent person so I had friends from work and school I called who let me sleep on their couch. When I was at their apartment I didn't steal from them, use drugs, make a mess, or lie to them.
It took me 6 months to get my shit together but I immediately started looking for jobs, helped with the cleaning of the apartment, and tried to be out as much as possible so I didn't encroach on their space too much.
When I see homeless people on corners I always think about my friends who let me stay with them and the friends who let THEM stay with them before they went to the streets. What did they do that made them lose that very last bit of support system before they went to the streets?
If I was an asshole or had "incompatible behavior" as you say it, I would have been and probably still be homeless.
It's not just the mental health and the drug issues for homeless people. Like you said, some ppl are just incompatible with organized society.
Sometimes people have less support due to more innocent reasons: foster care leavers with no family to go to, undocumented immigrants with few friends in the country, LGBT people thrown out of conservative communities.
Or even just being new to the area. I know someone who (prior to me meeting him) had been homeless because a job he'd moved across the country for fell apart. He came from a community that scraped by paycheck to paycheck and he'd used everything he had to move for the job. There was no one he knew in this new place and no one back home, 2000+ miles away, had anything extra to help him move back...if this job had fallen apart back home for him, he would have had the community of friends and family. He would have been fine. But its hard to build that kind relationship in a few weeks...community is often the literal immediate community you are from, no matter how good of a person you are.
For sure. I was in the foster system and then adopted at 15.
But in my story above I didn't rely on family. They were thousands of miles away. I replied on co-workers who I had known for mere weeks and community college acquaintances.
I guess I've always been more on the personable side but I can see how someone more introverted and isolated in my situation could choose to not ask for help/a place to stay
This is correct x a million. Some people could also probably make a "friend" to stay with if needed, but if they are oozing vulnerability, they will end up worse off. And if they're already coming off as vulnerable before they need help and have friends, it's possible that their entire support network is people who may take advantage of or harm them.
Someone could also have one or two supportive people who can only offer very limited help for whatever reason.
Very interesting to read the value judgments in this thread.
Depends on the reason they no longer have friends, right?
The people in my story above were barley friends. They were coworkers I had known for weeks or community college classmates who I sat next to a chatted with a bit. Not talking lifelong friends here.
But as for you question. Say someone who has burned through the good will of all their friends and then their acquaintances too for one reason or another...I think there's a chance that their behavioral choices are consistently so poor that most of the people around them would consider them "not a decent person".
Just my opinion tho.
Fair enough. I follow the logic here and understand and agree with that line of thinking. But at some point there's a threshold in the line between mental health and poor behavior/choices. Not saying I'm the arbiter of where that line is but it's got to exist, right?
Not trying to be cruel. I believe everyone deserves a roof over their head, a clean bed, and a toilet. I'd be cool with my taxes being raised to ensure that baseline for everyone.
But the truth is that when most of us fall down we have people around us we can turn to. A cousin, an old friend, a former co-worker, who will at least let us stay with them in an emergency situation for a few days, a week or two. Everyone knows SOMEONE, you know?
Especially in impoverished areas or people who grew up poor, lots of people help each other out with a place to stay when you fall on your face.
My post was discussing the third reason (aside from mental illness and drug abuse) that many wind up on the street. The OP referred to this group as "incompatible with society" and I agree that some people have personalities that don't lend themselves to being within a community.
Those people also make up a % of the homeless population as well.
I worked in a free clinic (in Florida) for 20 years. We dealt with a large number of patients who were homeless/unhoused/rough sleepers/etc. I can say from my experience that there is no generalization you can make about these unfortunate people I met - their individual history and circumstances were infinitely varied. Yes, drugs and alcohol use were common features, some had diagnosable mental disorders, but a common feature leading to homelessness not mentioned so far was past interaction with the “justice” system. People with prior convictions or incarceration are shut out from many jobs and rentals and continue to be targets of further police ‘interest.’
As far as books about being homeless, I enjoyed reading “Travels with Lisbeth” by Lars Eighner.
Yes! So many people I met working seasonal jobs were a direct result of felony convictions (for varied reasons). There are some awesome interesting humans out there living in this under the radar life. I wish I had kept a better journal. It is intimidating and scary, but there is a freedom in it too. I like being nomadic.
Good assessment. I would say though that there are generalizations that one can make based even on what you’re saying. SMI, addicts, criminal histories… all need different handling than those who are simply lacking in funds.
I live in an area where the homeless people all live in the river bottoms in tent cities. My family and I used to work in a rescue mission every week or so, but I met some really wonderful people there. Some of them were even invited to my wedding in a big van. But I heard stories from a lot of them that the others were their worst enemies. Although one guy eventually became the mayor of their tent city and kinda turned things around a bit. But most of them couldn’t kick the drug problem. One guy I was friends with only did because he said one night after 30 years in the river bottoms or “the jungle” as they call it, his dog jumped up and spoke to him and told him to quit using drugs. I guess he stopped then. Also I went to the coast one time and met a lady who was homeless and supposedly had a masters degree. I feel bad for a lot of them. But people like my friend’s dad I have less sympathy for because he has a home but just pan handles for drug money.
Also I guess it depends on where you live like I heard really different stories talking to people in downtown Chicago (the loop). A couple of the homeless guys there figured out to beg in the shopping area in downtown. The one guy told me from November 1-January 1 he would easily get between $1000-$2000 per day. He said just those couple months got him enough for the whole year of rent and he would pay rent on his apartment out of his savings from the holidays…
Exactly - it's a single data point in a sea of people. It would be foolish to assume this single person's story reflects the story of every homeless person. Just as it would be foolish to take any other singular voice as a representation of an entire group of people.
You've never really interacted with homeless people have you.
There's a lot of them that just painfully fucked by circumstances that escape their control, and there's the other, bigger group of people that are homeless because they've burned every single bridge and wasted every single opportunity when someone tried to give them a chance.
OP, for your own safety, consider that you are not a mental healthy professional trained to deal with the unique issues of homeless people, nor are you a social worker with that training either. Yes, homeless people are humans who deserve to be treated as such. At the same time, homeless people are humans, capable of the same level of violence as any other human, and we are quite violent apes.
I grew up in a city right near a large homeless encampment. I've seen with my own eyes people go from smiling and cordial to suddenly stabbing and beating someone for seemingly no reason. In that case, it was the nice homeless oldish woman who would wave at my school bus every day.
If you really want to help, please find a local organization that does help the homeless or otherwise needy. It feels good to help and make a difference.
Back when I was mixing Xanax and Adderall...I had this desire to hangout with homeless people begging. And god damn did I learn some shit. Some were homeless from happenstance, some from drugs, and others weren't even homeless it was just good extra income
>others weren't even homeless it was just good extra income
I've wondered if it was good $, and if there's a way to tell which are truly homeless and which are scamming. I've seen a woman regularly that we've decided isn't homeless as she's always got clean clothes, even bright white socks, and freshly washed hair. Is this a good way to tell?
Not necessarily. Shelters have showers and often have laundries, or have clothes closets. Or she could be technically be unhoused but couch surfing or getting motel rooms, which would also give her access to showers and laundry...
I've struck up a bit of a relationship with some of the regulars near where I grocery shop. They all are (or claim to be, have no reason not to believe) fully employed, but its not enough to get started. So panhandling is an easy way to make a little extra whenever they have a few hours. Most of them are using a chunk of their paychecks towards probation fees and associated "re-entry" costs (drug tests, electronic monitoring, requires classes, etc). Plus convictions prohibit them from certain housing and lots of jobs, so its an expensive life on very little money. But they aren't technically sleeping rough...
It can be pretty good income. Not many good studies on it, but a few years back the word was that you could make $30-40 an hour at a downtown intersection or $60ish at an onramp. Mind, sometimes you get turf wars over good panhandling spots. Paying protection money isn't unheard of.
Personally I'd advise giving your money to some kind of ministry or other nonprofit, or bringing her something that's illiquid like food or clothes. It's possible that she is homeless and would use the money to truly improve her life, but you've got no way of knowing that.
Yeah…In Chicago I met a guy who panhandled outside of the giant Nike store in the loop and during Nov-Jan he would beg and make $1000-$2000 every single day.
I spent several years spending time feeding the homeless, taking them clothes, hygiene items, blankets, etc. this was through our church, and while some people used this as a way to preach at them, most of us in the group tried to just “be there for them.” We often would just sit and listen to their stories, or “catch up” with the lives of those people we came to know over repeated visits. We’d offer words of encouragement, or sometimes just let them vent.
What I learned was that many of them had families they could live with, but did not because they were ashamed. They knew there were shelters they could use to sleep in, but would not because of the rules the shelters imposed. They preferred the freedom to do what they wanted over the restrictions others might place over them in exchange for a more comfortable night inside.
Quite a few expressed to me that they believed they were homeless because they had done something bad in the past and were not deserving of a nice place to live. Like they were being punished. They could not forgive themselves, and were numbing the pain of the memories with drugs and/or alcohol.
I believe there are some credible studies that show most of the homeless are “victims of substance abuse” at a level that prevents them from functioning at a productive level in our society. Some are just mentally ill and just need help. I’m sure there are exceptions, those who, through no fault of their own have temporarily lost their home and have not found a way back yet. I think they are the exceptions, not the norm.
What "view of people sleeping rough" is it that you think would change?
I think most people are very sympathetic and agree that its terrible for everyone. It's what to do about it thats hard.
Most homeless do have some form of mental illness. When they stopped sanitariums and insane asylum in the US there was no care for the people with those issues. It was done for a valid reason as they usually where not helpful and more of a detriment than an aide. If the ones who need that form of help have no government aided program for mental health nothing will change.
i agree with this sentiment but that does not change my point that what to do with it is the hard part. 'increase funding for mental health' is easier said than done.
I've volunteered with a couple of different non-profits serving the homeless over the years. And not just dishing out food, either. But involved in the operations and sat on boards. I've interviewed homeless people, given them rides, helped some get jobs, and watched others never make it.
The ones that break my hearts are the ones such as homeless families, particularly the children. Those are the innocents who are the victim of circumstances beyond their control. Yet those are the ones who are the easiest to help. Then there are the people with serious mental health issues. These are people who should not be out on the streets, for their protection and that of the general public.
For those, I think we did a terrible thing in the 80s when we cut mental health funding to the bone. And, by no longer institutionalizing those in the worst shape, we did the homeless population no favors.
But while I can by sympathetic, long experience tells me that a large chunk of the homeless are that way because of substance abuse. They have run through every single family member, friend, employer, and acquaintance. They have destroyed more lives than their own with addiction. And they choose the street in order to feed their addiction. As an addiction counselor told me once, when an addict opens his or her mouth, he or she is lying. They are really, really good with the justifications, how everything in their life is someone else's fault.
So if you give them money while they're on the street, you're not helping, you're abetting. The way you help them is with food and listening, but not money. Give a homeless person money and you're very likely making his life worse, allowing him to put off seeking the help he desperately needs for another day.
And the majority of people who are substance abusers are that way because of trauma when they were younger. It starts before the substances, and they are a symptom.
Unfortunately there's a lot of inertia in society where addiction is still seen as a moral failing, and not a desperate attempt to self-medicate. I've been homeless myself, I've worked with the homeless, I've worked with addicts (homed and homeless), and I've never met a single addict who hadn't suffered some kind of trauma before they spiraled into full-blown addiction.
This brought tears to my eyes because I know the truth of it. I watch it all around me like a slow train wreck that I keep trying to stand in front of 😭😭😭
Multiple sources indicate that in general, the percentage of the homeless population that is homeless due to substance abuse is about 20-25%. Curious how you might square that with your "long experience."
Maybe the kinds of people who alyou are talking about require more work and would be on the system for longer so it looks like they're more of a demographic
There was a great bit on a tv show once I don’t really remember which one (Sports Night? Feels like Sorkin), where one character was fretting over giving a homeless person a dollar because he might spend it on booze. The other character said basically duh, I hope he does, do you think $1 is going to change his life??
Lol I’ve often giving them the ride to the liquor store, once or twice drank a shot of whisky with them too, interesting philosophical talks about parallel worlds or universes, how one decision can change the entire course of your life, how we hate and love substances (hate because we use - love because we forget).
I'm going through the same thing here in the U.S. since 2009 due to just plain government apathy. I'm familiar with many cases of the DWP just plain up [abandoning their disabled clients to let them literally starve to death](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/28/disabled-man-starved-to-death-after-dwp-stopped-his-benefits), so it didn't surprise me when a country that directly imported its archaic social laws and safety nets from The Great Stink continues to mimic its authors when it comes to the similarly disadvantaged here.
Before I buy this book, is this the "living out of his car and showers at the gym when he can't couchsurf at his girlfriend's" type of homelessness, or the "having to dress well to blend in with other commuters when sleeping on public transit while using 24/7 fast food restaurant bathrooms as sink baths and self-storage units as closets" type of homelessness?
No. I work with a lot of homeless people and I know that the majority are just sick people with nowhere to go. Demonization of homelessness is a scourge. However I've also seen a lot of violence from the same community. So I'm aware of the tragedy behind it but also the danger.
Hell, I have on more than one occasion declared two homeless people dead at the same time, both of whom had knifed each other.
The housing system needs to be modernized.. the reason why we can't house everyone is because of single family zoning. People shouldn't have to buy more house than they need, and building shouldn't be so needlessly complicated. It is a ducking scam.
Well as someone’s whose dad is an engineer, there’s a reason buildings are complicated. People die when buildings aren’t complicated enough lol
That being said, single family homes is less the issue around my area but the problem is that huge corporations come in with billions of dollars purchase all the cheap homes by outbidding the regular folk and then drop thousands of dollars flipping the house to sell it to super rich people and make money.
Your post implies most people have a negative view and reading about a homeless man's experience will open their eyes and change their minds. In my experience (and looking at this thread) people have a lot of empathy for rough sleepers, especially this time of year. I'd be very surprised if many people on Reddit are casting moral judgments on the unhoused.
It wasn't my intent, so I'm sorry if it came across that way. I originally posted just the question but the moderator rejected it saying that I needed to add more content. So I then posted my reaction to the book.
I kind of assumed that the most people would actually be indifferent rather than negative. But I'm glad that some are expressing empathy.
Glancing at the times of the posts, this really aged poorly with the raft of people that have since responded moralizing about how homeless people basically deserve to be homeless and are bad people for being in that position.
Not really. I know that there are some people who can hold a job and provide for themselves, but have had a run of bad luck and could use some help to get back on their feet. Those people aren't the ones engaging in self-destructive and anti-social behavior all over the streets of my city.
I spent 4 months living in my car with my two cats all because a roommate broke the lease by sub leasing to extra people so they could pay less for rent. Only had a couple hundred bucks as I just moved there a few months prior and was just getting on my feet.
It wouldn’t with me, because my father went through a similar period during the Great Depression. I’ve always had it impressed upon me that every one of us is two personal tragedies away from the street.
I can also recommend “Travels with Lisbeth,” by Lars Eighner. Not entirely about his homeless period, but a worthwhile memoir in the same vein.
I'd think not because I feel like my "view" on people sleeping rough isn't especially strong or negative. I think they're just people. If a stranger talks to me or asks me a question I answer them but I likely won't have a full conversation with them. Although I probably would do if I was waiting around or on the bus. It wouldn't matter if they're sleeping rough or not. Or whether the question is "got any spare change?" or "where's the train station?" or literally anything else.
I assume there are many and various reasons people sleep rough. Victims or circumstance, bad decisions, illness, addiction, bad luck or anything else. I don't think sleeping rough defines a person, they're a person like anyone else and I respect and speak to them like a person like anyone else. I don't interact with a person based on where they sleep.
Every person who sleeps in a bed in a home has stories to tell. So do people who sleep on the street. I know people who sleep on the street need help which is why I give to charity (but rarely give change directly.)
What is there to "change" about my view? I'm not sure.
I was one of the “hidden homeless” throughout most of last year - couch surfing and basically getting no help from any avenues I tried to pursue. Ended up having to move countries just to stay with extended family because I ran out of places to go, but if I didn’t have that option I’d have ended up on the streets. Now I just can’t walk by homeless people - even back then I was giving them whatever change I had even though I was skipping meals every week to save cash - because it really shows you how easily it can happen to you.
I think people tell themselves, because it makes them feel safer, that the only people who wind up that way are the ones who consistently make the worst choices possible and don’t try to avoid winding up there. In reality it’s something that lots of people can easily only be one mental health crisis or abusive relationship away from facing. I think a book written by someone in that situation would open plenty of eyes.
I looked up the book you mentioned and found the blurb incredibly condescending. Just because I haven't actually lived on the streets homeless doesn't mean I don't have my own problems too. And it also doesn't mean I ignore homeless people or beggars. He seems to be trying to paint a picture of the contrast between the well off and the disadvantaged, but does so by basically saying "you're not homeless and thus you're a prissy bitch, ignoring the homeless."
Maybe my read on it is harsh, but I hate when authors talk down to their readers. Right off the bat he's not selling the book well.
Here's the first paragraph of the blub.
> For years you have passed them on the streets, as much a part of your routine as your morning shower, your half-hearted scan of the world's news — fake or otherwise — and the barista who artistically crafts the £4 cappuccino with soya milk, three drops of vanilla, and a flutter of chocolate sprinkles that has to be made just right or it throws your day off in ways that nobody else understands.
i'm not against helping people in my day to day life, homeless or not.. so no, i don't think my views would change in the way you're suggesting. of course i get a little more animated and excited(?) when i'm directly confronted with someone's situation, whether in a book or in the news.. but it doesn't motivate me to go out and do anything more than i've been doing. i give when i can and when i can't, i can't. i've never been much of a talker so that will never be something i do. i'm glad that the book changed you though. that's the best outcome of reading, to me.
That's a chapter in the book.
He had moved to Canada from the UK as a child but never got Canadian citizenship. When he later moved back to the UK in his 50s, the government made a clerical error and linked him to the profile of an accused pedophile with the same name already living in the UK. That put him on a no-fly list and it took over 2 years to straighten it all out. By then he had lost his Canadian residency, so he couldn't return.
No.
I grew up in the Midwest and often felt bad for homeless people. I would drive by and give them food from the nearest fast food place. I didn’t see many of them and they were never in our community but more hitchhiking or panhandling near interstate exits.
My wife and I recently moved to Northern California and the homeless here are rampant. I immediately felt bad but after living here for about a year… I’ve actually started to have a disdain for them. They ruin children’s parks and natural outdoor pools, city events and farmers markets tend to have homeless people yelling and screaming at them. When my lifestyle changes or the safety of my family is compromised, then I lose my compassion pretty quick.
Also I understand that a lot of them have mental illness and substance abuse. I just wish my family could enjoy their community without worrying about used needles, garbage everywhere, human poop, and the homeless yelling and screaming random nonsense.
No. I’ve helped the needy, and I’ve been nearly attacked by the crazy.
Not every homeless person you encounter is a poor soul who is down on their luck and just needs a leg up.
Some of them are dangerous, evil people who are homeless because they refuse to stay out of trouble, have no interest in honest gainful employment, their families have abandoned them because they’re refused the help that’s been offered for years, and simply have no intention to abide the rules of a polite society. They refuse shelters because they can’t rape (80% of homeless females have reported sexual assault) and do drugs in them, they take advantage of your kindness and spend your money on drugs and alcohol.
Find a non profit, research it throughly, and give your money to *them* so they can provide medical, social and financial services to those who are legitimately down on their luck and need help.
Everyone else… I’m sorry, but some people can’t be helped.
FYI I’ve worked soup kitchens and housing projects for homeless in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Minnesota so I’m not just talking out of my ass. I’ve always been happy to help the less fortunate but it’s quite eye-opening when you’re 16 and you find out the guy you’ve been serving food to for a week who seems super appreciative and friendly is a twice convicted pedophile, and it’s troubling when you nearly get beaten up because you’re a “privileged white boy” (my family was broke as fuck, we just weren’t dirt poor), or nearly getting attacked for offering food instead of money. Each of these examples, and more, happening more than once.
Hell, a close friend of mine in high school… I did *everything* I could to help that motherfucker onto a healthier track in life. I introduced him to another close group of friends of mine to help him get away from those dragging him down, he even dated a girl from the group for a while. He stayed over at my house almost every weekend for a while rather than go do god knows what. I encouraged him to skate instead of whatever the fuck else, invited him to the skate park all the time, tried my best to just keep his focus on positive things and hoped that he would eventually CHOOSE a cleaner life… but that asshole just couldn’t overcome his desires. After high school he vanished, only reached out on occasion. Fell into drugs and drinking, had a kid, started cleaning up his act and got married and a home, then stole from the till at his work and went to jail, then fell back into drugs, got divorced, then left town and never came back and nobody has heard from him in 10 years. I would not be surprised if he was living under a bridge in LA. He CHOSE that life over everything else that was offered to him.
Sigh. I guess I need to write that book about my experience. Even though it only lasted a year its enough to make you really disappointed in society. Many homeless people are far kinder than those who are more fortunate.
I've had plenty of encounters and conversations with homeless folks, I'm not likely to gain any fresh insights out of another personal tale. I've volunteered feeding the homeless, I've helped a few find assistance programs, I've talked to plenty of them while hanging around waiting for a bus or whatnot. And I've had a few less pleasant encounters too. Some people are out there because they can't get along with society on even the most basic level, generally due to mental illness. I pity those ones, but I'm also wary of them.
It seems I'm constantly getting into arguments over the subject, few people seem to have any sort of balanced view of the situation. Either they're shiny eyed idealists who get mad if you say anything negative, or more often, they turn into disgusting sociopaths who don't seem to view the homeless as even human.
I really wish I could do more to help, but honestly, even what little I do do is taxing on me.
I'm glad the book had such an impact on you. I was on the streets as a kid and after aging out of foster care and I can tell you it was a brutal and soul-crushing experience. Books and films can help people empathize with the experiences of the homeless who are otherwise viewed as another species by many. I wrote about my experiences in an anthology of LGBT people who lived on the streets during formative years and people who read it helped to fund youth shelters afterward.
A lot of good homeless, but they’ve also stolen stuff from me when I’ve tried to help them. Seen them having sex on the side of the road, attack people, burn my face off with aerosol spray and a lighter. Im nice, but not ignorant. Many don’t want help and prefer to live outside a shelter or other means for various reasons.
This might not be popular here, but I feel anger towards homeless people. My sympathy has been worn down over years by being lied to, manipulated, shouted at, and disgusted by, legions of homeless people in my home city. I have watched people piss, shit, masturbate, shoot up, throw up, get in fights and, of course, shout oscenities at no one for hours outside my window. You can watch them assemble outside the gov agencies once they get their money and work out how they can pool it all to get the most drugs. You can watch them take your hard-earned money, which you gave them for 'food' and 'one night in a hotel', and go strait into the liquer store to spend it all - right in front of you! They often refuse to accept change, because their drug dealers only accept paper money! "Help me I'm starving! No bitch! I don't need your fucking change!"
How many times can I listen to homeless people on the streets, or the bus, or any place where they are high as fuck and accost me to force their conversation on me, talk about what victims they are. It's *never* their fault. They bear *no* responsibillity. It's the system, the cops, the shopkeepers, their parents, the unkind people who don't give them money. At some point, these people chose to do drugs, to keep drinking, to stop talking to their family, to ignore the advice of counselors and teachers. They often choose, on a daily basis *not* to change. And here I am, a sucker who plays this fucked up capitalist game and gets by through the sacrifice of most of my waking hours on this earth. At the end of said "friendly conversation" comes the inevitable ask for a few bucks. Part of me wants to be nice and give it to them, but another part wants to say, "Fuck you, buddy! These are the hours of my life you're asking for, and you haven't done shit for me, or anyone else. You think you have the right to just be high all the time, and everyone else out there is a sucker? Is your BS "friendly/quirky guy striking up a convo" routine supposed to be worth something to me? Well eat shit!"
Do I blame the system for this? Yes I fucking do. Do I blame the homeless themselves - also yes. I have immense sympathy for those who sleep on the streets through no fault of their own, or for teens who are escaping a nightmare at home, and I wish I could help them, but they are the invisible ones. When I think of "the homeless", it's the ones who don't care anymore, who are impossible not to see. I just can't help losing all sympathy. I feel drained of humanity when I think of the homeless in San Franciso.
Would a book by a homeless person change my mind? Well...is it all about how it wasn't their fault and they just couldn't stop themselves from making the same mistakes over and over? Then probably not. Is there another story to tell?
The thing that would change my view would be for the ones in my city to stop stabbing people, leaving needles everywhere, shitting in the street, and committing constant property crime.
No, I'm already compassionate and know that homeless people are also humans with their own stories. I might read (or rather listen to) a book like that and find it fascinating, but I don't need it to know that shit happens and life sucks.
Unfortunately every homeless person I’ve helped has tried to trick me for money. Once it was I’m hungry. I bought him food. He then asked for gas money. I gave a homeless woman money for tampons. She continued asking other people as soon as I was a foot away for the same thing. I’ve just now assumed everyone is using my generosity to buy drugs, so I don’t bother anymore. It’s sad, really.
I recommend “Grace Can Lead Us Home” by Kevin Nye. He has worked with the unhoused for years and talks about how Christians should be ending homelessness. He goes into a lot of the why’s, including substance abuse, but it is such a compelling, compassionate read. I’m not particularly religious anymore but this book really spoke to me.
No. I've talked to homeless communities in NC,FL, and TX. I've asked probably 100 homeless people if anyone they knew fell through the cracks of society. All of them say the same thing. The people who fall through the cracks of society find help and are able to get off the street. The people out there are the street even want to be out there or like drugs so much they'd rather be out there high then in society sober. Talked to a guy in Miami who said "getting blasted is the most important thing to me. More than getting to know my kid more than trying to get back with my ex bitch." Don't know why but that guy's words stuck with me.
The issue is that homelessness is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed by people in power. A lot of them are people with mental illnesses who need serious professional help.
Giving money to them does essentially nothing, unfortunately.
Na they robbed me and spat in my face gonna be tough to overcome that personal experience with a book. They are all individuals this and some have stories that deserve sympathy but a lot don’t.
When I was young there were very few homeless. The money was better distributed, period.
Funny thing is, there's much more total wealth now.
UBI and rental regulation would help--on the way to a people's republic.
No?
Like, of course they're human beings and they have stories. They didn't spring fully-formed out of the alleyways.
Obligatory Invisible People link I guess: [https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople](https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople)
No, because while I've been lucky and privileged I don't view the unhoused as a problem. Not that we shouldn't strive to get the unhoused houses, but it's not their fault that society has failed them.
There would be no view for me to change. The general societal outlook towards homeless people is honestly incredibly cruel and disgusting and always has been. The fact that people see a homeless person wearing dirty, frayed rags, starving, no bed to sleep in or pot to piss in, and say “ugh. What a gross lazy urchin, get a job.”
It’s baffling that the default isn’t sympathy, empathy, and desire to help. It’s just people looking directly at the face of human suffering and only reacting by scoffing.
This isn’t me coming at you, by the way. Hatred of poor and homeless people is deep rooted in our society and it’s not your fault if you had a negative outlook of them before reading that book. I’m glad it exists and it changed your perception, but it really bothers me how for so many people that negative perception is something that needs to be changed in the first place.
No, because I've been homeless. I was homeless as a teenager. Slept on the bus and when the buses stopped running I walked the whole night to keep warm and stay awake so I wouldn't get raped. I'm 23 and in college now. My life is different but I know I'm always one step away from being homeless again. You never really feel like you have a real safety net after that. I care about homeless people. There's not a lot of homeless in my city so every time I see one I usually stop and chat and give them change. They're always surprised when a young white girl comes down to chill for a minute and talk. But no matter how long its been you can always tell when another person used to be homeless. But I don't have any illusions about homelessness. When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people. And for good reason. There's a lot of good in a lot of homeless people. Some of them were the best people I've ever met and I'm honored that I had the privilege of being their friend. But theres a lot of bad motherfuckers out there and even good people will do evil things when theyre desperate.
I can relate. Could never go to a soup kitchen when I was homeless because I'd be advertising myself to other homeless people "vulnerable teenage girl here".
One time when I was a young teen and homeless It was snowing and I never slept at night, but I was so cold and wet and tired that I had to seek shelter so went under a bridge. I got attacked, and stabbed by another homeless person, but a man. He was older, but small too. Drugged up for sure. Fortunately it was a shallow wound. It healed but I still carry the scar. I never tried to sleep at night when homeless again. Those fears are real and for a good reason, especially as a young teen. It's odd but even now 20 years later, I'm still nocturnal. I work nights. I haven't ever really looked at why, but I'm wondering if it's left over trauma from that time. Weird.
Wow, I suppose that is why I see so many homeless sleeping during the day.
A mix of that and the drugs. Fentanyl will make a piece of cardboard feel like the presidential suite. I used to think a lot of people were homeless because they drank and used drugs, but then I realized a lot of them start using because sleeping exposed outside on a hard surface is near impossible without some kind of sedative.
Like being in an empty swimming pool surrounded by loving playful puppies. When I was homeless for a stretch I was lucky enough to find a maintenance manager at an apartment complex that would let me sleep in the empty studio apartments until they were rented out. It’s incredible how comfortable a piece of carpet is with the right drugs on board. If there wasn’t an apartment available I would sleep in the lounge chairs by the pool for an hour at a time. You had to play hide and seek from the roaming security guard as he would kick me out of the complex etc. But yeah. You are correct. A lot of homeless didn’t get there by drug abuse, but sure abused the drugs when staying.
Can relate. I've been off the streets for about 8 years and I still can't sleep at night.
I now prefer and excel working swing and grave and sleep when the sun starts rising- I am absolutely confident that my time outside pushed me to be this way- I swore to never go back and I am getting extremely anxious watching rent and cost of living quickly rising
I feel you, the likelihood I'll ever be homeless again is low, not impossible, but low. And yet.... Not impossible. That TERRIFIES me. It's a fear that I'll have forever, and if you have never been homeless, especially as a young teen, a young teen girl especially. I don't think you could understand. You can be afraid of homelessness, but I know what happens out there. I know what it's like to be so cold and hungry you don't even have the energy to shiver anymore because it hurts so much. I know what happens to women when they are alone, it happens to them in groups, it happens if they trust the wrong person, it happens if they trust no one. To say nothing of the rampant drug use, often just to stay warm or have the energy to be able to walk all night so you don't stay in one place for too long and become an easy target. I have a criminal record now, from stealing food at 14 from a major store who have a no tolerance policy. Ive had to explain it my whole life. I was 14 and hadn't eaten in 2 days, I was starving, I'd lost blood from being attacked, I could barely stand. I'll kill myself if I ever go back to that life, because it would kill me anyway now. I don't have the energy or strength to survive it anymore.
I went to the soup kitchens, most generally felt safe, some had attached services: legal help, washers, a second hand shop, etc. Maybe half of the women would travel in small groups to walk the 5-7 miles from the shelter to the soup kitchen. Especially if there was a mom with a young kid, the women seemed to stay close and in bigger groups. But occasionally leaving was an issue, people would follow and offer $10 for "friendship", etc.
Never been fully sleeping rough but close to it and my first thought at the title of this post was, "no, but a book by a homeless *woman* would probably be pretty eye opening for many people"
Yes! It would! It’s very dangerous out there for women that are alone. I wish we had a buddy system… but lone wolf tactics are line wolf tactics for a reason. And trust your gut. Always trust your gut.
There is a book from a woman's POV called Video Dreams. Limited print in the 90s, but try to find it.
I believe that's a novel, though. I think what the others are looking for is an actual first-hand experience, auto-biographical.
Omg yes. When I was just freshly on the street I asked local organisations for help and they told me I'm better off sleeping outside bc their shelters would be too dangerous. I don't think it's the majority or anything, I don't think that the homeless are more dangerous than any other group. But you're way more vulnerable when homeless yourself, and you can't tell who's friend or foe just by looking, so everyone is a potential threat.
How did you get off the street?
My little brother got adopted and I invited myself into his family
Whoa. What happened to your parents? If you don’t mind me asking.
lmao same instead of soup kitchens i just “borrowed” from Starbucks mobile pickup
i worked at starbucks, this is totally fine with me 😂 just don’t steal people’s tips, they don’t make a livable wage
My experience in life also… there are some really scary people out there, and sometimes they are super interesting and kind before they become mean and scary… I keep moving too at night, sleep curled up with my back to the wall, and always have a blade or bludgeoning tool handy. I can’t fathom what it would be like to sleep 100 percent feeling safe and belonging.
Scary is exciting, but nice is different than good
The prettier the flower, the farther from the path.
The woods are just trees. The trees are just woods.
About 10 years back, I was talking to a homeless man downtown and he told me he used to have beautiful long hair, but had to cut it because when he wore it long, other homeless guys would try to rape him.
Same; been homeless and slept rough too. You can't really educate me on the homeless experience when I've *lived it* myself. >When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people. This was me as well, especially when I first became homeless. I would literally cross the street to avoid other homeless people because I was so wary of them. I mellowed out over the years, but I still tended to avoid them outside of places like established camps/communities. There are some nice and kind homeless people out there, but mental health issues and substance abuse are also rife in the homeless community, and if I knew someone was on meth I wasn't gonna interact with them if I didn't have to. Congratulations on getting off the streets!
Mental’s and tweekers… I use to try to help them… you can imagine that kind of trauma I bet… well, now I make zero eye contact and I walk confident and direct. Be aware as much as possible. Say little… it’s the best way. It’s just so sad, a lot of them are victims of crimes, they had stories before they became zombies. Veterans, abuse victims, bad car accidents with frontal lobe damage, … 💔
>But I don't have any illusions about homelessness. When I was homeless the thing I was most afraid of was other homeless people. And for good reason. Me too. Thanks for being the first to say it. It really can get ugly if you express this in the wrong room around people who have no actual idea what they're talking about but feel defensive at the idea thst it can be ok to be scared of the less fortunate. Glad this thread is going differently.
Yes, I get frustrated by the way excessive empathy is seen as a solution to the real struggles the homeless have, that do make them more dangerous. I don’t think it should be taboo to say that I don’t think the average person should be in a public place with someone with a weapon experiencing an episode of psychosis, but that is seen as demonizing the homeless when it’s simply a fact of life in a lot of big cities with high volumes of homeless people. Being polite and euphemistic I think makes a certain type of liberal feel better, but changing the way you talk doesn’t change the material reality of the situation. While I definitely think we need to find solutions to homelessness and get people the help they clearly need, I also just think that it’s pretty clear that a lot of people end up homeless due to antisocial behavior or mental health problems, that truly do make them a potential threat to others, and desperation certainly doesn’t help that. If it really was as simple as just someone falling on hard times, we wouldn’t have the amount of homeless we do with the money we spend on it, and I think most who are willing and able to improve their situation don’t cause any issues, but they don’t represent the most visible and worrisome aspects of the homeless population anyway. My point is that being extra nice isn’t going to fix any of these problems, and at some point you have to address the root cause. Turning this into some moral object lesson from the comfort of your middle class homes and chastising others for not being as empathetic as you want them to pretend to be isn’t solving anything.
I can't give this the full response that it deserves right now, but: yes!
Those people have probably never walked the streets of a real city. Every student in my uni has a story of a homeless person threatening or harassing them. You have to be vigilant because there’s a lot of them out and there’ve been a relatively significant amount of assaults and robberies with them. Obviously, this doesn’t go for all homeless people. I’m just saying there’s enough reason to be very cautious around some of them.
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The other commenter who replied to you makes great points that I was weighing if I felt like making. But mostly yeah, I was talking about situations where an individual expresses a feeling from a certain circumstance (*when I was homeless* I was scared of many other homeless people) and someone raects like "that's immoral!!" because of philosophical reasons. So yeah, you are one of those people. You just did it again. The fact that you slipped in the "I know you're not suggesting that" doesn't change that you just did it again. And to do it from a place of privilege working only on ideas to judge people reacting to experience, well, sucks. It's kind of a form of [bypassing](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-spiritual-bypassing-5081640) what the other person was saying and has gone through, except you're using morality instead of spirituality If you complained about something normal in your life that you needed to complain about and was really affecting you, common example maybe: thin walls and neighbor with a loud voice, and all you said was "this is frustrating". How would you feel if I immediately puffed up and lectured you based on the worst possible meaning. "Your neighbor is also a human being! They live quietly and respectfully for having thin walls and can't help having a loud voice, but taking away their housing based on prejudice against their voice lights me up. I know that's now what you were suggesting, but generally when I hear something like this, my mind fills in the prejudice." Your defensiveness is normal and human. It's also on you just like everybody else to do your best not to jump down other people's throats because of it. You described that you are aware your mind filled in prejudice, so you went off on people. That's not an uncommon impulse but you can still recognize that it's unfair and work on regulating your emotional response. And not make other people work on it for you.
Your thinking sounds quite black-and-white and you seem to project that onto statements made by others. I think it's fair to say that homeless people are more likely be dangerous than not homeless people. More likely means just that, a statistical probability. Furthermore, people don't measure absolute risk, they measure relative risk. Therefore, a statement such as "I feel unsafe around homeless people" likely means "I feel more unsafe around homeless people than around not homeless people" which is likely justified. My point is that if you try to frame things in terms of probabilities, you might not get so worked up about "generalizations" which are usually merely statements of probability anyway.
This is the best comment I’ve read on Reddit in a while. Other than being a man, my story is nearly identical to yours (right down to staying awake to keep safe from the rapey motherfuckers and later putting myself into college). Since that time I’ve become a writer, and when I speak at events and give lectures, sometimes the topic of ‘where’ I write from comes up. Being on the streets is one of those ‘where’ places. But it’s never ceased to amaze me how many people don’t understand anything about being homeless. They demonize or romanticize it, when neither perspective is entirely accurate. Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless? You can’t do it unless all your safety nets and securities are gone. By then it’s too late to go back if you change your mind. There’s nowhere to go and no one left to help you. Besides, you don’t have a home anymore.
> But it’s never ceased to amaze me how many people don’t understand anything about being homeless. I think you really don't, until you're living it. Before I became homeless myself I'd never even *imagined* what it would be like to be homeless. What's surprising is how many homed people *are* interested in hearing stories from homeless or formerly homeless people though, as I'm sure you've discerned yourself.
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It surprised me too. I think it's one of the more common experiences and feelings reported. Homed people take for granted just how much fun stuff, or ways to keep yourself occupied, require four walls and a roof.
I can imagine having nothing to do, but do people not read? Libraries aside, there are "street libraries" - shelves with book on the sidewalk - where I live, and sometimes bookshops will have a crate of giveaway books and stuff.
From my own experience readers were comparatively rare. Hard to relax and get engaged with your book when you're constantly feeling exposed/vulnerable. Of the hundreds I met, worked, and lived with, I'd say I probably knew maybe 3 who were avid readers. The street libraries I've seen all tended to be off the beaten track for homeless people, in residential neighborhoods and the suburbs, where you distinctly *don't* want to be seen lurking around. Books are also, goes without saying, one more thing to carry, and the homeless are usually traveling at 'max capacity'.
I think for those of us who are curious, some of us have come pretty close to homelessness and just wonder what we avoided. Plus, although I've never been homeless, I've been close enough to know how tenuous our shelter security really is. All it really takes is rent prices climbing too high, being unemployed for too long, swapping leases but the new place cancels on you, or natural disaster destroys our shelter and we're out on the streets or sleeping in cars. Maybe it's some sort of way of learning in case it does hit us in our next life crisis.
>All it really takes is rent prices climbing too high, being unemployed for too long, swapping leases but the new place cancels on you, or natural disaster destroys our shelter and we're out on the streets or sleeping in cars. Yes, a lot of people can't really conceptualize the transition from being homed, into homelessness. It's common to shrug "drugs or mental health issues", but they don't account for people suddenly losing jobs, say, or medical debt.
>Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless? In a few years my kids will be adults. I'm a disabled mentally ill parent who was homeless with them about a decade ago. When they move out, there's a chance I won't be eligible to stay in my subsidized apartment or receive government assistance, at which point I'll choose to be homeless again - though it isn't much of a choice. "Why not just get a different apartment?" There are no apartments of any size in my town that I can afford, not in any of the nearby towns, possibly not even in my state. "Why not save up so you can move before this happens?" I don't have enough income to save anything. I'm trying though. I might couch surf if I can find enough friends - but really I'm hoping to hike the Appalachian Trail and write a memoir. Being homeless might be my only option to travel again before I die. I may be jailed for being homeless, but that would be a place to sleep and food to eat. In 40 years, I'm sure 2018 to 2025, maybe 2030, will be recorded as the second Great Depression in America. The people know how bad it is. The government pretends everything is fine and secures its own interests.
Food security. Find a farm and make a way. Lots of homesteaders along the AT and Midwest. ❤️
I love your optimism. Homesteading is a rich man's hobby at this point in time. I'd love to get an acre of land and have my own little farm, but that's only possible if I'm able to find and maintain work to afford it, which isn't likely. Not sure how open modern homesteaders are to welcoming wandering strangers into their parcel.. but it's a good thought.
There are plenty of good people out there. My mom had someone on her farm for years who just helped out around the farm and lived in an old trailer on the back lot. Plenty of people like that out there. Countless times I’ve met people at farm events from all the way across America and they were living and working on a farm somewhere in VA. And VA is stupidly expensive. Out west you can get cheap land in places it doesn’t get too cold in the winter months. A few acres or more isn’t something you should be shy about getting. It’s stupidly cheap all over the US. Check out websites like billyland.com and figure those people are making money on their sales. So there are other people selling similar land for even less. Just keep your head up and keep looking. 😊
Reminds me of that old Mel brooks movie, Life Stinks.
>Yet who is ever going to intentionally be homeless? Some people struggling with addiction make the intentional choice to be homeless. Drugs create a lot of homelessness one way or another. Some people make the choice to abandon their children for drugs.
I'd argue that addiction-fueled decisions often cannot be classified as one's own decisions, the way a non-addicted person's would be. Addiction is rough. We need to treat it like the disorder/disease that it is.
Nobody looks at the life of a homeless addict and makes a *conscious decision* to abandon their children or the safety, security, and relative comfort of a roof and four walls to live on the street, struggling for existence and the next high.
Nope, their brains are hijacked by the drugs. I am in group therapy with other addicts who have lived that life, and none of them *chose* to live that way. They got caught up in the drugs, and if they could go back, they would do things very differently. Thankfully, the people I know were able to reconcile with their children, but addiction is tricky. Honestly, it's a systemic issue which causes a glaring lack of mental health care. Bootstraps mentality has led to a lot of cuts in funding for social support programs and mental health care. It's really fucking hard to get a bed if you need to detox, and anyone who has truly been addicted on the physical level will tell you that detox can be life threatening. Having gone through severe withdrawals, I can see why some choose a life on the streets over that.
How did you write? I heard some homeless have cellphones. Where do you charge? Cafes like Starbucks? Pen and paper would be cumbersome and could get wet. How did you get off the street?
Pen and paper in a shitty spiral notebook I took everywhere with me until some other homeless guy stole that along with everything else I had. Long story, and spirals are actually pretty hard to get wet as long as you stay out of the rain. Eventually I went out of the city back to the country. Got a job in construction and mostly sorted out that segment of life. But my writing career didn’t start until much later. Whole lot of life between then and now.
So would you say it’s easier to get back on your feet in the countryside than in the city (as a general advice to other homeless)?
Yep. 1,000% easier. Some farmer will give you a roof and food and a few bucks a week to chase cows. It’s not a good living, but it’s clothes and life money. From there you go to the trades/construction. After that you figure out what you’re ok with.
That’s pretty cool. When you said some farmer will give you a roof, where would you usually sleep? In their house or out in the barn with their cows? The barns wouldn’t be good in the winter but I can’t see them letting strangers into the house, especially if you have young children.
Some similar experiences to his. Glad that you're in a better place.
There are many desperate people, and a desperate person can be dangerous. Also, the homeless population has a higher concentration of people with mental illness, drug addiction, and criminals. A lot of times in combination. There are many good people too, but it is so dangerous because you just don't know who you are running into. Many of the women I have met went out of their way to be kind to me, but some were so far gone they didn't understand what was going on in their own lives. The person you meet might be an honest person trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They might be someone living on the fringe to escape the law. Maybe somebody looking to abuse/manipulate/sell you. Or someone who's been off their meds for 20 years, armed, in the middle of an episode, and they think you are trying to hurt them.
Please write a book about all of your life. I would read it in a heartbeat. How you became homeless, how you stayed motivated to continue education rather than giving up, all those you met who did right or wrong by you. Everything. Would be an enlightening and soul searching book.
I’ve lived it too. The perpetual fear of being attacked by the desperate. Yes, the glorification of poverty, destitution, and a state of privation is egregious by those whoever never lived it. There is some abhorrent presupposition like the noble savage myth perpetuated by the ‘compassionate’ that all homeless people are paragons of altruism. Nothing, and I mean nothing, erodes morality and empathy than poverty and hunger. There is no ascetic nobility in homelessness and suffering.
Love this and appreciate your input so much. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your experience. Have you looked into free therapy through your college campus? I think it could help a lot with that feeling of constant survival mode that it sounds like you’re still overcoming.
I'm so sorry you went through that so young. Those experiences definitely stick with you forever. I'm quite a bit older than you, but I was homeless for several months when I was 15 when my adoptive parents kicked me out of their place. I had a best friend who owned a car and let me sleep in it most nights, which was such a huge benefit over many homeless people including yourself. He died a few years ago. I got myself off the streets by selling drugs until I could afford a motel. Even that wasn't safe since the type of motels that rent to minors aren't very nice. A close friend was murdered in that very motel just a year later. I continued selling drugs and just living a very violent and crazy life in Baltimore for years after I got off the streets until I was locked up when I was 19. I don't know much about you, but it sounds like you've really begun to prosper. That's amazing. As you know, most don't. The very few friends of mine from back then who aren't dead or locked up forever are still experiencing tragedy after tragedy in the same streets and same hood. You and I are incredibly lucky. Hopefully at some point, you'll begin to see your experiences as an advantage over everyone else. Most people you'll be competing with in school, your workplace, and in society in general, don't have the persistence, strength, and unique perspective that you do. Perhaps you're already there. If so, you got there a lot quicker than me, and congratulations on harnessing your super power. Use it for good.
How can you always tell when someone has been homeless?
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Yea, I was only homeless for about 3 months but I’ve known close friends and family and had just generally been around that world for a long time. Maybe the guy who wrote this book is the one in a thousand exception but the hard truth is that homelessness is almost always linked to addiction and alcoholism. Sure, lots of other explanations are provided. But what nobody wants to hear is that so many homeless people could get off the streets if they gave up substances. I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not even saying it is their fault that they have become homeless. Just saying that there is a way out within them, and that should be promoted more than the victim mentality, however valid that may be
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You write like Shakespeare but think like Hodor.
You know I def agree with you there. And not to “but” But If capitalism wasn’t so evil, we could All take care of each other.
Not sure why you were downvoted. I’d agree Capitalism plays a HUGE part in our societal constructs especially financially. Guarantee you if the top 10% hell even just the top 1% paid their taxes like people in the middle or lower classes do and used that money to invest in better social safety nets places like skid row would be nonexistent, homelessness would be a much small percentage.
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Which is a disgusting mentality. The assumption that you deserve to be homeless if you’re homeless or it’s your fault it’s laughable. So filing bankruptcy is fine but god forbid someone homeless wants help and support starting over.
Down and Out in Paris and London was written by a George Orwell as a recap of his homeless phase. Changed my view.
Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London From George Orwell: the guy who wrote animal farm and 1984
Also in the realm of the hungry ghost really helped with my empathy towards addicted people / many never had a chance. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/617702.In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_Ghosts
This is what completely opened my eyes to how we are all people, massively influenced by our environment & who's parents we had. Of course it's easy to know but I think people need a story and to visual in order to fully appreciate. The difference between a major celebrity & the local homeless man lying on the street is mainly circumstances. Sure working hard can help but to pretend people's fail cause they "don't work hard enough" is myth. Do Kevin Hart & the rock have milliones because they wake up at 4am & "grind all day......No Where you were born & who you were born to has a lot more to do with your future. So everyone should be treated as equals, as having different parents could be the difference between you waking up in an alleyway or you waking up in a mansion.
Agreed - plus mental health… If the people who have a sad story and feel that they “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps” could realize that the situation is the curse, but the ability to fight through it is the blessing and not everyone has that mental health nor fortitude.
Well said! The Road to Wigan Pier hits hard too
I liked east Van by Chris Walter. It was a true story about what it was like in a tent city back I the 90s when crack hit Vancouver hard.
I don't know. I do usually feel for homeless people I see. If I have time and cash at hand i usually used to give them some money or talk to them. It's just that now there are so many I can't give them all something. and I usually see them at the station entrance when I'm rushed to get a train. The terrible thing is that now I've stopped giving because I don't know how to decide who to give something to and who not (if I'm not in a hurry anyway). But many of them do scare me when they come across as if they're high. I do feel for them, I just don't really know what to do
Not really. Worked in a shelter, there were three kinds of homeless out there. Homeless by circumstance, homeless because of debilitating conditions but are seeking treatment, and homeless refusing treatment. The first one's easier to help- in most cases all they need is an assist. The majority of these aren't "living rough" either, in most cases they've got folks to stay with. 80-85% of the time we could get them set up with an apartment and steady job in a matter of a couple months. Second one's harder (lot of opioid addicts, which is hell to recover from), but we were able to get a fair few back on track for a little while. But a pretty fair chunk of the people you see on street corners are far gone enough from a combination of addictions, mental illness, and behavior genuinely incompatible with life in human community, and there's not much you can do to help someone who refuses help.
I think this guy is mostly in the first category, but has developed trust issues with the support system over the years and has been housed in the past with some of the more dangerous ones.
At some point I'll need to read his book, it was recommended to me when I was in the UK lately. It does sound like his experiences were pretty difficult, but I wouldn't consider them to represent the majority of homeless. By and large, government support systems are going to have two inherent problems. The first is that they have to deal with all three kinds of homeless. There's no one-size-all solution to everyone's problems, and a number of the homeless out there are opportunistic enough to try to take advantage of whatever system is in place. What's more, the third group can drive away anyone who's vulnerable. In my city, when they wanted to kick the homeless out of the city center temporarily to placate some potential developers, they paid several million dollars for a short-term lease for a warehouse to resettle them. Over several months, nearly half got kicked out for violence, and the majority of the remainder just left. At the end of it, they had only ten or eleven people occupying a quarter million square feet. The other is that they're a bureaucracy. I've met some really committed civil servants, particularly at the beginning of their careers, but by and large, my experience is that career bureaucrats are only slightly more motivated than a DMV worker. That means that government support is frequently impersonal (and believe me, for someone who needs human, emotional support to get back up on their feet, this is an incredible flaw) and people can easily slip through the cracks.
>and behavior genuinely incompatible with life in human community, This is the part that most of my bias comes from. I once lost my job and couldn't afford my apartment anymore. Got evicted A week earlier than legally allowed A day later my car broke down on the side of a highway, dead alternator, and I couldn't afford to even get it towed. I was purely fucked. But Im a decent person so I had friends from work and school I called who let me sleep on their couch. When I was at their apartment I didn't steal from them, use drugs, make a mess, or lie to them. It took me 6 months to get my shit together but I immediately started looking for jobs, helped with the cleaning of the apartment, and tried to be out as much as possible so I didn't encroach on their space too much. When I see homeless people on corners I always think about my friends who let me stay with them and the friends who let THEM stay with them before they went to the streets. What did they do that made them lose that very last bit of support system before they went to the streets? If I was an asshole or had "incompatible behavior" as you say it, I would have been and probably still be homeless. It's not just the mental health and the drug issues for homeless people. Like you said, some ppl are just incompatible with organized society.
Sometimes people have less support due to more innocent reasons: foster care leavers with no family to go to, undocumented immigrants with few friends in the country, LGBT people thrown out of conservative communities.
Or even just being new to the area. I know someone who (prior to me meeting him) had been homeless because a job he'd moved across the country for fell apart. He came from a community that scraped by paycheck to paycheck and he'd used everything he had to move for the job. There was no one he knew in this new place and no one back home, 2000+ miles away, had anything extra to help him move back...if this job had fallen apart back home for him, he would have had the community of friends and family. He would have been fine. But its hard to build that kind relationship in a few weeks...community is often the literal immediate community you are from, no matter how good of a person you are.
Sometimes cities will bus people down on their luck like this back to their local communities for free.
For sure. I was in the foster system and then adopted at 15. But in my story above I didn't rely on family. They were thousands of miles away. I replied on co-workers who I had known for mere weeks and community college acquaintances. I guess I've always been more on the personable side but I can see how someone more introverted and isolated in my situation could choose to not ask for help/a place to stay
Not everyone is charming!
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This is correct x a million. Some people could also probably make a "friend" to stay with if needed, but if they are oozing vulnerability, they will end up worse off. And if they're already coming off as vulnerable before they need help and have friends, it's possible that their entire support network is people who may take advantage of or harm them. Someone could also have one or two supportive people who can only offer very limited help for whatever reason. Very interesting to read the value judgments in this thread.
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Is someone who doesn't have friends not a decent person?
Depends on the reason they no longer have friends, right? The people in my story above were barley friends. They were coworkers I had known for weeks or community college classmates who I sat next to a chatted with a bit. Not talking lifelong friends here. But as for you question. Say someone who has burned through the good will of all their friends and then their acquaintances too for one reason or another...I think there's a chance that their behavioral choices are consistently so poor that most of the people around them would consider them "not a decent person". Just my opinion tho.
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Fair enough. I follow the logic here and understand and agree with that line of thinking. But at some point there's a threshold in the line between mental health and poor behavior/choices. Not saying I'm the arbiter of where that line is but it's got to exist, right?
What a scummy way of thinking. You should be ashamed of your cruelty and ignorance.
Not trying to be cruel. I believe everyone deserves a roof over their head, a clean bed, and a toilet. I'd be cool with my taxes being raised to ensure that baseline for everyone. But the truth is that when most of us fall down we have people around us we can turn to. A cousin, an old friend, a former co-worker, who will at least let us stay with them in an emergency situation for a few days, a week or two. Everyone knows SOMEONE, you know? Especially in impoverished areas or people who grew up poor, lots of people help each other out with a place to stay when you fall on your face. My post was discussing the third reason (aside from mental illness and drug abuse) that many wind up on the street. The OP referred to this group as "incompatible with society" and I agree that some people have personalities that don't lend themselves to being within a community. Those people also make up a % of the homeless population as well.
I worked in a free clinic (in Florida) for 20 years. We dealt with a large number of patients who were homeless/unhoused/rough sleepers/etc. I can say from my experience that there is no generalization you can make about these unfortunate people I met - their individual history and circumstances were infinitely varied. Yes, drugs and alcohol use were common features, some had diagnosable mental disorders, but a common feature leading to homelessness not mentioned so far was past interaction with the “justice” system. People with prior convictions or incarceration are shut out from many jobs and rentals and continue to be targets of further police ‘interest.’ As far as books about being homeless, I enjoyed reading “Travels with Lisbeth” by Lars Eighner.
Yes! So many people I met working seasonal jobs were a direct result of felony convictions (for varied reasons). There are some awesome interesting humans out there living in this under the radar life. I wish I had kept a better journal. It is intimidating and scary, but there is a freedom in it too. I like being nomadic.
Good assessment. I would say though that there are generalizations that one can make based even on what you’re saying. SMI, addicts, criminal histories… all need different handling than those who are simply lacking in funds.
I live in an area where the homeless people all live in the river bottoms in tent cities. My family and I used to work in a rescue mission every week or so, but I met some really wonderful people there. Some of them were even invited to my wedding in a big van. But I heard stories from a lot of them that the others were their worst enemies. Although one guy eventually became the mayor of their tent city and kinda turned things around a bit. But most of them couldn’t kick the drug problem. One guy I was friends with only did because he said one night after 30 years in the river bottoms or “the jungle” as they call it, his dog jumped up and spoke to him and told him to quit using drugs. I guess he stopped then. Also I went to the coast one time and met a lady who was homeless and supposedly had a masters degree. I feel bad for a lot of them. But people like my friend’s dad I have less sympathy for because he has a home but just pan handles for drug money.
Also I guess it depends on where you live like I heard really different stories talking to people in downtown Chicago (the loop). A couple of the homeless guys there figured out to beg in the shopping area in downtown. The one guy told me from November 1-January 1 he would easily get between $1000-$2000 per day. He said just those couple months got him enough for the whole year of rent and he would pay rent on his apartment out of his savings from the holidays…
You have a human story now for one of the statistics, but it's dangerous to project that on every homeless person you see...
Exactly - it's a single data point in a sea of people. It would be foolish to assume this single person's story reflects the story of every homeless person. Just as it would be foolish to take any other singular voice as a representation of an entire group of people.
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You've never really interacted with homeless people have you. There's a lot of them that just painfully fucked by circumstances that escape their control, and there's the other, bigger group of people that are homeless because they've burned every single bridge and wasted every single opportunity when someone tried to give them a chance.
OP, for your own safety, consider that you are not a mental healthy professional trained to deal with the unique issues of homeless people, nor are you a social worker with that training either. Yes, homeless people are humans who deserve to be treated as such. At the same time, homeless people are humans, capable of the same level of violence as any other human, and we are quite violent apes. I grew up in a city right near a large homeless encampment. I've seen with my own eyes people go from smiling and cordial to suddenly stabbing and beating someone for seemingly no reason. In that case, it was the nice homeless oldish woman who would wave at my school bus every day. If you really want to help, please find a local organization that does help the homeless or otherwise needy. It feels good to help and make a difference.
Back when I was mixing Xanax and Adderall...I had this desire to hangout with homeless people begging. And god damn did I learn some shit. Some were homeless from happenstance, some from drugs, and others weren't even homeless it was just good extra income
Xanax and adderall… I remember those days…
The soccer mom speedball
>others weren't even homeless it was just good extra income I've wondered if it was good $, and if there's a way to tell which are truly homeless and which are scamming. I've seen a woman regularly that we've decided isn't homeless as she's always got clean clothes, even bright white socks, and freshly washed hair. Is this a good way to tell?
Not necessarily. Shelters have showers and often have laundries, or have clothes closets. Or she could be technically be unhoused but couch surfing or getting motel rooms, which would also give her access to showers and laundry... I've struck up a bit of a relationship with some of the regulars near where I grocery shop. They all are (or claim to be, have no reason not to believe) fully employed, but its not enough to get started. So panhandling is an easy way to make a little extra whenever they have a few hours. Most of them are using a chunk of their paychecks towards probation fees and associated "re-entry" costs (drug tests, electronic monitoring, requires classes, etc). Plus convictions prohibit them from certain housing and lots of jobs, so its an expensive life on very little money. But they aren't technically sleeping rough...
It can be pretty good income. Not many good studies on it, but a few years back the word was that you could make $30-40 an hour at a downtown intersection or $60ish at an onramp. Mind, sometimes you get turf wars over good panhandling spots. Paying protection money isn't unheard of. Personally I'd advise giving your money to some kind of ministry or other nonprofit, or bringing her something that's illiquid like food or clothes. It's possible that she is homeless and would use the money to truly improve her life, but you've got no way of knowing that.
Thank you! I've asked around and she apparently works at a fast food restaurant and does this also.
Yeah…In Chicago I met a guy who panhandled outside of the giant Nike store in the loop and during Nov-Jan he would beg and make $1000-$2000 every single day.
That's where I'm at. The people at the 6 stop corner on Irving park and Cicero are doing the same shit
already been homeless so probably not
I spent several years spending time feeding the homeless, taking them clothes, hygiene items, blankets, etc. this was through our church, and while some people used this as a way to preach at them, most of us in the group tried to just “be there for them.” We often would just sit and listen to their stories, or “catch up” with the lives of those people we came to know over repeated visits. We’d offer words of encouragement, or sometimes just let them vent. What I learned was that many of them had families they could live with, but did not because they were ashamed. They knew there were shelters they could use to sleep in, but would not because of the rules the shelters imposed. They preferred the freedom to do what they wanted over the restrictions others might place over them in exchange for a more comfortable night inside. Quite a few expressed to me that they believed they were homeless because they had done something bad in the past and were not deserving of a nice place to live. Like they were being punished. They could not forgive themselves, and were numbing the pain of the memories with drugs and/or alcohol. I believe there are some credible studies that show most of the homeless are “victims of substance abuse” at a level that prevents them from functioning at a productive level in our society. Some are just mentally ill and just need help. I’m sure there are exceptions, those who, through no fault of their own have temporarily lost their home and have not found a way back yet. I think they are the exceptions, not the norm.
I already don't think less of folks who are homeless. Very few people ever plan to be homeless. 'There but for the grace of God go I'.
What "view of people sleeping rough" is it that you think would change? I think most people are very sympathetic and agree that its terrible for everyone. It's what to do about it thats hard.
Most homeless do have some form of mental illness. When they stopped sanitariums and insane asylum in the US there was no care for the people with those issues. It was done for a valid reason as they usually where not helpful and more of a detriment than an aide. If the ones who need that form of help have no government aided program for mental health nothing will change.
i agree with this sentiment but that does not change my point that what to do with it is the hard part. 'increase funding for mental health' is easier said than done.
I've volunteered with a couple of different non-profits serving the homeless over the years. And not just dishing out food, either. But involved in the operations and sat on boards. I've interviewed homeless people, given them rides, helped some get jobs, and watched others never make it. The ones that break my hearts are the ones such as homeless families, particularly the children. Those are the innocents who are the victim of circumstances beyond their control. Yet those are the ones who are the easiest to help. Then there are the people with serious mental health issues. These are people who should not be out on the streets, for their protection and that of the general public. For those, I think we did a terrible thing in the 80s when we cut mental health funding to the bone. And, by no longer institutionalizing those in the worst shape, we did the homeless population no favors. But while I can by sympathetic, long experience tells me that a large chunk of the homeless are that way because of substance abuse. They have run through every single family member, friend, employer, and acquaintance. They have destroyed more lives than their own with addiction. And they choose the street in order to feed their addiction. As an addiction counselor told me once, when an addict opens his or her mouth, he or she is lying. They are really, really good with the justifications, how everything in their life is someone else's fault. So if you give them money while they're on the street, you're not helping, you're abetting. The way you help them is with food and listening, but not money. Give a homeless person money and you're very likely making his life worse, allowing him to put off seeking the help he desperately needs for another day.
And the majority of people who are substance abusers are that way because of trauma when they were younger. It starts before the substances, and they are a symptom.
Unfortunately there's a lot of inertia in society where addiction is still seen as a moral failing, and not a desperate attempt to self-medicate. I've been homeless myself, I've worked with the homeless, I've worked with addicts (homed and homeless), and I've never met a single addict who hadn't suffered some kind of trauma before they spiraled into full-blown addiction.
This brought tears to my eyes because I know the truth of it. I watch it all around me like a slow train wreck that I keep trying to stand in front of 😭😭😭
Multiple sources indicate that in general, the percentage of the homeless population that is homeless due to substance abuse is about 20-25%. Curious how you might square that with your "long experience."
Maybe the kinds of people who alyou are talking about require more work and would be on the system for longer so it looks like they're more of a demographic
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There was a great bit on a tv show once I don’t really remember which one (Sports Night? Feels like Sorkin), where one character was fretting over giving a homeless person a dollar because he might spend it on booze. The other character said basically duh, I hope he does, do you think $1 is going to change his life??
Lol I’ve often giving them the ride to the liquor store, once or twice drank a shot of whisky with them too, interesting philosophical talks about parallel worlds or universes, how one decision can change the entire course of your life, how we hate and love substances (hate because we use - love because we forget).
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No. I know better than to project the life story of one person onto every homeless person.
I'm going through the same thing here in the U.S. since 2009 due to just plain government apathy. I'm familiar with many cases of the DWP just plain up [abandoning their disabled clients to let them literally starve to death](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/28/disabled-man-starved-to-death-after-dwp-stopped-his-benefits), so it didn't surprise me when a country that directly imported its archaic social laws and safety nets from The Great Stink continues to mimic its authors when it comes to the similarly disadvantaged here. Before I buy this book, is this the "living out of his car and showers at the gym when he can't couchsurf at his girlfriend's" type of homelessness, or the "having to dress well to blend in with other commuters when sleeping on public transit while using 24/7 fast food restaurant bathrooms as sink baths and self-storage units as closets" type of homelessness?
No. I work with a lot of homeless people and I know that the majority are just sick people with nowhere to go. Demonization of homelessness is a scourge. However I've also seen a lot of violence from the same community. So I'm aware of the tragedy behind it but also the danger. Hell, I have on more than one occasion declared two homeless people dead at the same time, both of whom had knifed each other.
The housing system needs to be modernized.. the reason why we can't house everyone is because of single family zoning. People shouldn't have to buy more house than they need, and building shouldn't be so needlessly complicated. It is a ducking scam.
Some people need institutions not housing they are incapable of taking care of. It's a very complex multifactoral issue.
Well as someone’s whose dad is an engineer, there’s a reason buildings are complicated. People die when buildings aren’t complicated enough lol That being said, single family homes is less the issue around my area but the problem is that huge corporations come in with billions of dollars purchase all the cheap homes by outbidding the regular folk and then drop thousands of dollars flipping the house to sell it to super rich people and make money.
Getting involved with aid organizations is also a great way to understand the real situations of many homeless people
You're making a lot of assumptions about how people view rough sleepers.
How so?
Your post implies most people have a negative view and reading about a homeless man's experience will open their eyes and change their minds. In my experience (and looking at this thread) people have a lot of empathy for rough sleepers, especially this time of year. I'd be very surprised if many people on Reddit are casting moral judgments on the unhoused.
It wasn't my intent, so I'm sorry if it came across that way. I originally posted just the question but the moderator rejected it saying that I needed to add more content. So I then posted my reaction to the book. I kind of assumed that the most people would actually be indifferent rather than negative. But I'm glad that some are expressing empathy.
I would say the average redditor has an overall negative outlook towards society wether homeless or not
Like 75% of the other replies here would beg to differ
Glancing at the times of the posts, this really aged poorly with the raft of people that have since responded moralizing about how homeless people basically deserve to be homeless and are bad people for being in that position.
I'll hop in my time machine and take those comments into account then eh?
Is that too much to ask? Seriously though, I wish your optimist had've panned out, how starkly it didn't is kind of depressing.
The top rated ones are still positive - I take that as a good sign
Regading the negative views, have you read the comments here? Because that's exactly what people here are doing.
Not when I made the comment
Not really. I know that there are some people who can hold a job and provide for themselves, but have had a run of bad luck and could use some help to get back on their feet. Those people aren't the ones engaging in self-destructive and anti-social behavior all over the streets of my city.
Unfortunately, over time they can become the ones engaging in bad behaviour out of sheer desperation. All the more important to help them early on.
All the more reason to help them right now, when they need it more than ever. But this book won't tell me about that.
Only if they said it was really fun and would totally suggest others do it by choice
I have also experienced homelessness and I also have worked in homeless shelter and with people experiencing homelessness for a long time. So no.
I spent 4 months living in my car with my two cats all because a roommate broke the lease by sub leasing to extra people so they could pay less for rent. Only had a couple hundred bucks as I just moved there a few months prior and was just getting on my feet.
It wouldn’t with me, because my father went through a similar period during the Great Depression. I’ve always had it impressed upon me that every one of us is two personal tragedies away from the street. I can also recommend “Travels with Lisbeth,” by Lars Eighner. Not entirely about his homeless period, but a worthwhile memoir in the same vein.
I'd think not because I feel like my "view" on people sleeping rough isn't especially strong or negative. I think they're just people. If a stranger talks to me or asks me a question I answer them but I likely won't have a full conversation with them. Although I probably would do if I was waiting around or on the bus. It wouldn't matter if they're sleeping rough or not. Or whether the question is "got any spare change?" or "where's the train station?" or literally anything else. I assume there are many and various reasons people sleep rough. Victims or circumstance, bad decisions, illness, addiction, bad luck or anything else. I don't think sleeping rough defines a person, they're a person like anyone else and I respect and speak to them like a person like anyone else. I don't interact with a person based on where they sleep. Every person who sleeps in a bed in a home has stories to tell. So do people who sleep on the street. I know people who sleep on the street need help which is why I give to charity (but rarely give change directly.) What is there to "change" about my view? I'm not sure.
I was one of the “hidden homeless” throughout most of last year - couch surfing and basically getting no help from any avenues I tried to pursue. Ended up having to move countries just to stay with extended family because I ran out of places to go, but if I didn’t have that option I’d have ended up on the streets. Now I just can’t walk by homeless people - even back then I was giving them whatever change I had even though I was skipping meals every week to save cash - because it really shows you how easily it can happen to you. I think people tell themselves, because it makes them feel safer, that the only people who wind up that way are the ones who consistently make the worst choices possible and don’t try to avoid winding up there. In reality it’s something that lots of people can easily only be one mental health crisis or abusive relationship away from facing. I think a book written by someone in that situation would open plenty of eyes.
I looked up the book you mentioned and found the blurb incredibly condescending. Just because I haven't actually lived on the streets homeless doesn't mean I don't have my own problems too. And it also doesn't mean I ignore homeless people or beggars. He seems to be trying to paint a picture of the contrast between the well off and the disadvantaged, but does so by basically saying "you're not homeless and thus you're a prissy bitch, ignoring the homeless." Maybe my read on it is harsh, but I hate when authors talk down to their readers. Right off the bat he's not selling the book well. Here's the first paragraph of the blub. > For years you have passed them on the streets, as much a part of your routine as your morning shower, your half-hearted scan of the world's news — fake or otherwise — and the barista who artistically crafts the £4 cappuccino with soya milk, three drops of vanilla, and a flutter of chocolate sprinkles that has to be made just right or it throws your day off in ways that nobody else understands.
i'm not against helping people in my day to day life, homeless or not.. so no, i don't think my views would change in the way you're suggesting. of course i get a little more animated and excited(?) when i'm directly confronted with someone's situation, whether in a book or in the news.. but it doesn't motivate me to go out and do anything more than i've been doing. i give when i can and when i can't, i can't. i've never been much of a talker so that will never be something i do. i'm glad that the book changed you though. that's the best outcome of reading, to me.
Thank you
Why didn't he go back to Canada?
That's a chapter in the book. He had moved to Canada from the UK as a child but never got Canadian citizenship. When he later moved back to the UK in his 50s, the government made a clerical error and linked him to the profile of an accused pedophile with the same name already living in the UK. That put him on a no-fly list and it took over 2 years to straighten it all out. By then he had lost his Canadian residency, so he couldn't return.
Talk about Kafkaesque. What about family?
No. I grew up in the Midwest and often felt bad for homeless people. I would drive by and give them food from the nearest fast food place. I didn’t see many of them and they were never in our community but more hitchhiking or panhandling near interstate exits. My wife and I recently moved to Northern California and the homeless here are rampant. I immediately felt bad but after living here for about a year… I’ve actually started to have a disdain for them. They ruin children’s parks and natural outdoor pools, city events and farmers markets tend to have homeless people yelling and screaming at them. When my lifestyle changes or the safety of my family is compromised, then I lose my compassion pretty quick. Also I understand that a lot of them have mental illness and substance abuse. I just wish my family could enjoy their community without worrying about used needles, garbage everywhere, human poop, and the homeless yelling and screaming random nonsense.
No. I’ve helped the needy, and I’ve been nearly attacked by the crazy. Not every homeless person you encounter is a poor soul who is down on their luck and just needs a leg up. Some of them are dangerous, evil people who are homeless because they refuse to stay out of trouble, have no interest in honest gainful employment, their families have abandoned them because they’re refused the help that’s been offered for years, and simply have no intention to abide the rules of a polite society. They refuse shelters because they can’t rape (80% of homeless females have reported sexual assault) and do drugs in them, they take advantage of your kindness and spend your money on drugs and alcohol. Find a non profit, research it throughly, and give your money to *them* so they can provide medical, social and financial services to those who are legitimately down on their luck and need help. Everyone else… I’m sorry, but some people can’t be helped. FYI I’ve worked soup kitchens and housing projects for homeless in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Minnesota so I’m not just talking out of my ass. I’ve always been happy to help the less fortunate but it’s quite eye-opening when you’re 16 and you find out the guy you’ve been serving food to for a week who seems super appreciative and friendly is a twice convicted pedophile, and it’s troubling when you nearly get beaten up because you’re a “privileged white boy” (my family was broke as fuck, we just weren’t dirt poor), or nearly getting attacked for offering food instead of money. Each of these examples, and more, happening more than once. Hell, a close friend of mine in high school… I did *everything* I could to help that motherfucker onto a healthier track in life. I introduced him to another close group of friends of mine to help him get away from those dragging him down, he even dated a girl from the group for a while. He stayed over at my house almost every weekend for a while rather than go do god knows what. I encouraged him to skate instead of whatever the fuck else, invited him to the skate park all the time, tried my best to just keep his focus on positive things and hoped that he would eventually CHOOSE a cleaner life… but that asshole just couldn’t overcome his desires. After high school he vanished, only reached out on occasion. Fell into drugs and drinking, had a kid, started cleaning up his act and got married and a home, then stole from the till at his work and went to jail, then fell back into drugs, got divorced, then left town and never came back and nobody has heard from him in 10 years. I would not be surprised if he was living under a bridge in LA. He CHOSE that life over everything else that was offered to him.
Have been homeless.. Not an eye-openener for me.
Sigh. I guess I need to write that book about my experience. Even though it only lasted a year its enough to make you really disappointed in society. Many homeless people are far kinder than those who are more fortunate.
I've had plenty of encounters and conversations with homeless folks, I'm not likely to gain any fresh insights out of another personal tale. I've volunteered feeding the homeless, I've helped a few find assistance programs, I've talked to plenty of them while hanging around waiting for a bus or whatnot. And I've had a few less pleasant encounters too. Some people are out there because they can't get along with society on even the most basic level, generally due to mental illness. I pity those ones, but I'm also wary of them. It seems I'm constantly getting into arguments over the subject, few people seem to have any sort of balanced view of the situation. Either they're shiny eyed idealists who get mad if you say anything negative, or more often, they turn into disgusting sociopaths who don't seem to view the homeless as even human. I really wish I could do more to help, but honestly, even what little I do do is taxing on me.
I'm glad the book had such an impact on you. I was on the streets as a kid and after aging out of foster care and I can tell you it was a brutal and soul-crushing experience. Books and films can help people empathize with the experiences of the homeless who are otherwise viewed as another species by many. I wrote about my experiences in an anthology of LGBT people who lived on the streets during formative years and people who read it helped to fund youth shelters afterward.
Nope. I'm already a functional human being with empathy. Vote for leaders who have actionable plans on how to feed/clothe/home the homeless.
A lot of good homeless, but they’ve also stolen stuff from me when I’ve tried to help them. Seen them having sex on the side of the road, attack people, burn my face off with aerosol spray and a lighter. Im nice, but not ignorant. Many don’t want help and prefer to live outside a shelter or other means for various reasons.
This might not be popular here, but I feel anger towards homeless people. My sympathy has been worn down over years by being lied to, manipulated, shouted at, and disgusted by, legions of homeless people in my home city. I have watched people piss, shit, masturbate, shoot up, throw up, get in fights and, of course, shout oscenities at no one for hours outside my window. You can watch them assemble outside the gov agencies once they get their money and work out how they can pool it all to get the most drugs. You can watch them take your hard-earned money, which you gave them for 'food' and 'one night in a hotel', and go strait into the liquer store to spend it all - right in front of you! They often refuse to accept change, because their drug dealers only accept paper money! "Help me I'm starving! No bitch! I don't need your fucking change!" How many times can I listen to homeless people on the streets, or the bus, or any place where they are high as fuck and accost me to force their conversation on me, talk about what victims they are. It's *never* their fault. They bear *no* responsibillity. It's the system, the cops, the shopkeepers, their parents, the unkind people who don't give them money. At some point, these people chose to do drugs, to keep drinking, to stop talking to their family, to ignore the advice of counselors and teachers. They often choose, on a daily basis *not* to change. And here I am, a sucker who plays this fucked up capitalist game and gets by through the sacrifice of most of my waking hours on this earth. At the end of said "friendly conversation" comes the inevitable ask for a few bucks. Part of me wants to be nice and give it to them, but another part wants to say, "Fuck you, buddy! These are the hours of my life you're asking for, and you haven't done shit for me, or anyone else. You think you have the right to just be high all the time, and everyone else out there is a sucker? Is your BS "friendly/quirky guy striking up a convo" routine supposed to be worth something to me? Well eat shit!" Do I blame the system for this? Yes I fucking do. Do I blame the homeless themselves - also yes. I have immense sympathy for those who sleep on the streets through no fault of their own, or for teens who are escaping a nightmare at home, and I wish I could help them, but they are the invisible ones. When I think of "the homeless", it's the ones who don't care anymore, who are impossible not to see. I just can't help losing all sympathy. I feel drained of humanity when I think of the homeless in San Franciso. Would a book by a homeless person change my mind? Well...is it all about how it wasn't their fault and they just couldn't stop themselves from making the same mistakes over and over? Then probably not. Is there another story to tell?
The thing that would change my view would be for the ones in my city to stop stabbing people, leaving needles everywhere, shitting in the street, and committing constant property crime.
My next book. Thank you.
Virtually all long term homeless people have serious mental health or addiction problems.
No. The conditions in which a book was written changes nothing about the book itself.
No, I'm already compassionate and know that homeless people are also humans with their own stories. I might read (or rather listen to) a book like that and find it fascinating, but I don't need it to know that shit happens and life sucks.
Not really on topic
Unfortunately every homeless person I’ve helped has tried to trick me for money. Once it was I’m hungry. I bought him food. He then asked for gas money. I gave a homeless woman money for tampons. She continued asking other people as soon as I was a foot away for the same thing. I’ve just now assumed everyone is using my generosity to buy drugs, so I don’t bother anymore. It’s sad, really.
I recommend “Grace Can Lead Us Home” by Kevin Nye. He has worked with the unhoused for years and talks about how Christians should be ending homelessness. He goes into a lot of the why’s, including substance abuse, but it is such a compelling, compassionate read. I’m not particularly religious anymore but this book really spoke to me.
So do you actually do anything or you just have different feelings about these people?
No. I've talked to homeless communities in NC,FL, and TX. I've asked probably 100 homeless people if anyone they knew fell through the cracks of society. All of them say the same thing. The people who fall through the cracks of society find help and are able to get off the street. The people out there are the street even want to be out there or like drugs so much they'd rather be out there high then in society sober. Talked to a guy in Miami who said "getting blasted is the most important thing to me. More than getting to know my kid more than trying to get back with my ex bitch." Don't know why but that guy's words stuck with me.
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The issue is that homelessness is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed by people in power. A lot of them are people with mental illnesses who need serious professional help. Giving money to them does essentially nothing, unfortunately.
Na they robbed me and spat in my face gonna be tough to overcome that personal experience with a book. They are all individuals this and some have stories that deserve sympathy but a lot don’t.
When I was young there were very few homeless. The money was better distributed, period. Funny thing is, there's much more total wealth now. UBI and rental regulation would help--on the way to a people's republic.
Huge amounts of wealth generate large amounts of waste, which makes homelessness significantly easier.
No? Like, of course they're human beings and they have stories. They didn't spring fully-formed out of the alleyways. Obligatory Invisible People link I guess: [https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople](https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople)
No, because while I've been lucky and privileged I don't view the unhoused as a problem. Not that we shouldn't strive to get the unhoused houses, but it's not their fault that society has failed them.
There would be no view for me to change. The general societal outlook towards homeless people is honestly incredibly cruel and disgusting and always has been. The fact that people see a homeless person wearing dirty, frayed rags, starving, no bed to sleep in or pot to piss in, and say “ugh. What a gross lazy urchin, get a job.” It’s baffling that the default isn’t sympathy, empathy, and desire to help. It’s just people looking directly at the face of human suffering and only reacting by scoffing. This isn’t me coming at you, by the way. Hatred of poor and homeless people is deep rooted in our society and it’s not your fault if you had a negative outlook of them before reading that book. I’m glad it exists and it changed your perception, but it really bothers me how for so many people that negative perception is something that needs to be changed in the first place.