Perhaps I am reading too much into the statement “it isn’t impossible.”
This is what my opinion was based on. If an act isn’t impossible, then to not do it is a choice. Please, if necessary, correct me. I’m not trying to be an ass here.
“not impossible” means that some people may be able to do so. This does not mean:
- That any single individual will be able to
- That it’s a common thing
- That to fail to do so is a matter of choice.
For example: To score a ‘hole in one’ in golf is not impossible. Does this mean that because I couldn’t hit a hole in 1, that means I’ve chosen to not do so? Does the fact that it’s not impossible give you any information about those who fail to do so at any given moment? Does the fact that it’s not impossible give you any predictive value for any specific individual? Does that help (Hope so, since I don’t play golf)
Damn. Back to gender identification school for me.
Sorry wring!
No problemo 
- It’s not the first time. I just don’t like to have people thinking I’m misrepresenting myself.
I am including those living in shelters in the homeless. Some clearly have no options other than the shelter or the streets and may choose the streets over the shelter because they feel safer in the street. Some have no safety net at all, no family or friends to take them in ‘till they get on their feet. Others,however,do have choices.I have had clients who lived in shelters by choice.Some did it because the city policy at the time was both not to investigate the person’s options and to give priority to those in shelters for subsidized apartments,so that a shelter was a faster way to an apartment than doubling up. Others chose to live in shelters because although they could live with relatives they found the relatives’ rules intolerable (not unreasonable rules,simply such rules as wanting help with household duties) They were often surprised to find that the shelter’s rules could be more restictive in some ways than the relatives,but by that point,they had often fallen into my next group. The largest group, in my experience, that ended up in the shelter or the streets was the people who right now have no options, but could have had options had they behaved differently in the past.I don’t mean that they should have been more educated, or gotten a better job or saved more money. I mean the man whose brother would have taken him in, except the last time things were stolen.Or the woman whose mother would let her move in, except the last time she did, the daughter disappeared for a week, leaving the kids with grandma.Or the one whose relatives are tired of the police coming to look for him or her.Those people may not have exactly chosen to be homeless, but they’re also not missing that safety net through no fault of their own.
Many of the homeless people we see panhandling, standing around scratching themselves in public, holding up cardboard signs, and defecating in the dumpster bins are indeed “street people” who more or less choose to live the way they do. They are the “visible homeless”, but only part of the homeless population.
The “hidden homeless” are are families, often single mothers with children, that are homeless through no fault of their own. We may not see them as much because they often live in cars, or use shelters, but they exist. And whatever you may feel about the able-bodied adults that are in that position, surely your heart has to go out to children who live that way.
People see shiftless panhandlers and lose sympathy for all of the homeless, not knowing that the homeless may also be the kids in elementary school playground, the old folks who stay inside a shelter all day to avoid the heat, or the lady who works for minumum wage at the local drive-thru, but still doesn’t earn enough to pay rent (a full time minimum wage paycheck won’t cut it in a big city). So we penalize them for the sins of others.
Any discussion of homelessness has to recognize that there are many people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle, and we really have no right to tell them that they are wrong. There used to be a whole class of people known as Hobos that simply chose to live free. Many of them were hard workers, and would take temporary jobs to make enough money to buy used clothes and food and temporary lodging. But then they’d shortly get restless and move on. Temporary Hobo towns could be very large, until the police started a program of breaking them up.
You can go to any country in the world, no matter how many social programs they have, and find a fairly substantial homeless population.
I happen to know a lot of homeless people. I used to be a professional poker player, and making a living doing that took me through the seedier downtown districts to some underground card clubs (kind of like the clubs in ‘Rounders’). I knew lots of people playing in those games who did not have fixed addresses. They had money, since they could afford to play poker. But they just didn’t want the hassle and expense of maintaining a domicile. So they’d float around. Play in a card game for 20 hours, crash on the couch in the back of the club, play again for a few hours, go to a party somewhere and crash on a bed, head back to the poker clubs… Once in a while, they’d rent a hotel room for a week, or a furnished apartment for a month or two to regain their bearings and clean up. Then it’d be back onto the streets. This was definitely a lifestyle choice for many of these people, and others were so addicted to playing poker that they blew all their money at the tables. But at least a few of them were educated, capable of working if they wished, but simply didn’t wish to.
There was a scandal here a while ago over a man who was a well-known for standing on a corner with his entire family, begging. He said he was homeless, and would work for food. So an newspaper sent some undercover reporters to watch how much money the man made, and to go up and offer him work. He turned down everyone. It turned out that this family lived a lower-middle class lifestyle. His shtick was so good that they were making the equivalent of $30,000 a year (before tax) from begging. He was literally making more doing that than his skills would earn him in the job market. The scandal came from the fact that he was subjecting his kids to a pretty destructive lifestyle.
SS: Any discussion of homelessness has to recognize that there are many people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle, and we really have no right to tell them that they are wrong.
Sure. If Weary Willie and Dusty Rhodes and all that gang are law-abiding citizens, I don’t have a problem with their preferring to have no fixed abode and no steady income. What I think a lot of posters here are suggesting, though, is that such people are really a very small minority of the homeless population.
Look, I think it is clear that most homeless people have severe problems. Homelessness is not their problem, homelessness is the result of their problems. If you are an addict, an alcoholic, mentally disabled, physically disabled, abused, uneducated, and unsocialized it is going to be almost impossible for you to work for a living. And getting these people a job isn’t going to help. Yes, they need jobs, but they simply are incapable of doing what it takes to have a job, usually for a multitude of reasons.
Many people who have these problems aren’t on the streets because they have relatives who take care of them…they may not work, but they contribute in some way. But then what happens when the grandmother dies? Or becomes disabled herself?
For lots of street people, the only option would be involuntary psychiatric commitment. I don’t know if that is a good solution or not.
I guess the problem comes when people feel that “the homeless” are just your average run-of-the-mill person who just happens to not have a home. Well, of course there are people like that, I’ve been in that situation myself. When that happened, I stayed with friends for a couple of months until I found a new situation. I don’t think I should have counted as “homeless” when I was staying with friends. Your typical homeless person is on the streets because of multiple disabilites that aren’t going to go away just because you give them a bed and a job.
Do you consider alcoholics and other substance abusers “chooose” to get drunk or high?
Answering this question goes a long way towards answering the question posed in the thread header.
Some homeless are schizophrenic or suffer from other mental illnesses. Some are alcoholic. There is a good deal of overlap, with the mentally ill self-medicating with alcohol.
Some are simply overwhelmed by life. Things that a normal person could handle send them into a downward spiral. Some are children dependent on mothers (never fathers) with some or all of the above problems.
In any case, very few homeless chose homelessness, at least as one choice. A good many, it could be wagered, got that way from an accumulation of other choices.
“No one raindrop considers itself the cause of the flood”.
Regards,
Shodan
Lemur866:
While on the one hand I hate to listen to people opine that homeless people must be homeless by choice since they could just alter their situation (or at least could have chosen differently), I also have problems with the assertion that homeless people in general are all discombobulated and disabled and messed up in the head and so on.
When I was homeless, during the phase when I was living in a Facility for the Provision of Room Board and Condescensions, my colleagues included a trained pharmacist whose license status had been administratively screwed up; an attorney; an experienced horse trainer; and a handful of other people whose situations COULD for the most part have been remedied by giving them a bed and an appropriate job.
Many many more of them lacked skills and education and, perhaps more problematic, study habits and work habits that one aqcquires from being a successful student or a continuously employed person, and yet were not disabled in the sense of anything being wrong with their minds or their overall health. Most of them, nevertheless, were virtually unemployable, although I could conceive that an exceptionally well-designed and implemented social work program could have addressed that. (They weren’t in one).
Of those who clearly did have mental and emotional problems, and/or drug/alcohol problems, there were many who seemed to have ended up like that as a result of homelessness or as a result of despair at the lack of options in life. An even more comprehensive social work program might have been able to provide for these folks’ multifaceted problems and resulted in some of them becoming economically independent and responsible folks who sleep indoors in domiciles they rent or own like most of us do. (Of course no program such as that was in place there either)
At this point you may quite possibly be nodding and thinking that we are not in disagreement.
But I need to point out that the main programmatic initiatives being funded for helping us–the policies and opportunities of which the Facility was a part–all revolved around the idea that homelessness was a symptom of untreated ‘mental illness’ which in turn was conceptualized as a ‘chemical imbalance in the brain’, i.e., a Thorazine Deficiency Disease. Having said that, I now invite you to re-read what I’ve said, and I ask you to concur with my observation that the homeless shelter residents I’ve described here were not going to benefit from a concerted effort to get us all on regular doses of psychiatric medication, and putting us on it wasn’t going to result in us functioning independently.
I was curious, so I called my friend eggo: he said about 5%of the homeless people he met while hitch-hiking arround the country were homeless because they liked to be.
Zenster and Spider-woman: Eggo says Hi.
Prior to the 1980’s, this was fairly common. However, the federal government cut funding for inpatient psychiatric care to the point where many patients, who desperately needed to be in hospital, were released. Not having the skills to live on their own in the community, and not having the outpatient care and supportive therapy to keep their illness manageable, these people were forced onto the street.
Even programs that exist to offer financial help, like SSI, state disability, HUD Section 8, and Medicaid often have strict requirements for eligibility, and not everyone can get these, which, for some people, puts them right back at square one.
AHunter3: Can I have a membership application to the Psych Patient Liberation Movement?
Robin
Assuming the statistic above is accurate with the homeless person averaging about 60 dollars a day then that person, assuming he/she begs 300 days a year (no weekends, holidays, and some personal days), then he/she would clear $18,000 a year in cash. That would be like having a $24,000 a year job and having taxes taken out for the take home pay (or roughly $11.50 an hour) which is about what a bank teller or a first year college graduate makes. That is well within the boundaries of keeping an apartment of some kind (be it alone or with roommates) for most of the country. Also, if one is homeless there are many meals on wheels programs in metropolitan areas that they can and do take advantage of.
The Washington City Paper had an article a while back about some college kids that went on a homeless weekend of DC. Basically, the article said you would have to be severely mentally ill to starve to death being homeless since they meals on wheels thing here is very prevalent. For those who are temporarily indigent (is that the right word?), there are programs to get off the street that require proactive involvement. Typically the temporary homeless aren’t that way for too long.
The choice comes in when one considers priorities. Temporarily homeless people take advantage of the programs available (job placement, training, counseling, shelter) and work to get off the street and may be able to save at least a little cash to make it easier. Chronicly (sp?) homeless people may or may not but change their priorities to not necessarily include shelter or a lifestyle of work (not begging).
In the case of chronicly homeless, I would have to say they choose to be homeless. Even if the choice is made through indifference. They may not want the help that the various agencies have to offer to get them up on their feet. They may not want to live on the streets either but in order to accomplish any goal one must be proactive. They may even view the life on the streets as easier since they don’t have any bills to pay, don’t really have to worry about food (assuming they are in a metropolitan area, which I believe at least 90% of the chronically homeless are), nor do they have to worry about neighbors (if the get annoyed, it is easy enough to pick up and move). They may be there because their priorities are to do drugs, not work, or any number of reasons, but again that is their choice. They may not like it or want it, but not being proactive in getting off the street makes it a choice.
Personally, I can not morally justify giving money directly to the homeless person on the street begging. I can not in good conscious make the life on the streets any easier by giving a homeless person money when they could go to a program that I would support that would work at getting them working and in a home again. Also, I can not tell if they are there because they are chronically homeless or temporarily homeless, if they are a habitual drug user, a drunk, or any other type of hooligan. Again, I don’t want to support anothers destructive behaviour. I used to spend time volunteering in a homeless shelter for a while. It was a fairly depressing place where you would meet all types of people. The one I volunteered out of was basically a soup kitchen. There were all types of people that would come through from broke college students, women, men, families, people who have been homeless their entire adult life, con men/women, young, old, etc. Spending time like that helped put things in perspective for me. Those types of places should be funded to help many people directly in a way that is beneficial rather than giving one person some temporary cash that he/she may not spend in a way that would have the end goal of being off the street.
HUGS!
Sqrl
I could have said all I said more simply. Homeless people don’t choose to be homeless. They choose to remain homeless.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Why do you assume that $60 a day is “a statistic”? The post said that a reasonably attractive girl made that much. True, she had the potential to make a great deal of money. The homeless people I have met don’t have the advantage of being a reasonably attractive girl.
I used to work with homeless people. I worked in a convenience store in a college town, and sold them their beer. These men were not making $60 a day. This was not a “get rich quick” scheme by any stretch of the imagination.
I eventually got to know some of them, and learned their stories of how they ended up on the streets. A point that I have not seen addressed is that some homeless people are where they are because they are wanted for crimes. Many stories I was told involved illegalities: caught wife in bed with another man, shot him in the face, ran away… went along with brother’s hare-brained scheme for “robbing” the armored truck company you work for, get caught, run away when threatened with jail time… get involved in a bar fight, stab a guy who later dies, dad springs you on bail, tells you to run away and never come back…
Granted, these were not the most intelligent decisions they could have made, but honestly… Do you expect anyone to get off the streets if that meant getting arrested and going to jail for outstanding warrants? Would you?
I make no claim about percentages, or numbers or statistics, just pointing out a side to the story that maybe people hadn’t considered.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you saying their homelessness is or is not a choice?
Where I am currently (Calgary, Alberta), the unemployment rate has dropped below 5%. The homeless population is increasing. The majority of people who are using the shelters, food banks, etc. are defined as “the working poor”. Put quite simply, they are not earning enough working 40 hours a week to afford shelter and food. The problem is tied into the fact that there is absolutely no limit on rent increase… the rule is, whatever the market will bear - the provincial government refuses to intervene and keep rent increases (currently averaging about 20%) down. If your most basic expenses (shelter) keeps rising, and salaries are stagnant, the most poorly paid are eventually forced out of their housing.
No these people are not choosing to be homeless, they are doing what they were brought up to believe would keep them in dignity – working hard. But, so long as salaries are kept stagnant (the legislated minimum wage) and rents keep soaring (refusal of the government to enact any sort of rent control or appeal of unjust increases) we are going to have more and more homelss people. And this is not likely to change so long as we have a comfortable middle class driving out to the suburbs ignoring what is happening around them.
“Do you expect anyone to get off the streets if that meant getting arrested and going to jail for outstanding warrants?”
Yes I would. If you do something stupid you should pay for it. Also, if getting off the streets meant going to jail, I would expect some of them to do it (remember the O’Henry story?).
“Would you?”
Yes. If I was dumb enough to do something stupid like that I would expect to have to pay it off. Eventhough prison is a scary place, I would think it would be better to have a roof over my head and food regularly. Although from what I gather here from reading several different newspaper articles you have to be completely incompetent to go hungry in DC if you are homeless and it would probably be in your best interest to be somewhere that would make sure you are on your medication.
Also, 60 dollars a day sounds reasonable for a professional beggar. From an earlier Washington Post article (unfortunately I don’t have the exact one anymore since I am working from memory), it said basically that several crews of reporters went around and offered the local beggars (the will work for food kind) jobs paying a little above minimum wage for several days and the consensus was that they all said either “no, we make more money here” or “yes” but in the yes cases no one showed up. I am not saying that every homeless person is a beggar but of the visible homeless they are one of the majorities that you see. Also, just because they make X amount of money doesn’t mean they don’t spend it all to support substance abuse habits or the like.
If some people think clearly they could easily enough get a prepaid cell phone to use as their home phone number, a post office box to use as an address, and then go to a thrift store or a resale store and pick up a reasonably priced set of “interview clothes.” I have seen decent suits at places like that for less than 20 dollars to about 60 dollars. It may take a few weeks to save up that amount of money but that is where one has to be proactive. Once one has those things (or even before but with less success most likely), one can apply for jobs using the cell phone for the phone number and the po box for an address. I don’t know of any jobs that require you to open a bank account beforehand but with that information one could reasonably open a bank account too which could make saving more money easier. Not sure if that would work for a checking account for sure, but that wouldn’t really matter at this stage anyway. So, if one thinks the number and address of the “shelter” may be blacklisted from certain businesses the cell phone and po box you just purchased certainly won’t be. There are also many no to low skill jobs available. They often don’t pay great but it is at least a first step to moving on. I also know many other parts of the country have roommate services available. The nature of having a roommate would mean that one would pay less for a place than one would alone. In places that are cheap to live, like San Antonio, one could get a roommate for a nice place for less than $200 a month. In fact, I had several friends who paid less than $100 a month to rent while going to college. It isn’t the nicest thing to do but one has to start somewhere.
It still goes back to, most homeless people don’t choose to be homeless, they just choose to remain that way either through indifference or ignorance. I can’t imagine not thinking of ways to get off the street every minute of every day if I were on it. And not to have thought of at least some of those basic things above seems ludicrous to me.
HUGS!
Sqrl
**
There are also organizations like “Dress for Success” that will give women clothing suitable for a job interview that includes a dress or suit, appropriate accessories, shoes, and a handbag. If you get the job, they give you another outfit. In some cities, this includes a makeover and hairstyle. I’ve also heard of companies that work with different organizations to provide pagers or voice mail for job contacts. Unfortunately, some shelters, fearing drug trafficking, ban pagers and cell phones.
**
Unfortunately, one of the realities of homelessness is that one’s credit tends to get damaged when bills aren’t paid. Some companies will work with you to minimize the damage; others, especially large companies, don’t care. It’s almost impossible to get a bank account with bad credit. Bad credit also makes it hard to get certain jobs (those that require handling large sums of cash like cashiering jobs require you to be bondable), or decent housing.
Unfortunately, there are risks with taking a roommate. There’s the risk that the roommate will abscond with the rent and bill money; there’s the risk that the roommate will hock the furniture for booze and drug money; there’s the risk of physical and/or mental abuse. I’m not saying don’t do it, because those services do tend to have at least a basic screening process, but do be careful. However, I can afford to live on my own, and choose to do so. (BTW, I’m not in SA anymore; I’m in Houston and have been since the end of May 
)
Robin