I've volunteered on homelessness issues over the past few years, and many of my friends are homeless or have been homeless in recent memory. This is one of the most frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects of the society we've built (among many frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects).

I can sum up just how evil it is with one anecdote:

One night a few years ago, I got a frantic message from a friend on facebook, something along the lines of, "Look at X's wall. Nobody has been able to reach them." So, I looked at X's wall, and the last post looked very much like a suicide note. Brief and somewhat cryptic, but given the circumstances of X's life and some of the things they'd said and done in recent weeks made it pretty worrying.

X, at that time, had been homeless for some time, off and on for years. They'd been couchsurfing but felt like they'd worn out their welcome and didn't want to be a bother. They'd been kicked out of their parents' house when they were younger because they were gay. They were literally terrified of their parents, and never want contact with them again. So, they had no contact with most of their family, and the one relative who hadn't disowned them was a grandparent without the resources to do much, even if anyone knew how to reach them. Even calling the police was a questionable choice (which we ended up not doing), because they had warrants, and had traumatic interactions with police in recent months.

X had been in public housing for a short time a couple years before, but had been kicked out because their partner visited too often and stayed overnight too many times (only married couples can do that, you see, and only in designated housing), and due to some "behavioral issues" that stemmed from X being on the autism spectrum (another reason to not call police) and the rules of public housing being unforgiving. I've visited other folks in the same building, and the rules are absurd. It's like a low-security prison; visitors have to check-in/out, there is a curfew, etc.

Long story short, this was someone who's had a lot of setbacks in life, and that night they just couldn't see a way forward. But, the most tremendously horrific thing about it, to me, was that it mostly boiled down to no ID and no clear path to get them an ID. Without ID, no job. Without ID, no housing (public or otherwise). Without ID, no future. The steps to getting an ID are crazy difficult for a homeless person with no family ties and no records available.

One of their exes found them a couple hours after our search started, and we were able to get them committed voluntarily to a psych hospital while we sorted out what they'd find when they got out.

When a few people stepped up to help get the ID sorted, and some other folks raised enough money from friends to cover their rent in co-op housing for a few months, they were able to get back on their feet. They're holding down a job, paying their own rent and expenses, and have been doing well for a couple years now. But, it took a fucking team to get the ID problem solved, and that's ridiculous.

If you ever go to any organization that provides services to the homeless, you'll find that getting ID is one of their most used services. And, also a challenging one in many cases. It's just one that nobody who's never lived it really ever thinks about. But, think about having to keep all of your paperwork on your person or being always at risk of losing it. That's the situation homeless folks are in.

This is further complicated by police who arrest homeless folks on spurious charges and make them leave their things behind, where they'll be stolen or thrown away before they're able to return. A life of total impermanence is just unimaginably difficult.

I've rambled a lot here, but it's easy for me to get riled up on this issue. Knowing what I know, and having seen what I've seen, it'd be very easy to convince me that our system is built to intentionally destroy the lives of a few at the bottom, and make it all but impossible for them to climb out, all while people demonize the homeless as being a nuisance that should be pushed out of cities (San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Los Angeles, liberal cities, I'm looking at you, too).

It's all inflicted via mostly tiny cuts, that don't look like a big deal if you've got a house, a job, an ID, a family, a filing cabinet with all of your records, a bank account, a credit card for emergencies, etc. Even tiny things can spiral into a disaster quickly for the very poor.