Having been homeless for a few years now i am intimately familiar with the nuances, missing pieces, and plain incorrect thinking regarding that way of life.
Im always amused in a sad way at how far off base these radical attempts to reign in the situation always are. The disconnect is flabbergasting. There appears to be a genuine confusion as to why the situation is this bad, and what can be done about it. Obviously in many cases the major causes are evident such as drug use or mental illness. But beyond these obvious causes one would think we were attempting to understand the inner workings of an alien virus and feverishly working to bring it to heel.
Heres the problem: Once a person actually becomes so destitute that they no longer are certain where their next meal is coming from or where they are going to sleep that night their connectedness to society as a whole also becomes broken. The psychological impact of transitioning from the greater whole to a fringe lower caste involves a fracturing of their self and the self worth they had up to that point relied on their entire life. To fall to such depths, where " down" is no longer an option, as when one is literally already at the bottom, is to face the utter condemning fact of failure. Failure to society to parents to perhaps children and to self. The devastation to the psyche in the realization of this marks DAY ONE for such an individual. And it marks us All just so. Returning from the wasteland of loss of self sufficiency and control of ones life cannot begin until the shock has settled in and worn off enough to understand that overcoming the circumstances means beating THAT original denigrating fact. From there one begins the remaking of of ones very identity. Because clearly the original one was insufficient and grossly ill equipped.Yet not all who share the experience share also the wherewithal to achieve success via such mental feats. Indeed a large number were barely glued to the whole before lifes jostling effects shrugged them off in the first place. The cataclysmic event alone wiped out a fortitude they never had and introspective achievements may as well be the philosophy of kant insofar as it is relateable. The savage fall teaches such a one a library of lessons. And they are to be applied moving forward in this new world. Not as cognition for escape. Yes to someone perhaps educated, whos fall was unfortunate circumstance only, this is merely the beginning, step one, if you will, of a comprehensible logical process of extraction. Graspable as a goal.
But everyone whos circumstances mirror do not necessarily recover in the same way. Sure " if it were me" you might say. But it isnt, is it? And therefore your self applied mental construct or plan isnt easily so applied to someone NOT YOU. Isnt in fact resolveable as a mere midnight cure at all, the way some things can be when logic or money is applied to them. The misunderstanding all of you( who are not broken this way but who care) continue to struggle with when attempting to understand us, who ARE broken, is simply the abject refusal to consider the complex individual human element inherent in the case by case basis that IS the homeless epidemic. Refusal to put the grimy faces you attempt to hide or ban upon the problem. And in that negligent act you strip the problem of its human identity. Without that identity the characteristics that define human humane resolution are wiped as well. So here we are. Still confused still lost still homeless. All of us. To a degree. Indeed how can anyone call home a place where shadows hide what we refuse to acknowledge, where silence is demanded of those screaming in pain, where the shiny contrived surfaces are called reality and the blood everywhere behind all the closed doors is never cleaned never taken seriously. Someone here is hurt, bleeding, ignored. This is what you call home?
How very telling that in the same house we all share, your contribution oftentimes to the survival of its more embarrassing members and their sad issues is to blindly desperately coldly hope and wish we would just disappear.