> “Most homeless people I know aren’t homeless because they’re addicts,” said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. “Most people are homeless because they can’t afford a place to live.”
It's only true in the trivial, unhelpful sense of "if we got housing costs down to $10/month or free, then all the people there could afford a place." But when we talk about housing costs in general and policy around it, we mean something like getting rents down from $3000/month to $1000/month (from vast expansion of building), not some artificial number that no amount of expansion would (scalably) get.
And I don't think you can really take one homeless person living at an encampment, making a self-serving statement, as a source.
Do you have grad school experience? An $1800 grad stipend will help you understand the difference a few hundred bucks make.
I understand the difference that a few hundred bucks makes to a grad student. I don’t think those are the same people that become homeless in significant numbers and that’s why I’m objecting to the narrative: the person that just needs housing prices a few hundred bucks less is not the person going homeless. Those are different problems.
It's harder than it looks, apparently, because millions of low earners -- i.e. almost all of them -- manage to avoid this outcome. I feel like poor people are discussed in the abstract by people who have never actually been poor. Homelessness is still not a normal outcome. Mentally and physically able people are not routinely homeless.
You can try to reason through this from first principles, I guess. That's a fun thing to do on a nerd message board. But I'm telling you that this is not what happens in actual practice.
When you talk about poor people in the abstract, it's easy to contrive scenarios in which somebody loses their job at the gas station and is forced into homelessness. But in actual real life, that's rarely how it plays out.
If it wasn't for my mom, he would definitely be homeless. These situations are not contrived.
Furthermore, what if the problem is mental or physical disability? That's not a valid concern of yours? Maybe the homeless population is spiking because of medical costs. What if you have a medical condition that requires medication or you lose your mind? You lose your job, you lose your medication? I honestly feel you're either a troll, or you're just... obtuse?
For the record, I actually have been poor. My family was one shocking expense away from homelessness for much of my life. Luckily we hung in there by a thread. Clearly our country is full of folks like you who think that anyone who's homeless is a useless and easily discarded piece of trash.
We're a wealthy enough country to give assistance to anyone who needs it. There's no reason we shouldn't.
Moving to a different city is hard. The older they get the harder it is. Most people can’t do it.
When I was six we moved to the easiest place to move to: early 90s greater Toronto Area. No crime. Lots of jobs. Lots of good will from the natives. It was tough.
The Central Valley is ravaged by unique social issues. To dismiss the issues because it’s cheap to live there is insane.