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Comment by jplayer01 | Hacker News Reader

She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That's it? Seems like a societal failing on some level.

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From reading the story, it sounds a lot like a mental health issue.

  - Started at UW at age 14 while competing. 
  - Had a programming job, quit to go back to cycling.  
  - She had a job, disappeared for 4 days, only to return, freak out and quit in fear of being fired. 
  - Had a support job, got fired, returned to Seattle and didn't even bother applying for another job.
  - Won't accept help from people who found out about her state.

“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,” Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

She needs some sort of counselling and help with life skills. Her line of thinking isn't even, "If I sort myself out, then maybe I can help some of the people I know".

society medicalizing it via the lens of psychology is not always helpful. These people need help, but teaching them to be part of the system again (which they rejected or which rejected them) can give them even more the feeling of not being understood. Urban living presses us into a pattern not everyone is cut out for or will find worth living.

but what do I know. kids today are put on Ritalin like it was candy, and everyone has to march in lockstep. If you don't you're lazy, or a bum. To quote Pulp Fiction:

VINCENT: So if you’re quitting the life, what’ll you do?

JULES: That’s what I’ve been sitting here contemplating. First, I’m gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I’m gonna walk the earth.

VINCENT: What do you mean, walk the earth?

JULES: You know, like Caine in “KUNG FU.” Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.

VINCENT: How long do you intend to walk the earth?

JULES: Until God puts me where he want me to be.

VINCENT: What if he never does?

JULES: If it takes forever, I’ll wait forever.

VINCENT: So you decided to be a bum?

JULES: I’ll just be Jules, Vincent – no more, no less.

EDIT: ofc medicalizing the problem is what people do because that way they become the problem of a therapist, and we can sleep better because we know that a professional will look after them (it's easier to deal with them by just looking at their disease instead of the human behind the disease - "and anyway how could we possibly help somebody that far gone and who obviously doesn't even want to be helped").

For anyone who doesn't know this yet: German prisons (probably not just in Germany but other places in Europe) are full of homeless people that are there for not paying the tram/bus fare (often intentional in order to survive the colder months of the year).

Also for all the people who wonder how can anyone let themselves go so low and lie in the street with pants full of shit, it helps with not getting raped (it doesn't help though with avoiding being doused with lighter fluid and set on fire unfortunately).

I think it's more an existential crisis that can only be solved through some sort of combination of psychotherapy, drug therapy or self reflection.

Either way it needs to bring about a profound philosophical breakthrough that permanently changes your psychology.

I think a lot of problems we have in society are symptoms of psychological causes. Toffler's Future Shock posits that technology is accelerating this societal pathology. I also think that it's an incredibly difficult problem to overcome because there is no mass market or scalable cure... the antidote is a very personal journey of transformation.

The closest thing I've come across to a mass market cure is the profound experience playing Neir: Automata gives you if you manage to get far enough. Unfortunately, this is a philosophical masterpiece that is only going to be experienced by JRPG fans or truely open minded video game connoisseurs. In other words, it has a lot of preconditions. Still, Neir: Automata gives me hope that there could be a mass market solution to the existential malaise suffered in modern times.

That last bit really got to me too. It seems like a lot of pride and guilt are mixed in with whatever else might be going on. Yes, 12,000 people there, half a million in the country, but someone is trying to help her. So if she would let them, they could then help someone else. And then maybe she could double the effort by helping out others herself.

That all seems so easy sitting here in my air conditioned office and not having experienced anything in her life. I'm sure it's far more complicated than that.

Of course it's a societal failing. Why else would homelessness be much more prevalent in some areas than in others?

What is definitively a societal failing to you is a personal moral failing to others. I don't think it helps anybody to state these things in absolutes, especially when opinions tend to vary greatly, and I was more interested in provoking discussion about the topic as opposed to making any sort of moral judgment.

Only if we entertain the thought that some people just randomly seems to fail on a personal level, in some areas. That is, of course, a ridiculous notion.

But not half as ridiculous as confusing it with a moral issue.

Lazy people of course deserve housing too.

You aren’t wrong. But I doubt the multi time world champion and multi time Olympic medalist is lazy.

Different contexts. You can be really driven toward pursuing the things you care about but not things you don't.

There was nothing to suggest this woman doesn’t care about being homeless.

This thread is wild, from people calling this woman mentally ill, to lazy, to simply not caring about being homeless. It’s certainly more a reflection on the people making these comments and our society than any reflection on her.

Strong disagree. All those explanations are plausible. Without pathologizing her, this is still true by her own admission: She is treatment resistant and homeless by choice

>She is treatment resistant and homeless by choice

I think it’s significantly more complex. It would appear she became homeless through financial/employment issues but elects to not accept what she sees as special treatment which would secure her housing. It reminds me of John McCain electing to stay a Prisoner of War despite being given the opportunity to be returned because of his status as the son of an admiral. Yet It’s odd to say McCain was a POW by choice, he wanted his presence/story to bring to light the story of all POWs, he wanted to be treated the same, just as this woman clearly wants light shed on all homeless not just special treatment/help/housing because her status.

She suffered from homelessness as a child and yet began college at 14, became a world champion/Olympian, even appears to have returned to school successfully after she stopped competing. I mean come on with an experience like that people are here calling her lazy and mentally ill? No doubt mental health issues will follow any homeless child for life, but the track record is clear the woman isn’t lazy and certainly capable, To return to homelessness in her 50’s is tragic, and I’ll double down and say for society to blame her because she is being offered charity and she refuses to accept on principal and then calling her situation a choice is a double tragedy and again more a reflection on society than her.

Dude she’s treatment resistant. Talk to a social worker. Her story is not as special as you think. She’s a pretty classic case of a treatment resistant homeless person. And yes she is making a choice just like John McCain made a choice to remain a POW. To say “but they made a choice because X altruistic reason!” does not mean they did not make a choice.

The whole idea that somebody could be so lazy as to become homeless, without any other issues, is somewhat absurd. Being homeless is terribly uncomfortable. A truly lazy person would find it unbeatable.

Interesting question. I guess most people think of depression when imagining advanced forms of laziness, but maybe determined laziness can be a form of ascetism too?

It seems natural to me - a reflection of harsh reality on this planet. You work for yourself, or you perish. You see this in all living beings. We're animals just like them, bound by the same harsh rules.

Many anthropologists seem to think that a lot of hunter-gatherer populations had a fairly laid back life in terms of hours worked per week. It seems plausible to me that unnecessarily industrious tribes living in rainforest could overtax their environment, for example.

A lot of people who appear lazy are just paralyzed by other things. If it wasn't for living at home, my son would probably wind up homeless just for a lack of coping skills. And he wouldn't be able to get out of it, because of a lack of coping skills. That's just how he's wired.

Help others more often, label people less.

Can you point to a solution besides giving them shelter and just sort of tolerating it?

I mean, there’s different mechanisms for shelter — family, public housing, NGOs, etc, and we can talk about how to tweak those knobs as a culture — but I can’t think of what else cultures have done, besides various levels of housing people who just want to float.

My comment implied that I'm not sure what else could be done or what should be done. I do feel it should be talked about. What are the root causes? What do these people actually need? What are they lacking? Who are they in the first place? Why are they where they are?

What about some sort of credit people could claim for housing a transient? Even if it's family, it takes a toll and relieves strain on the system.

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