I kinda can't blame him, because it's common for people to paint a picture of homelessness as something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle class standards. I hate it, because it reminds me of how conditional empathy is. Empathy is a skill, and like any other skill, it's developed through practice, and we mostly practice on people just like us. So people advocating for support for the homeless have to make them sound like they'd fit right in with the people who have the money and power to help them.
Almost half of American children spend at least one year in poverty
Not to mention, I don't know where you folks develop your anecdotes -- you really do meet a lot of totally ordinary, high-functioning adults in soup kitchen and community pantry scenarios. They just happen to be broke and hungry.
At any given time, most homeless families are only temporarily homeless, and most hungry families are only temporarily hungry. Life has its ups and downs. Most of the adults spend most of their lives working, just like everyone else does.
The "hardcore," long-term homeless, who spend years at a time unhomed, are not terribly representative of the great mass of Americans who have spent some time unhomed.
Poverty is endemic in America, and it's a hard time to be a working stiff, especially if you work in, say, the Bay area, as the comic's author did. ("Santa Luna" seems like a very thinly fictionalized Santa Cruz.)
A man like the author, in 2020, could very well find himself in the encampment he so obviously feared.
Broke, hungry, and poor are all different from being homeless. The vast majority of people served by food pantries are not homeless. Most people who can't afford to put a roof over their heads are sleeping under somebody else's.
I do get it. When people think about homelessness, when they cast a ballot, we don't want them to think about the "hardcore" (as you put it) unsympathetic homeless. We want them to think about the more relatable people experiencing transitional homelessness. People who are leaving an abusive situation, people working a job that didn't cover their rent, etc. The Rosa Parkses of homelessness.
And that sucks. It sucks that the "hardcore" homeless are so stigmatized that the only acceptable way to talk about helping them is to frame a larger problem in which they can be hidden away as an unrepresentative minority.
I don't think this thread was about stigma. It was about whether thing called homelessness can happen to otherwise functional people. Whether such a thing exist.
The thing about what you call hardcore homelessness is the serious mental health issues many of those people have. And that is much bigger harder issue.
Consider the inherent differences in the metrics you're using.
The comment that started this discussion involved observing people visiting a soup kitchen. Short-term homeless may outnumber long-term homeless in an absolute metric (I was homeless for a few months in 2014) but long-term homeless make many more lifetime visits to a soup kitchen and therefore comprise a higher proportion of the people you meet. They also comprise a higher proportion of the people who are at any given time living on the street. If you solve short-term homelessness but not long-term homelessness, you haven't made nearly as much of a dent in the shelter beds and tent cities as you have in the quoted statistic of people who are ever homeless.
I'm sure you do meet "high-functioning adults" in soup kitchens, but I would also doubt they're the modal attendees.
Your implication of certain people making more lifetime visits implying that a majority of the visitors are from that group does not follow.
For example if a typical longtime homeless person would make (round number) 400 visits a year, and a typical transiently homeless person would make around 40 visits a year, then if eg there were 20 transiently homeless people a year for every longtime homeless person, then the makeup of a soup kitchen would be two-thirds transiently homeless.
Homelessness is something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle-class standards. Perhaps you weren't here when Doreen Traylor's article about being homeless for six years appeared?
Nevertheless, thank you for showing your privilege. Judgement made.
Doreen Traylor proves that a homeless person can write, have an online presence, and make a living as a freelancer. The fact that you think that's important is exactly my point, that you think homelessness is a different issue depending on whether or not homeless people are capable of living a certain kind of life we value. It shouldn't matter. It's sad that it does.
