this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I am not American so I can't claim to know about the causes of homelessness there, but I think this is because the homeless can generally be sorted into two categories. One is, as you mentioned, the people who unfortunately encountered financial trouble and lost their home. These people are legally homeless but usually invisible, because they move in with their friends and family or live in their car. They are generally able to financially provide for themselves and will eventually have a home again. Society is very empathetic to this group and there is a lot of support for them, but they're not what people think of when homelessness is discussed.
The public perception of homelessness is the second type of visible and persistently homeless people, the ones you see on the streets. They suffer from mental disorders and drug addiction, so they lack a support network, cannot provide for themselves normally and will often turn to crime to survive. It's not unexpected that people see this group as "assaults people in public", "attracts crime", "leaves trash and needles around" and lose empathy for them. Now I'm not an expert on this issue and this categorization is obviously a generalization, but it helps to understand why people hold certain perspectives in this debate.
this is less of a dichotomy than i think is described here, though: almost all people in the second category were at one point people in the first and end up there because the support described in the first category disappears. when you become homeless, that frequently means you lose almost everything--and it's really, really hard to build up from nothing in modern society because the expectation is that you have money to survive, and there's only so far people are willing to pay your way forward with that expectation.
(there's also the reality that even if you have something, there's only so long you can make that last without a job--and for a homeless person getting one can be functionally impossible, no matter how menial. housing is also catastrophically expensive, so even if they clear the job hurdle once they're down, the housing one may be likewise impossible to clear. this treadmill is a big part of why so many people become visibly and persistently homeless)
As someone who deals with homeless and near homeless a lot you're absolutely right. Our system constantly fails the most vulnerable by not providing then with support when they have none. I do my best to provide them with contacts to resources and social workers but those resources are incredibly limited and I'm sure most end up without help regardless.