A difficult concept to grasp

We need to establish a frame for understanding the homeless. We don’t understand why people become homeless or how a person can live on the street. Categorizing homeless people into an idea that we can wrap our head around while at the same time accept emotionally is a defense mechanism used to protect our fragile hearts.

Lifestyle choice?

There is a lifestyle associated with homelessness that can appear as a way of life that people choose. The activities necessary for survival on the streets along with coping mechanisms are indeed choices. I believe we are masking the problem by defining people under these circumstances as homeless people. Categorizing people experiencing homelessness as homeless people gives us a sense of disconnect and implies homelessness is type of person adding to the ignorance resulting in attempting to change people of the homeless condition rather than attempting to battle homelessness as an issue or the societal problem that it is. It also gives way to blaming “the homeless” for their situation, placing the responsibility solely on people experiencing homelessness, ignoring societal factors such as the lack of affordable housing and an economy that is not able to hold up the bottom wage earners, that is creating the problem, therefore making solutions even more difficult to come up with because of the miss diagnosis of the cause.

To read more:

http://www.tcstreetview.com/ho...encing-homelessness/