Why are there non crackhead homeless people still on the street after 5+ years?

thefloorislava

thefloorislava

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When you are addicted for that long it completely transforms a person sense of self. Most people who fall into hard drugs like that have typically experienced childhood trauma (rape, neglect, domestic abuse) that caused them to go down that path. It takes a sense of purpose and self esteem for people to pull themselves from addiction which 99% of them didn't have in the first place. If you are a heroin junkie who's been on the street for 10+ years, in your mind why even try to get clean at that point? You have already deeply hurt your friends and family and have wasted precious years of your life hooked on drugs. People have treated you like an animal for almost a decade now and your mental faculties have withered away. At best you could work retail or fast food and scrape by a meager living, but the allure of drugs will always be there. You have never learned to process shame and anguish without the use of hard drugs and the prospect of facing all of your pain seem more terrifying than a lifetime of addiction. Ironically the comfortable thing to them is to stay hooked on drugs and accept either overdosing or spending their days bouncing from shelter to shelter.

The truth is very few of those people can be saved. The best thing we can do as a society is preventing at-risk people from going down that path.
 
Piff Perkins

Piff Perkins

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Let's say you're homeless and have no money. How exactly are you going to get off the street, whether in one year or five? You don't have a phone. You don't have a mailing address. You don't have a driver's license. What jobs are you getting in America without at least one of those? Someone is going to list some back breaking work like washing dishes at a diner. Even if we pretend that's possible without a phone number for the employer to call...how are you getting off the street while making sub minimum wage at a diner? Let's say you do all the things smart dumb people say you can do to make due...like getting a gym membership to take showers. How are you eating? Fast food likely which is a money sink. What happens when we have a massive winter storm like right now? Where do you go? Shelters become full, not everyone can get in.

Even if everything goes your way and you magically save money, how do you get a place when the tenant asks for a record of your previous home and sees you make below poverty level wages?
 
Unknown Poster

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Matt504 said:
I'd argue that if a person in perfectly good mental health lived on the street for even half a year, their mental health would begin to decline.

:francis:
Click to expand...
Homelessness will eat at your mental health slowly but surely. Many folk who are homeless have PTSD


The stress of trying to find a place to sleep.
The stress of trying to make money
The stress of trying to find work
The stress of trying to stay presentable, clean, and not visibly homeless
Trying to hide where you live to people you know cause you dont want them knowing about your situation causes stress as well.

Also homelessness exposes you to a lot of unsafe conditions. I think about those stories where a group of teenagers set homeless people on fire or some psycho starts killing them for no reason.
Homeless people are more likely to get arrested and end up in jail (I got arrested while I was homeless back in 2015).
Certain places in NY, if you just nod off for 2 minutes after 11 they get ready to call the police on you.

Yeah, I'm happy I survived with my mental health intact. No one deserves to be homeless.
:wow:
 
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