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Pinpointing the basis of homelessness

2008-01-08
By

Author’s Note: I wrote this letter to the editor to Dissent almost two decades ago. I believe the basic point in it remains valid.

In Tamar Jacoby’s excellent and even-handed article about the homeless (Spring 1991) she neglects to pinpoint the simplest explanation for this tragic phenomenon: some people’s labor is not worth what it takes to support him/herself.

The mentally ill, along with many physically disabled, are only the most dramatic examples of this rough economic fact.

The number of homeless has increased because the degree of competency required for self-support in our technologically sophisticated culture has risen.

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  • Squiggy

    Apparently the person living with you wants to improve his life. The people who didn’t want to go to a shelter even though it was going to be killing cold are different than him. They wouldn’t come live with you, no matter what you offered them. They are where they want to be, and you can’t tell them different. And I don’t know that anyone has the right to. Some of them won’t even take a coat from you (though they will take a dollar).

  • randyf

    Squiggy, do you want to stay in a shelter? You’re looking at short term solutions to overnight stays. How about long term? Living with some dignity? I don’t have simple answers, but a couple of coats, while nice, doesn’t solve anything long term. I have a homeless person living with me. I’ve been lucky. I’m giving back. I’ll give them at least 6 months to get it together.

    I don’t think it will take that long, because this person is high functioning. Not very much education though.

    *I just hope my luck holds out…

  • Squiggy

    In Birmingham Alabama last week it got down to 8 degrees, and there were volunteers going all over trying to get street people into shelters. But most wouldn’t go. They gave lots of reasons, but it’s their choice. I seriously doubt these particular “homeless” people are there for any reason except they choose to be there.

    Just in case though, I’ve got a couple of extra heavy coats in my back seat. It’s the Christian thing to do.

  • steven deluca

    Good one amfortas. A gust of wind…

    When I was there, more than twice in my life, I met others. Some were “out of it” and needed help. Some were just lazy. Some were veterans who had been damaged in ways others can’t even guess at.

    Sometimes I see them and I turn away. Sometimes I help. Sometimes I am criticized for helping by those who had easier lives and more options. Sometimes I write about them as if the story is about me and not them… Some of us see them and feel empathy, others desdain. Our feelings about them likely say more about who we are than who they are.

    I live in a beautiful city, in a beautiful home. The storms took away the power and lights for a few days, our computurized heating system, water heat in the floors, adobe looking but made of cement, are not heated because a chip got fried with a surge of power. But my remote controlled gas fire place ( looks real said the advertisement, and it should, it cost enough) is keeping us warm tonight. We are both surfing the net, my wife and I … So we have lights today and yesterday, the wireless is back on, the phone is working, we are sitting on leather couches, … sometimes I want to yell at them because I feel some guilt and I know part of why I am doing better is luck … I don’t like articles about the homeless. I have an 8 by 10 glossy of a poor women in Europe sitting with two dirty kids in front of a window selling fine China…

    We can’t help but have some people on the streets but there is something wrong with a country that has as much money as ours that so many people find themselves there. Some had tremendous potential and their parents and schools beat it out of them and that’s the truth, I have seen it.

  • amfortas

    Every homeless person has a story. There are many tales to tell. On the street, discarded and avoided, they deteriorate fast and their ability to tell the story disintegrates. The sick, the lazy, yes they are there; and the one’s who have given up; the dispossessed though they tried and did well for a while; the cheated and swindled; the outcast by calumny; some more sinned against than sinner.

    And off the street, in the rooms and tiny apartments, are legions of others an inch from the door. A gust of wind……

  • randyf

    Wow, I was in a hurry….

  • randyf

    I actually agree with you. Some problems emerge in our education system, as discipline is lacking, and of course values in the home. I also the the gender bender lack of role guidance adds to the problem. So many people don’t have skills. Or even just bad luck.

    Don’t see it changing though… people like redrajesh have it all figured out… until their luck runs out…

  • redrajesh

    If irresponsibility and skewed priorities qualify as mental disabilities, then such mentally disabled people deserve to only be homeless. The degree of competency and right attitude required for survival in America is much less compared to most of the developing countries of the world where even people with the right attitude can only lead a basic survival existence when they are doing basic jobs no matter how diligently they do it. If in a country like america where so much support and pampering by the govt. exists(espescially for special groups like women), most of the homeless are there because of their own irresponsibility. The only exceptions are men who have been deprived of the right to utilize their own earnings by the misandric law enforcement in order to subsidize some whore who preyed upon him.







Right.

Man up.

Buy the book now on Amazon.com. Or listen to Ronnie tell a story at escaping-from-reality.com.

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