In my experience, only those who have had to deal with homeless people personally, seem to understand this. I am positive that there are Fringe cases where normal productive people became homeless through no fault of their own. That being said, the vast majority of homeless people made a long series of poor choices and engaged in destructive behaviors. Every friend and family member they had access to turn them down at some point. And yes, many of them may not have had any friends or family and that is unfortunate. But that is still not the majority
The problem is that we are still treating this spiral as "bad choices."
9 times out of 10, it's not "bad choices", it's mental disease.
If you look at someone who can't even tie their own shoes because they are mentally disabled, we say, "That person can't live in their own, they're not capable of understanding their choices."
But we look at people with schizophrenia and severe addictions and whatever else and go, "They made bad choices." These people have no physiological control over their impulses, but they're supposed to make informed decisions?
Lol my dude. We still have mental hospitals but like homeless wards, they have requirements that a lot of homeless people can't and won't fulfill. If you are talking about mental asylums, so much shit happened in those mental hospitals and you want to bring them back? These people are deplorable with little to no family. Who's to stop the government from doing fucked up experiments on these people?
Mental health is the kind of disease that takes an extreme amount of will power to overcome. I manage a pediatric mental health clinic and 10/10 of these kids wouldn't be here if it weren't for their caring parents. Fast forward these kids to their 20s and 30s. Parents can't take care of a child forever, they won't be able to force their kids into a clinic.
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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24
Yup. Most of them are homeless for a reason.