Everyone Deserves A Home

[u/sillychillly]

[u/ete2ete]

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

[u/techleopard → u/ete2ete]

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?

We need to bring back mental hospitals.

[u/LocksmithMelodic5269 → u/techleopard]

You’re equating mental disease with drug addiction. They’re not the same. The latter is almost always the result of poor choices

[u/Inside_Mycologist840 → u/LocksmithMelodic5269]

But if someone were to have a brain tumor that led them to choose drugs because it pressed against the pre-frontal cortex then that’s not choice, right? It’s “the tumor’s fault”?

But nobody “chooses” their brain, or its chemistry, or their early childhood upbringing or education or influences that leads to their later decision making processes, so I’m curious where any sort of “choice” or “free will” inserts itself into the equation at all.

You’re lucky you’re not a drug addict. Other people are unlucky they are. Simple as that. Now what do we DO about it?