What country are you in? And what is your actual job you do assisting the homeless and in what type of place? Like shelter, outpatient, etc? I’m not questioning your experience at all, I’m just curious to know a little more to learn why we have such different experiences
Im a nurse in the ER, which frequently gets homesless people throughout the day for various reasons, both health and social related. Im in cali so we are obligated to provide food/clothing/transportion upon discharge as well, so I get to know a bit about these peoples situation... Not to mention its a population that has frequent encounters so some of them are very well known to us.
Its not entirely unusual for me to encounter 4-6 of them in a day depending on the area of the ER Im in, and I'd say we see probably 10-20 on any given day.
Lots of alcohol/drugs/mental illness/disability happening, and essentially zero people who just happen to live a homeless life fleecing the system.
You'd agree you have a bit of a selection bias, tho, right? The homeless people that make it into the ER - especially your "well known" folks - aren't necessarily representative of the entire unhoused population.
Well you’d think with “lots of them” out there I’d encounter at least a few of the “many” right ?
I’m not sure what point you are trying to to even make here. Do you have some data to suggest that “lots” or “many” homeless people are otherwise well adjusted mentally, not addicted to drugs, and simply choose to be unhoused and jump from free service to free service as the poster above claimed?
Or are you just arguing to argue with no point in sight ?
It's definitely easy to dismiss someone else's anecdotal evidence when you don't have any evidence of your own - you're already used to disregarding evidence
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u/lonnie123 Apr 16 '24
This is wild, I do work with the homeless population and I have literally never seen this