Physical handicaps, mental health issues and addiction seem to be the most commonly cited causes of homelessness. This framing helps make it hard to imagine actually solving the problem.
It does so in myriad ways.
1. It makes homelessness sound like it has a single cause.
It makes it sound like a single point of catastrophic failure is what causes a life to come unraveled and remain unfixable. This makes the problem seem overwhelming and intractable.
It also makes it seem unpreventable. It makes it sound like random bad luck that you can't possibly protect yourself from, like "the RNG just hates you!"
2. It attributes the problem to other problems that sound inherently unfixable.
When someone homeless suffers from addiction or has a mental health issue or other handicap, that problem often gets blamed for why their lives don't work. Since these are generally problems that cannot be "fixed" and made to go away, if you say they are The Cause of homelessness, you implicitly suggest you can throw your hands up and not bother to try to really fix it.
3. It blames the individual.
It frames homelessness as a personal problem. It frames it as a personal failing. This conveniently absolves society of any role.
4. It's very othering.
It helps promote the idea that homeless people are fundamentally different from everyone else. This helps make other people feel like "that won't happen to me because I'm not like them."
Othering people never helps resolve a problem. In fact, it helps make the problem psychologically unapproachable and unrelatable. The whole point is to protect people from the discomfort of feeling like "There but for the grace of God go I."
I've had a college class in Homelessness and Public Policy. I also spent nearly six years homeless. None of the above fits my understanding of the problem space.
1. There is no single point of failure.
Homelessness is not due to any one thing. It occurs when there are more problems than solutions.
The difference between a homeless person and a housed person can be as little as one more problem or one less resource. Yes, things can sometimes come unraveled suddenly, or at least appear to do so.
It's a little like the saying "You can't be a little bit pregnant." You either are or are not pregnant. Similarly, you either are or are not homeless.
One minute, you are housed. The next, you aren't.
But the process of your life unraveling may have been years in the making. Generally speaking, you only really become suddenly and unexpectedly homeless if your house burns down or is destroyed by some other catastrophic event, such as a tornado or earthquake.
Even in cases where "the war was lost because a nail was lost," you have to be living in a metaphorical war zone. Things became unraveled suddenly because you were dealing with this larger context for a long time that was constantly threatening to unravel your life. Then, one day, some little thing helped make it finally go down that way.
2. Handicaps Can Be Managed.
When you ask people to self identify as disabled, somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of respondents will cop to that. But a 2003 study by Microsoft was intentionally designed to avoid stigmatizing language, such as disabled or handicapped.
Instead, it asked how many respondents had difficulties with day-to-day tasks. The answer: 60 percent.
In other words, most people have some kind and some degree of handicap. It can be something as simple as colorblindness, which interferes with day-to-day tasks, yet almost never causes someone to self identify as handicapped.
There are people who live with various handicaps, yet still make life work. Sometimes, even people with severe handicaps still have serious careers and full lives, such as Stephen Hawking.
The same is true of mental health issues and addiction. There are millionaire rock stars and other celebrities who struggle with addiction or mental health issues. They typically make enough money to live well and to attend inpatient rehab facilities periodically.
Generally speaking, no one expects them to end up on the streets with completely ruined lives over this one issue. It's only after you end up homeless that people act like homelessness is the logical and inescapable conclusion of such conditions.
We generally do not predict utter financial ruin and that homelessness is inevitable for millionaire celebrities who happen to have an addiction. So we really shouldn't claim that addiction causes homelessness. Saying so for people already on the street amounts to begging the question. If you cannot use addiction as a means to confidently predict this outcome, than you can't reasonably cite it as causative.
3. There Are Societal Factors.
Housing policy can either help promote homelessness or can help prevent it. Healthcare policy can also help either prevent or promote homelessness.
Instead of blaming the individual, we need to be working on systemic issues. In the US, our excessively financially burdensome healthcare system is part of the problem. So is a general lack of missing middle housing.
If you really want to address homelessness, those are two issues that desperately need some work in this country at all levels, from the local community to federal policy.
4. There Can Be An Element Of Choice
The thing most people don't want to acknowledge is that homeless people are still people. They aren't entirely defined by their lack of housing.
They are multidimensional. So there is often an element of choice involved.
Sometimes, it's the lesser evil. Maybe they left an abusive relationship. Yes, they would like to have housing, but not if it means taking more abuse.
In other cases, people actually don't want to return to a "normal" life. That simply doesn't work for them. Maybe they would accept an alternative lifestyle that is more palatable to the rest of society, but perhaps they don't have the means to arrange it or don't know of an alternative that would work.
You have to respect the agency of people on the street. The best way to solve homelessness both effectively and humanely is to supply better options for people whose lives don't play well with conventional lifestyles. They need to be viable and attractive alternatives that people will willingly choose.
This piece is being written to propose a mental model that fosters solutions. Yes, it's a big problem, but it's not unsolvable.
This blog is part of a desire to create an alternative to the Housing First model. I think of it as a People First model.
A large part of what I desire to do is help people develop an earned income, in spite of personal handicaps and other barriers to regular employment. But that earned income needs to fit around their various personal quirks.
Most jobs expect a person to put the job first. For some people, this is simply untenable.
Some people can only manage to get anything done if their paid work fits around other things that take a higher priority, such as a health issue or some disability.
This approach should be inclusive of people who are currently homeless without being a program "to help the homeless." Programs specifically designed to exclusively serve the homeless tend to entrench homelessness.
My background is as a homeschooling mom of twice exceptional kids. I'm also twice exceptional and I have worked hard to hammer out solutions that work for me in spite of being unable to work a regular job for the past few years.
People with various personal issues are at high risk of homelessness. One reason is that they have trouble developing an adequate earned income.
Pocket Puter and Write Pay are additional projects of mine that support my goal of hammering out a People First model. Like this site, those sites are informed by years of firsthand experience with this problem space, as well as pertinent education.
I spent several years homeless and got myself off the street without going through some program. I developed an income from the street, paid down debt while homeless and researched a town that would provide the lifestyle I needed. I then traveled there and found a rental that worked for me.
So, this is a field tested approach. I don't expect it to work for everyone, but I am confident that it can work for at least some people other than me.
It does so in myriad ways.
1. It makes homelessness sound like it has a single cause.
It makes it sound like a single point of catastrophic failure is what causes a life to come unraveled and remain unfixable. This makes the problem seem overwhelming and intractable.
It also makes it seem unpreventable. It makes it sound like random bad luck that you can't possibly protect yourself from, like "the RNG just hates you!"
2. It attributes the problem to other problems that sound inherently unfixable.
When someone homeless suffers from addiction or has a mental health issue or other handicap, that problem often gets blamed for why their lives don't work. Since these are generally problems that cannot be "fixed" and made to go away, if you say they are The Cause of homelessness, you implicitly suggest you can throw your hands up and not bother to try to really fix it.
3. It blames the individual.
It frames homelessness as a personal problem. It frames it as a personal failing. This conveniently absolves society of any role.
4. It's very othering.
It helps promote the idea that homeless people are fundamentally different from everyone else. This helps make other people feel like "that won't happen to me because I'm not like them."
Othering people never helps resolve a problem. In fact, it helps make the problem psychologically unapproachable and unrelatable. The whole point is to protect people from the discomfort of feeling like "There but for the grace of God go I."
I've had a college class in Homelessness and Public Policy. I also spent nearly six years homeless. None of the above fits my understanding of the problem space.
1. There is no single point of failure.
Homelessness is not due to any one thing. It occurs when there are more problems than solutions.
The difference between a homeless person and a housed person can be as little as one more problem or one less resource. Yes, things can sometimes come unraveled suddenly, or at least appear to do so.
It's a little like the saying "You can't be a little bit pregnant." You either are or are not pregnant. Similarly, you either are or are not homeless.
One minute, you are housed. The next, you aren't.
But the process of your life unraveling may have been years in the making. Generally speaking, you only really become suddenly and unexpectedly homeless if your house burns down or is destroyed by some other catastrophic event, such as a tornado or earthquake.
Even in cases where "the war was lost because a nail was lost," you have to be living in a metaphorical war zone. Things became unraveled suddenly because you were dealing with this larger context for a long time that was constantly threatening to unravel your life. Then, one day, some little thing helped make it finally go down that way.
2. Handicaps Can Be Managed.
When you ask people to self identify as disabled, somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of respondents will cop to that. But a 2003 study by Microsoft was intentionally designed to avoid stigmatizing language, such as disabled or handicapped.
Instead, it asked how many respondents had difficulties with day-to-day tasks. The answer: 60 percent.
In other words, most people have some kind and some degree of handicap. It can be something as simple as colorblindness, which interferes with day-to-day tasks, yet almost never causes someone to self identify as handicapped.
There are people who live with various handicaps, yet still make life work. Sometimes, even people with severe handicaps still have serious careers and full lives, such as Stephen Hawking.
The same is true of mental health issues and addiction. There are millionaire rock stars and other celebrities who struggle with addiction or mental health issues. They typically make enough money to live well and to attend inpatient rehab facilities periodically.
Generally speaking, no one expects them to end up on the streets with completely ruined lives over this one issue. It's only after you end up homeless that people act like homelessness is the logical and inescapable conclusion of such conditions.
We generally do not predict utter financial ruin and that homelessness is inevitable for millionaire celebrities who happen to have an addiction. So we really shouldn't claim that addiction causes homelessness. Saying so for people already on the street amounts to begging the question. If you cannot use addiction as a means to confidently predict this outcome, than you can't reasonably cite it as causative.
3. There Are Societal Factors.
Housing policy can either help promote homelessness or can help prevent it. Healthcare policy can also help either prevent or promote homelessness.
Instead of blaming the individual, we need to be working on systemic issues. In the US, our excessively financially burdensome healthcare system is part of the problem. So is a general lack of missing middle housing.
If you really want to address homelessness, those are two issues that desperately need some work in this country at all levels, from the local community to federal policy.
4. There Can Be An Element Of Choice
The thing most people don't want to acknowledge is that homeless people are still people. They aren't entirely defined by their lack of housing.
They are multidimensional. So there is often an element of choice involved.
Sometimes, it's the lesser evil. Maybe they left an abusive relationship. Yes, they would like to have housing, but not if it means taking more abuse.
In other cases, people actually don't want to return to a "normal" life. That simply doesn't work for them. Maybe they would accept an alternative lifestyle that is more palatable to the rest of society, but perhaps they don't have the means to arrange it or don't know of an alternative that would work.
You have to respect the agency of people on the street. The best way to solve homelessness both effectively and humanely is to supply better options for people whose lives don't play well with conventional lifestyles. They need to be viable and attractive alternatives that people will willingly choose.
This piece is being written to propose a mental model that fosters solutions. Yes, it's a big problem, but it's not unsolvable.
If the difference between the housed and unhoused can be one less problem or one more resource, then you can imagine that the path to homelessness is a slippery slope where problems pile up until the whole thing collapses. Ergo, the antidote is creating a gradient where people can climb up out of the pit in manageable small steps.
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
This blog is part of a desire to create an alternative to the Housing First model. I think of it as a People First model.
A large part of what I desire to do is help people develop an earned income, in spite of personal handicaps and other barriers to regular employment. But that earned income needs to fit around their various personal quirks.
Most jobs expect a person to put the job first. For some people, this is simply untenable.
Some people can only manage to get anything done if their paid work fits around other things that take a higher priority, such as a health issue or some disability.
This approach should be inclusive of people who are currently homeless without being a program "to help the homeless." Programs specifically designed to exclusively serve the homeless tend to entrench homelessness.
My background is as a homeschooling mom of twice exceptional kids. I'm also twice exceptional and I have worked hard to hammer out solutions that work for me in spite of being unable to work a regular job for the past few years.
People with various personal issues are at high risk of homelessness. One reason is that they have trouble developing an adequate earned income.
Pocket Puter and Write Pay are additional projects of mine that support my goal of hammering out a People First model. Like this site, those sites are informed by years of firsthand experience with this problem space, as well as pertinent education.
I spent several years homeless and got myself off the street without going through some program. I developed an income from the street, paid down debt while homeless and researched a town that would provide the lifestyle I needed. I then traveled there and found a rental that worked for me.
So, this is a field tested approach. I don't expect it to work for everyone, but I am confident that it can work for at least some people other than me.