I don't think this is super true, I think people become the random guy yelling at trees rather than some guy who works at the Duane Reade because homelessness causes you to go insane
I'm no expert on homelessness, but I've spent a number of years assembling and distributing care packages for the homeless population in my area (not in California). I started doing this after seeing the body of a person who had died on the sidewalk from hypothermia one winter.
I've learned a whole lot of things from talking with these people over the years.
My first observation is that about half of them are homeless because they have serious mental or emotional problems that prevent them from functioning in society.
About half have serious drug or alcohol problems. There is an enormous overlap between this group and the mentally/emotionally ill group.
A smaller percentage are young people who have, basically, dropped out of "the rat race". They have chosen that life.
And the smallest percentage are people who suffered a serious blow in their life and were unable to recover. Most often, this was a serious illness of some sort. Sometimes it was the death of a loved one, a terrible divorce, that sort of thing.
I have developed a kind of "sixth sense" for telling if someone is homeless or not (you very often can't tell just by a casual look). I remember making my rounds one evening and spotting a 30something guy, clean, clean clothes, etc. But my sense told me he was homeless.
I approached him and offered a care package. He was exceptionally grateful. He told me that he'd been homeless for about a week, as a result of a horrific divorces in which he lost everything, followed by losing his job because he couldn't function as a result of his marital trouble.
I knew, and told him, that if he stayed on the street for very long, he would become trapped, and become one of the grizzled people yelling at trees sooner or later.
One of the things that makes this issue so hard is that there isn't just one cause of homelessness. It's a complicated problem. But one thing is very clear to me -- as a society, we are failing these people. The US is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the planet. That we allow people to live like this is criminally negligent and inhumane.
And, another thing I learned because I've seen it first-hand, is that no matter how comfortable, established, or well-off you are -- it's possible for you to become homeless far faster than you would ever think.
So I think your observations can be broadly true and also that if you caught the people who are chronically homeless as they were falling out of being homed they would seem way less insane and their problems would be far more tractable
When you can't afford your place anymore; you live in your car and join a cheap gym with showers or sleep on the sofa of friends and family. Most people don't remain homeless, and aid spent for this group of homeless are super effective at getting them out of homelessness faster. The person that is driven to yelling at trees caused the stress of being homeless with no other underlying conditions, is the ultra-rare.
The people you see shouting on the street are usually suffering from schizophrenia, which has a base rate of 1% in the general population but exceeds 20% among the homelessness. Untreated schizophrenia will lead someone to homelessness, almost inevitably.
Yes, homelessness absolutely causes people to go insane. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted.
But some people end up homeless because their mental health issues weren't treated (or weren't treated well) while they were still housed and functional. It can only take a few bad episodes to lose your job, and the next job, and then your home, and then you're screaming at the pigeons at 2pm in SOMA.
That's certainly true. When I was homeless (nearly 40 years ago, and thankfully only for seven months or so), I absolutely self-medicated to deal with the hopelessness, isolation and fear I felt not having any place to go.
Interestingly (and yes, I know I'm an outlier), about nine months after getting off the streets, it was not wanting that again that got me to stop self-medicating (cocaine) when I found myself getting ready to spend my rent money on drugs, and haven't touched cocaine since.
Sadly, many folks are unable to get off that particular hamster wheel without lots of help.
All that said, as others have pointed out, those with mental health and substance abuse issues are a tiny minority of the homeless population. In fact, a majority of Americans are just one unexpected $600 emergency from becoming homeless themselves.
> All that said, as others have pointed out, those with mental health and substance abuse issues are a tiny minority of the homeless population. In fact, a majority of Americans are just one unexpected $600 emergency from becoming homeless themselves.
They are a tiny amount of the homeless population but not a tiny amount of the chronic homeless population. That is an important distinction: people who are homeless for a couple of weeks vs. people who are homeless for years. The sad case occurs when temporary homelessness converts into chronic homelessness, which often corresponds with substance abuse (i.e. someone became homeless, but rather than having that problem fixed, it just became much worse). IMHO, we should dump a lot of resources in making sure easy cases of homelessness (just need a house) don't become hard cases (need drug rehab, lots of additional social resources).
A lot of mental illness is simply drug/substance abuse related, which...yes, you might start going for cheap street drugs after becoming homeless, but it is also likely your parents kicked you out because you wouldn't stop doing drugs.
The vast majority of people who experience homelessness are on the streets for 1 night before getting their act together and finding a place to live. That means the people who are on chronically on the street are dealing with more issues.
