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
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.