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by slg 973 days ago
>Go give 1k to a homeless guy...he'll still be homeless, and probably dead thanks to what you enabled.

Why do people assume that every homeless person is both an idiot and an addict? Especially in cities in which real estate is as expensive as Los Angeles, the overwhelming majority of homeless people aren't there because of addiction issues. All the numbers I have seen suggest that only a quarter of LA's homeless population has addiction issues and even still the causal relationship isn't clear. When you live on the streets, the momentary escape of drugs is pretty alluring, but probably not as alluring as getting off the streets.

2 comments

You're using a very different definition of homeless than the person you're replying to.

Visibly homeless people– those who literally are living on the streets absolutely do have some sort of addiction or mental illness.

Yes, the definitions are part of my point if you read between the lines of my comment.

The definition of homeless I am using is literally "a person without a home". The person I responded to is using an incorrect definition.

That leaves two options. They knew this and they don't actually care about the problem of people not having homes. Or they didn't know that the "visibly homeless" are only a minority of all "homeless" in which case they can learn from this conversation.

>those who literally are living on the streets absolutely do have some sort of addiction or mental illness.

I don't know how you can say this as definitively as you are.

> Why do people assume that every homeless person is both an idiot and an addict?

Look, you're not wrong, but you're also making a few assumptions yourself.

You know what else happens to poor people who come into large sums of money? They become a target.