[harlanji]

I became homeless in SF 6 years ago, probably would have been out after like a year if not for pandemic. Same program over and over, feels like I'm about to get off the street again 3 hours outside SF. Housing here is so reasonable. $1,000 for a 2 bedroom right in town. Plenty of employment. Not saying where I am until I'm off the street. But I've been working on survival guides and my 'Homeless Guy' vlog videos are popping my channel off.

We really need to get homeless people distributed to small towns. Centralizing them in big cities is so backwards. There are indeed 2+ strata of homeless as another has mentioned, I'd call them addicts and life happened-ers. I'm the latter, life happened and pandemic and more life happenings made it into a complex/non-linear situation.

Literally been working 6 years to get like $20k to fix my life with. Used to be a software engineer, got into a legal dispute and that messed me up bad, gotta get into housing before I try to fix that and then try to get back into tech. Not interested in free jobs that I don't go through the normal pipeline for, happy enough working as a dish washer / grocery clerk for the past several years. I'm not available by email or phone, too difficult to communicate logistics. Can't wait to get back to meaningful tech work tho.

I'm one case, the life happened-ers are all different. But I think getting them to small towns to rebuild is definitely the way. Really easy for me to save money and nobody knows I'm homeless, just very very slow. But it's fair and sustainable.

[corinroyal]

It's amazing how people who don't know homelessness talk about it. I never see my own experiences reflected in these hot takes. Something about the topic breaks people's brains. I suspect people are simply terrified of homelessness and will do anything to distance themselves from the reality that there but for the grace of God they go.

[snapplebobapple]

it's the 80/20 rule man. the minority of homeless that are drug addicts or violently mentally ill leave such a sour taste in the average person's mouth that a going nuclear on the homeless policy seems like a great idea. The majority of homeless that are only a very minor inconvenience or are no problem at all are completely overshadowed by the minority screaming on the street, taking dumps in alleys (or in the middle of the street!), and causing other major problems pretty much continuously.

You can't really blame people for their hot takes either, when you're on month 32+ of powerwashing your alley and front sidewalk every day to try and get a few hours of the place not smelling like poorly maintained urinals/horse stables your overton window starts to shift to making more extreme solutions acceptable just because you are so supremely fed up with how things are and your sympathy was all used up years ago.

[Sirizarry]

There is a huge bias against homeless populations throughout the states. They’ve been depicted and demonized unilaterally as drug users and law breakers/undesirables but that couldn’t be farther from the truth for many many people. Homelessness is the direct result of a societal failure to secure our populations basic needs and that means we are all to blame to a certain extent. They are people from our communities that we’ve sidelined and largely ignored but nobody likes to think they’re the bad guy.