| HN Mirror

I wrote an incredibly angry reply to you, but I've calmed down enough that I can try to explain my point without attacking you.

mrharrison stated that the root cause of much of our poor handling of homelessness comes from our poor handling of the disabled. To avoid going with anecdotes, I'll simply point out that 13% of the homeless population are veterans. Physical and mental disabilities are quite common and our society has decided to just dump these people on the streets as opposed to helping them.

However, then nickthemagicman comes along and makes the implication that stating that a homeless person is disabled is equivalent to stating that the person deserves to be homeless. That's the most offensive thing that I've ever seen on the Internet, and I've been to 4chan. Just because a person has a disability doesn't mean that they don't deserve basic human dignity.

Though I am descending into anecdote here, my wife was homeless when I met her. She also has a physical disability which cost her her job and her home. There was a wonderful government program to help her out of poverty by letting her haul 40lb bags of sand around, but it's not much use to a woman who walks with a cane and can't carry more than 20lb without needing a week of bed rest. If we were willing to talk about the root cause, then she'd be getting the treatment she needs to be healthy again and be happy to carry those 40lb bags. Unfortunately, the system was designed by bigots like nickthemagicman. When she applied for disability, she was told that they would only pay for her medical treatment if she agreed to never work again under punishment of jail time. After all, basic dignities like the joy of contributing to society aren't allowed for the disabled. Just the able bodied homeless, I guess.