My grandfather hopped a freight train to come to Oregon during the Great Depression. He became a logger, then worked in a mill, and for most of his adult life he worked two full time jobs at a time. After retiring, he continued to do physical labor and side jobs. In many ways he was my primary role model.
Knowing that my grandfather hopped freight trains made me more sympathetic towards bums. As a kid i spent some time talking with them along railroad tracks. In general they treated me with dignity and respect, so i was inclined to do the same.
There are many synonyms for homeless people. Some prefer to call them the unhoused. I personally like the old-fashioned term vagabond. I don't use the term in daily speech because i am not sure it will mean the same thing to other people.
Around 2016 i began hanging out with homeless people again and listening to their stories. A jaded person would call these "sob stories" and suspect that they were not entirely factual or forthcoming. Be that as it may, it did not hurt me to give them the benefit of the doubt and hear them out. All i was doing was listening to their story.
When you listen enough, you find that the stereotypes do not hold true. The stereotypical image is of the unkempt man on the street corner who is unemployable and has addictions and/or mental illness. A friend told me that in the 1990s he heard on NPR that the majority of homeless people are women and children. The piece also discussed homeless firefighters in San Francisco who lived in their cars and used friend's mailing addresses to apply for jobs.
I will re-tell a few of the stories i have heard.
I met a woman in Eugene who told me that she and her husband had a nice house, no kids, and they both worked professional jobs. They were financially very well off. Then her husband got cancer and lost his ability to work. She worked to support her husband. He racked up medical debt, then died. Due to the stress, she lost her mental health. To be more accurate, she lost her ability to remember things. This meant she could not hold down any job, and with their medical debt, she became homeless.
I met a woman in Grants Pass who works as a school bus driver. She held odd jobs during summer vacations but depended on unemployment checks to pay rent. One year the state made a clerical error and paid her too much. Unaware of this, she was surprised when the next year she could not collect unemployment due to the clerical error. She lost her housing and began living in her car. She continued to work as a school bus driver and made an effort to regain housing.
I met a father and son in Eugene who became homeless when their landlord was busted for selling drugs. They were poor and they abruptly lost their housing. They could not find new housing in time and became homeless.
I met an adult son who lived with his elderly parents. He worked full time, paid the rent for their apartment, and helped take care of them in their senility. In the hospital, a nurse punctured his father's bladder while inserting a catheter. It progressed to a blood infection. His father recovered, but apparently the fever had caused brain damage and a radical personality change. He died shortly after that. Within the same year, the mother died too. The son became depressed, which impacted his judgment. He moved into his car to save money. Just like that, he became homeless.
When i look at news articles & statements from city governments & relief organizations, they consistently tell narratives about recovery being the first step. I can believe that recovery is an important step on the whole. But i've seen individuals herded into recovery programs when that wasn't what they actually needed.
It's a convenient narrative because it places the responsibility on the homeless person. They made the wrong lifestyle choices and their situation is a natural consequence of their moral failing.
During the Great Depression, the federal government recognized that it was a systematic problem. One response was to create New Deal work programs. In other words, the government created jobs to do public works. While these programs can be criticized, the intent was to give more dignified alternatives to squalor. Squalor is another way of saying crime, malnutrition, and so forth.
The way i see it, the current narratives deny the realities of economic contraction and stratification between the "haves" and the "have nots". I wonder how long the "haves" will be able to turn a blind eye and sustain the belief that they themselves are not at risk; that they will never face being unhoused because they are a better, more deserving kind of person.
In a setting of economic contraction and stratification, i foresee endless need. This means opportunities for people to derive meaning and purpose from helping each other out. I want to keep an eye out for the lightning rod of mutual aid. It could spark a massive discharge for the better. That would be something worthwhile, something to be passionate about, and to put one's shoulder into it.