hello there,
I've been meaning to write this blog for a while, but as life goes, time got away from me. However, the topic is still incredibly relevant and I really want to give my take on a very important situation that I've come to learn the majority of the population is incredibly uneducated on. The issue of homelessness is obviously something I've learned a great deal about being that it is my job to work with those who find themselves without a home. I think that because of that I sometimes lose sight of the fact that not everyone understands and sees what I understand and see. I was reminded of this while listening to The Kid Carson Show on Sonic the other day. The discussion was around the homeless population that was being evicted from Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver. One woman called into the radio to share her take on the situation. To sum it up she stated that homelessness is a choice. Her comment hit me in an unsettling way because her opinion is a popular one, shared and believed by many.
So I asked myself the question and tried to answer it based on my experience and knowledge.
Is homelessness a choice?
And after putting some thought into it, I realized I had to agree with her. I do think homelessness is a choice (not in every situation but in a lot). Let me explain.
Let's imagine perhaps that you're a girl on your 18th birthday. Your mother and her boyfriend have been exploiting you for as long as you can remember and now that you're finally an adult you realize you don't have to put up with this anymore. But your mom's boyfriend abuses you so you can't possibly go live with anyone you know, he'll find you. So you leave and choose to live on the streets because even that is better than what you've known. Then, you meet this guy. Oh, he's so good to you and he says he loves you. No one has ever said "I love you" to you before. He tells you that he has a drug that will make you feel better and you know you can take it because you trust him, because he loves you. What he didn't tell you is that once you take meth it'll cause permanent damage to your brain and it will be impossible to curve the cravings without professional intervention.
Or,
Maybe you're a middle aged man. Growing up you could tell you weren't like the other children. Your parents noticed it to. They said you just weren't quite right in the head. Once you were 16 they sent you to live with a distant relative . You graduated high school and moved away from everyone you knew because they treated you like a freak. You got a minimum wage job and made just enough to scrape by day after day. But as you got older the voices in your head got louder and you knew you needed help. Who do you turn to? Doing things on your own is the only way you know how. You've never had a healthy relationship. You don't even know mental illness is an actual illness because no one from your generation talked about it. It gets so bad you can no longer work. You're too embarrassed to ask your landlord for an extension to pay you rent because he already thinks you're crazy, so you choose the streets and try to maintain whatever shred of dignity the world has left you with until you can get another job. But the instability of life on the streets coupled with irregular sleep and an unstable diet causes your condition to worsen. You no longer even know who you are or why you are where you are.
See what I mean, homeless, it's a choice. Right?
When I introduce myself to someone new I don't ever say, "Hi I'm Maren, I live in a house". Why don't I do this? Because I don't identify myself by the roof over my head, just like a homeless person doesn't find their identity in the tarp over theirs. Why? Because my house is something I have, not something I am. Our worth as human beings is not found in the things we possess. When we start grading people based on their material worth we strip them of their human dignity.
So why do we hold this stigma regarding the homeless?
It's easier for us to sit in our warm and cozy suburban homes than it is for us to admit that there are people living within our communities that have faced and are facing bigger demons and are experiencing far greater oppression than we will ever come to personally know in our lifetime.
If a person is homeless, it's not who they are, it's their circumstances. And we are not defined by our circumstances. See, when a lot of people choose to be homeless it's because it's a heck of a lot better than any other situation they can conjure. Because for some people, the streets are a safer place than their home. Sometimes it's the only option they have. Other people's suffering can make us uncomfortable which is why it's so easy to just blame the homeless for their situations. It's easier than admitting there's a bigger problem that we don't know how to fix.
Many of you are probably thinking, 'well what about homeless shelters and social services programs?'. Well first of all, depending on where a homeless person is located, they may have no means of getting to the shelter. Secondly, some shelters (although definitely not all) provide living conditions that are worse than those of the streets. Thirdly, social service programs don't receive enough funding to actually do what really needs to be done. They definitely do an amazing job at doing what they can, but like I said the issue is bigger than many want to acknowledge. Fourthly, a lot of people don't know about the resources and programs that are available to them. And finally, a lot of this has to do with the dignity factor I've mentioned a few times now. I'm sure all of you have your own set of ideas and assumptions regarding those who access social service resources, such as welfare. And I'm guessing there's a lot of people out there that have extremely negative associations towards those people. Just so you know, the homeless know what's thought about them and, believe it or not, they're not all lazy people who want your tax dollars to pay their way through life. They're people with dignity that don't want people like you and me to categorize them in these negative stereotypes they've been classed in their whole life. Just like you and me they want independence, they want to prove to the world that they can take care of themselves. But they can't, no one can live life without a little help from others. However, too many people make them feel like they aren't worthy of being helped because it's their fault that they're in the circumstances they're in. Can you imagine going your entire life never knowing someone cared about you? Never knowing what it felt like to be loved by someone? Never having someone offer a helping hand when you needed one? Image someone labelling you based on the circumstances you couldn't control instead of who you are as person.
We all have a story, a past, and a future. So next time you see a homeless person or hear someone stigmatizing them, remember that they're a person first and foremost, just like you and me. And they have a story, just like you and me. Things won't change until we stop looking down on them as a societal epidemic and start looking at them as the humans they are.
-m.o
