A friend was telling me that some people in the USA actually choose to be homeless despite being financially capable and being mentally sound. As someone from an underdeveloped country, I’ve never heard of something like that and is quite incomprehensible to me. Why would you choose to live on the street?
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I am going to assume the individual has a job with a livable wage, doesn’t do drugs, and has no mental health issue.
The savings from not paying for housing allows them to live the life the way they like. Or the living arrangement which their wage allows is worse than being homeless; don’t want roommates. This is usually applicable to high-cost of living areas which is generally most cities in the United States; relative to local wages.
Also homeless covers people that live in their cars and RVs. It’s not limited to sleeping in a tent or on the street.
The people that actually choose to be homeless are an extreme few.
generally when people say this what they’re talking about is that a lot of housing assistance programs and long-term shelters won’t allow people who are actively using drugs. So some people who are addicted prefer to live on the street and use drugs rather than use the shelter but have to be sober.
That said, the psychology and neurology of addiction are very complex — it’s very debatable to what extent this is a choice made out of free will, and to what extent it’s a symptom of their addiction. I personally don’t really view this as a free choice that people are making, I think it’s part of the illness of addiction.
It’s also possible that they meant something along the lines of the vanlife crowd, who are technically choosing to be homeless, but I also wouldn’t characterize that as living on the street.
Drugs.
This sounds awfully similar to “People choose to be gay/trans because they like feeling persecuted.” That is, utter bullshit coming from a place of obnoxious privilege.
The fact that people “choose” to be homeless is not accurate. It’s just something people say to make them feel better about the people struggling around them. The choices that are often categorized this way are:
1. Drugs. Sure, it’s a “choice” to take drugs, but addiction is much more complicated than that. I guarantee you if you had given them the choice between drugs and losing their house and job, they wouldn’t have chosen it.
2. Living out of their car. Some people with jobs choose to live out of their car despite being able to afford an apartment. This is not because they want and “choose” to, it is because they are not making enough money to afford housing and retirement. They are essentially being homeless now hoping that they will be able to save up enough money to be stable in the future. They do not choose the fact that their wage is not livable.
3. Not living in a shelter. Homeless shelters can be dangerous and often have extremely strict rules and very little privacy. The communities there are often very toxic. Everybody is worried about self-preservation and the workers are hilariously underpaid. It is not a good place to live. Sure, it’s a “choice” not to stay in a shelter, but that is because our shelters are fucking disgusting and oftentimes genuinely worse than the streets.
There are maybe a few exceptions of artists or “van life” people who become homeless for the “experience,” but I do not consider those people to be homeless. Instead, the reason that most people “choose” to be homeless is because the alternatives that our society offers them are somehow actually worse than the streets.
We see somebody starving, shit in a bowl, offer it to them, and then throw up our hands when they don’t accept because “we tried, but they don’t want help.”
Probably no all encompassing correct answer to this question but I want to say because they can. We allow people to be as free as they want to be. This includes being able to live outside and on the street if that’s what they want to do. I think there is a time component to your question that is important for context. You’re asking about the first time that someone has chosen to live outside. I put that extra time criteria on there because most of the homeless people I see are well past that initial decision point. And by then the mental state of the homeless has deteriorated dramatically from drug use or other issues caused by being homeless.
The vast majority of homeless people in the US are not choosing to be homeless. IDK what your friend is talking about. Are there some folks that like the transient lifestyle? Sure, but they are definitely not the majority. Humans naturally want shelter and stability, no matter what part of the world you are in.
I couldn’t be friends with your friend in good conscience.
I have a few examples. All of these are local to my town.
The shelters will not accept someone on drugs or drunk. Usually these same people have burned bridges with friends and family because of the drugs/drink.
This one is pretty specific: boys over 15 are not allowed to stay in the women’s / children’s shelter and must stay in the men’s. There is only one family shelter (where he could stay with mom/sisters/younger brothers) in the city, and it is always full. The men’s shelter is scary for these teens, and they’d rather stay on the street. There was a group of these teens that sheltered together behind a Walmart for a while until the city found out and helped find volunteers to lodge them. But this was a few years ago so I’m sure there is a whole new batch of them in the same boat.
Some people just do not want to live in society. Like a hermit. There may or may not be underlying mental conditions, but they choose over and over to not enter the system.
But these examples only make up a small number of the homeless.
For some being homeless is easier than being an active member of society. I have friends who have friends who have neurodivergency issues that struggle to find gainful employment. Things like unmedicated ADHD can make life difficult for a person therefore its not uncommon for some to choose to stay homeless.
Sometimes the system is too hard for people to navigate and participate in so living a nomadic lifestyle is easier.
Usually mental illness or drug addiction, but there’s a generous helping of “fleeing an abusive home” as well. Having been briefly homeless myself, I chose it over some other options because it allowed me a semblance of independence while I figured some stuff out.
A reminder that most people who are homeless are homeless for a relatively brief period, in between periods of more stable housing.
On one hand rent and housing are exorbitantly expensive, and a lot of the new jobs created since the Obama administration are low-skilled, low-paying ones, so there are times in the lives of some younger Americans when living out of a car is the only real option if you don’t have any friends or family in the area and want to keep your job.
More likely they’re talking about how most housing assistance programs require people to not be taking any drugs and are basically just saying that addiction doesn’t exist, which is a depressingly common belief among both American conservatives and liberals.
The places they are offered to live (if they are) usually come with rules and they have to give up drugs. There’s a percentage of homeless who don’t want housing so they can do drugs and do what they want.
Usually it’s some level of mental illness. But sometimes (in very rare occasions) people just just think it’s fun.* The latter sometimes happens in places like Hawaii where you can benefit from nice weather and you don’t have to worry about freezing to death.
*by fun I mean more fun than the alternative of working incredibly hard to afford an overpriced apartment.
In Savannah, GA there used to be a “tent city” (the city tore it down last year because some new hotels were going up nearby), several years ago some reporter went there to interview them and out of over 50 people there was one couple who admitted to being their by choice. Rent was too high and they were tired of living paycheck to paycheck. Others fell on hard times and couldn’t bounce back because rent is stupid high in Savannah while minimum wage is like $7.25. Then of course you have those on drugs and those with mental problems.
The amount of people who actually *choose* to be homeless are miniscule. Most of us are one paycheck away from devastating circumstances, and that’s all across the country.
I can give an example of a high school friend, I still keep in touch with him through Facebook. He basically just opted out of society the best he could. He wants nothing to do with society, working, laws or anything. He gave a big middle finger to the world and checked out. So he escaped the best way he could, by living in a tent. He’s a perfectly rational guy, he just doesn’t want to be a part of the system and contribute to the machine.
The only time I’ve heard of choosing to be homeless is people who choose to live in an rv or live in the wilderness (I believe the movie Nomadland is about this). Otherwise it’s not really much of a thing.
Choose is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Living on the street is generally the last “choice”. People have often already exhausted their friends and family (sleeping on couches) and can’t get the money together for a motel, and have little or no support. Many shelters have rules that people can’t or won’t follow. Shelters don’t usually allow a pet, and some homeless people only have their pet, and can’t imagine being parted. Shelters are not always safe spots, and people get robbed and assaulted. Shelters fill up, and there’s not enough beds for the people that need them. And some people have mental health struggles or have developed addictions which would make them unlikely to do well in the shelter. I’m missing a lot, as the issue is complex and each person is an individual with their own reasons and stories.
r/vagabond is your place to go
A lot of homeless people have severe drug and alcohol addictions. For obvious reasons, homeless shelters don’t let you bring in drugs or alcohol. So many homeless instead take to the streets where they can satisfy their addictions.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that most people who are homeless in America are people temporarily living with friends/family or in their cars. Though highly visible and certainly a problem that needs to be addressed, the homeless on the streets are not the largest group of homeless people.
>A friend was telling me that some people in the USA actually choose to be homeless.
I have family that worked with the homeless (medical treatments and exams). This just my experience talking with them.
Each state is different in how it treats and supports the homeless. Some states have good programs while other states have none.
People who are homeless are not lazy. You might find a small percentage who are living out of their car, but they do have legitimate work. You might have a person who stays at a shelter at night but has a legitimate job during the day. These people unfortunately can’t afford housing at this time, but maybe they will soon.
The other homeless people are the mentally ill, mentally disabled, and drug addicts. Some of these people want help, and some refuse help.
Some of these people will turn down sleeping at a shelter at night because they would have to follow the rules.
We do not have national healthcare, so most of the homeless fall through the cracks. We’re more concerned about what books are in the library than the homeless people in the library seeking shelter from the cold or heat.
It’s substance use disorder (inf. ‘addiction’) and it’s incomprehensible to people who don’t have it.
Someone has altered their brain chemistry so severely that using drugs is the only priority.
They’re not choosing to be homeless, they’re choosing not to get help.
Its not so much that they CHOOSE to be homeless, but theres a lot of factors that go into it and in some cases it is on the individual.
My MIL is currently homeless (last we heard at least). But its 100% her fault. Did she directly CHOOSE to be homeless? Not really. But the choices she made is what led her to be homeless.
One; in June she got evicted from her apartment because she was months behind on rent. Now, she had also been combating an illness at the time, so my husband and I felt bad for her so we let her stay with us temporarily under the assumption she would be looking for a new place soon.
Well, not long after she started fights with me, kept asking for money, kept making excuses saying she didnt wanna have to find her own place so soon. She would rather get a car first. Mind you… she had no iob. She became a huge burden on us. Constantly starting fights. We stuck our neck out for her, had her living with us despite it being a lease violation on our end because she wasnt on the lease, spent so much money for her cuz she constantly needed money for “help with getting on her feet.” She stole at least 50 bucks in coins from my piggy bank supposedly to pay an apartment application fee. I guess she was too much in a hurry to ask me for the money 🙄
Then we find out shes doing drugs in our house. She even is caught messing with our security cameras while we are on vacation and having random people over which we told her we wont tolerate. My husband confronts her over the phone on our road trip and she pulls out the crocodile tears, says she will check herself into renhab. Okay. Believe it when see it. We send her an eviction notice in mid July while we vacation in Boston. We are tired of her shit, her lies, her fights, her manipulation, her verbal abuse.
Well, she ends up apparently finding a place to move to for beginning of August. Cool. Even on the day my husband helps get her shit out of the house she talks shit about me. I ignore her, its not worth losing my cool. My husband and her have a big fight as he drops her off at her new apartment. She claims we treated her unfairly. Mind you … he had found drug paraphernilia inside a box of sentimental items for us. Thats how much she preferred drugs over respecting her son.
He threw stuff her on the curb and told her to get outta the car. He was done with her.
Well, a week passes by and his aunt said she has heard from her in a while and is concerned. My husband calls the Saint Paul police to do a welfare check. They go to the apartment and the roommate she had denies her even living here which is odd… But then we find out days later that the guy kicked her out because he didnt wanna violate his probation by having a druggie living with him so now shes homeless in a park. So her “finding an apartment” was finding a roommate, but that roommate didnt want her either.
She is homeless now. She lied about rehab. Had no intention of going. She lied about drugs despite the tin foils, straws and pills we found all over. She lied about what she needed money for. Apartment fee, my ass!
And she severed her relationship with every relative. She had already been kicked out of her daughters house in Texas and now she was kicked out of her sons house in Minnesota. Also, her health problems are 100% cuz of drugs. She chose drugs over her own health, over her own family. We gave her a roof over her head, didnt charge her a dime and what did she do? Constantly take money from us, bring people over, had a random prostitute spend the night, and lovely girl she was, actually far more pleasant than my MIL, but a complete fucking stranger in my house! Was constantly getting high, causing fights, including in front of our friends and we didnt wanna put up with that abusive crap any longer.
Is every homeless person someone like my MIL? No. But its all situational and some people truly bring it on themselves. The saying is true, you can bring a horse to water but you cant make it drink.
The people who choose it are usually mentally incapacitated. Many homeless end up on the streets because of drug addictions. I don’t know the actual numbers, but I’d be willing to bet a very large majority of homeless adults are homeless due to mental illness or addiction.
The only people ‘choosing’ to be homeless are people in their 20s backpacking and hitchhiking to find themselves. And even then their parents are probably loaded and they can have a home whenever they wanted.
Most Americans who are homeless or facing homelessness are doing so as a result of a callous failed society which doesn’t care if people have their basic needs met.
We have almost no permanent safe social housing left and mental health and addiction services are accessible mostly for the wealthy.
Having drugs or other addiction control your mind and feeding your addiction rather than housing yourself isn’t a conscious choice.
Having a severe mental health condition doesn’t make it possible for you to make rational choices for yourself and the violence of living on the street often makes things worse. Testimony from someone with a severe mental health condition won’t even be taken in court.
Youth or other people who are abused are fleeing out of desperation. They are ‘choosing’ to not have a home rather than being beaten raped or killed.
Most Americans are one big financial emergency or setback away from homelessness. Whether they let themselves internalize that or not. And there is no social safety net to catch them.
There are also many who would be homeless if a friend or relative weren’t taking care of them, housing them, and making room for them in their daily life.
Everyone is providing reasons why they cant/are not being helped. Not answering why someone would willingly be homeless.
The guy in the park next to my house said this. “I just got tired of working every day I was miserable so I left it all behind.”
He works at the gas station down the street, then goes and sleeps in the park.
It’s almost always because they can’t just buy or rent a place with their own money, and whats available from welfare isn’t somewhere they want to go. Maybe it’s dangerous. Maybe they have an addiction they can’t shake or a pet they don’t want to abandon. Maybe the shelter is way out in the suburbs and they want to be near the city.