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One thing that I have never understood about this discussion is why it always seems to avoid the following question: What about people who want to be homeless?

• sweeneyrod 7y ago
  Because people like you are incredibly uncommon. I do not believe at all that there are millions of people like that in the US.
  • tistrue999 7y ago
    I don't know about millions, but I have firsthand experience and no one would know just by meeting someone like this that they had no fixed place of residence.
  • jMyles 7y ago
    You interact with us all the time, every day, and you have no idea.
• MisterTea 7y ago
  > What about people who want to be homeless? I think you overestimate the number of homeless by choice vs homeless by circumstance. You also are sort of marginalizing the homeless who need help by painting them as happily homeless. Very naive take on the situation.
  • jMyles 7y ago
    > I think you overestimate the number of homeless by choice vs homeless by circumstance. Well, we can't really know the numbers here. But the discussion seems to never include this phenomenon, so I think it's fair to say that this particular constituency is under-represented in the discussion even if there were only a small number of people. And again, I think there are many, many such people - I have personally met thousands without really trying. There are Rainbow Gatherings in every state, each with thousands or tens of thousands of such people, and this is just one gathering of one subset of this population. > You also are sort of marginalizing the homeless who need help by painting them as happily homeless. I don't mean to do that. I think that people who actually need help are being marginalized by casting such a wide net as to lose them. If people want help, why aren't we directing resources there? Instead of sending the police to arrest people who don't want help? > Very naive take on the situation. In a literally sense, I think it's not naive. I have been houseless for most of my adult life. How much of this phenomenon have you personally experienced?
• didibus 7y ago
  That's an interesting take. I don't think most people have an issue with a nomadic lifestyle, as long as you can afford it, and it doesn't interfere with other people's lifestyle choices. I think those latter two points are rare, but I might be mistaken. How many homeless have a job and pay taxes, but choose to be homeless? I think at the end of the day it's about having the ability to afford yourself and care for yourself. And we tend to believe that if an adult doesn't have this ability (as opposed to the opportunity), then it is a handicapped individual, either physically or mentally handicapped in some way. That's why I think most people believe homeless which aren't suffering from the lack of this ability most likely just lack the opportunity.
• seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  There is a public nuisance aspect to people who are living on the street or in forests on land they don’t own/rent. Even mobile vehicles can be problematic if they are parked on the street without access to decent facilities. I don’t think many would have a problem with someone who lacked a permanent home but setup camp or their vehicle on a formal campground with reasonable hygiene facilities so they weren’t pooping in the street and we weren’t walking over their tents.
  • jMyles 7y ago
    > There is a public nuisance aspect to people who are living on the street or in forests on land they don’t own/rent. I don't think there is a connection to property ownership and the presence of a nuisance caused by people. So what if people are living on land that they don't own and rent? Who has decreed that land ownership must be the absolute fundamental social norm? What if people are instinctually disinclined to believe or participate in land ownership? Why do we insist on being the only animal for which a subset charts the entire landmass of the earth into a grid, assigning ownership to every square inch? It's absurd. People tenting under bridges, on bike trails, in forests, don't bother me. Rich people have stolen far more from my family than poor people have.
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      There is a high correlation between squatting and property damage. People simply don’t respect what isn’t theirs, and anyways, the lack of formal infrastructure (plumbing, septic, ...) doesn’t give them a lot of options.
    • pandaman 7y ago
      There are many territorial animals who protect their territory from intruders and humans are by far not the only one. Is your complaint about humans refining the process and erecting a formal framework around this instead of constantly deciding who owns the territory in a fight like other animals? I don't think you'd like it more, to be honest.
• snuxoll 7y ago
  > Why have we built a society in which anybody who doesn't accept the lifestyle of sleeping in a static, hardened structure, and working to pay rent or a mortgage so as to have the right to do so, is diagnosed with some kind of illness? Equally amusing is that we attempt to make this a requirement, but do not make this a fundamental right in association with said requirement. If you're going to MAKE people have something, it should be provided for them IMO.