> Seriously? Does anyone want to live that way "Want" is not the right word, but a lot of folks who have lost housing security are in the situation that was mo

> Seriously? Does anyone want to live that way "Want" is not the right word, but a lot of folks who have lost housing security are in the situation that was most appealing out of a limited set of options. There are programs that will help people (though they often fall off quite harshly so their efficacy is pretty poor [1]), but they often insist on stringent behavior restrictions. This might seem like a small price to pay, but I think it's easier to understand if you understand the life that's just on the other side of being unhoused. Often, if you're currently unhoused, getting housed is going to massively increase the amount of money you need each month (you can't get anything now, ofc, but you're insolvent so people can't get much from you). Likely your only option for work (due to both stigma and the fact that having low social capital makes you more likely to lose housing) is to do relatively boring low-paid work for many hours a week (often more than 40). Doing that will get you a room and food and not a ton else - the working poor have hard lives in the US (and other places ofc). For lots of people who don't have stable housing, this doesn't feel like a trade off they want to make. Now, all of this gets even harder when you add in common histories of people who have lost housings (multiple diagnoses, chronic conditions, hectic personal lives). There is a large (and growing) population of people who don't have stable housing as such, but have strong enough social safety nets to stay off the streets. Those people aren't often seen as "homeless" largely because their personal medical situation is less severe. So maybe this all seems like people protesting too much. Lots of people view the loss of housing to be a moral failing on the part of the person who "lost" it (an agentic claim I'm skeptical of). If that's how you feel, I'd ask you to consider how many more hours a week you would work to make your life twice as comfortable (food is 'better,' clothes are 'better,' but you have less time to do anything but work). I think that the choices that unhoused folks make to remain unhoused are similar to choices that upper-middle class folks make all the time. The upper classes are just viewed as having the agency to make those choices. [1] Even the cato institute thinks so! https://www.cato.org/blog/new-study-finds-more-evidence-poverty-traps-welfare-system https://www.cato.org/blog/new-study-finds-more-evidence-pove...