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Homelessness is primarily a problem created by the requirement to continuously upkeep your shelter financially or risk losing it. The ability to perform this u

Homelessness is primarily a problem created by the requirement to continuously upkeep your shelter financially or risk losing it. The ability to perform this upkeep can be wrecked by any number of things, which there is not enough space to list here. The overwhelming majority of people who fail at this upkeep are saved by their support network, so the actual problem is several orders of magnitude larger than any official statistics. Most people who lose their shelter fall back on family and friends and may spend years living on couches, in closets, spare garages, cars, etc., without ever being picked up by the "homeless" statistics. How or why this system came about is beyond the scope of this comment, but it is an iceberg most people only see the tip of. And it is not a necessity, nor is it a reality in many other places around the world.

Aloha 4y ago
Often times that support network, will for years sustain people in their own home too, before the couches and other forms (of defacto, but not statistical) homelessness take over.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Everyday life is a treadmill, a neverending ceaseless treadmill, and bad things happen if you fall off that treadmill. For some people, the treadmill is cake: so easy to keep up with it is almost bothersomely slow. But... get a bit of a leg cramp, or lose energy, age a little, or get a bit of mental trauma, and that simple treadmill gets much more terrifying and ominous each day you have to run it. As I get older, those nutso men that shutter away in some far flung cabin with no contact with the world ... gets more appealing. Or simply a van down by the river.
Incipient 4y ago
But what would be the effect on the amount of dilapidated housing, or "slum areas" without this maintenance requirement?
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  I think there would be more people living in poorly maintained buildings instead of not having any building to live in.

Aloha 4y ago

Often times that support network, will for years sustain people in their own home too, before the couches and other forms (of defacto, but not statistical) homelessness take over.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Everyday life is a treadmill, a neverending ceaseless treadmill, and bad things happen if you fall off that treadmill. For some people, the treadmill is cake: so easy to keep up with it is almost bothersomely slow. But... get a bit of a leg cramp, or lose energy, age a little, or get a bit of mental trauma, and that simple treadmill gets much more terrifying and ominous each day you have to run it. As I get older, those nutso men that shutter away in some far flung cabin with no contact with the world ... gets more appealing. Or simply a van down by the river.

Incipient 4y ago

But what would be the effect on the amount of dilapidated housing, or "slum areas" without this maintenance requirement?

forgotmypw17 4y ago
I think there would be more people living in poorly maintained buildings instead of not having any building to live in.