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THREAD:
In discussions of homelessness, people love to bring up "drug use" and "mental illness" as reasons why universal housing won't be enough to end homelessness. Here's what people need to understand: (1/?)
In discussions of homelessness, people love to bring up "drug use" and "mental illness" as reasons why universal housing won't be enough to end homelessness. Here's what people need to understand: (1/?)
It's wrong to assume that drug use/struggles mental illness are what *caused* people to become homeless in the first place. If you lose your home and are forced to live on the street, most people will treat you as nothing short of subhuman unworthy of interaction. (2/?)
As someone who has never been homeless, I cannot even begin to imagine how traumatizing this would be. Imagine losing your home, living on the street, and seeing perhaps thousands of people walk by you every day refusing to even *look* at you, let alone say hello to you. (3/?)
Do you think your mental health wouldn't suffer? Do you think you'd see people and the world around you the same way? Even if you hadn't been afflicted with e.g. depression or anxiety prior, to you think you wouldn't experience them after being completely dehumanized? (4/?)
I can't imagine looking at the world the same way after a week of living on a sidewalk and having people literally refuse to look at you or acknowledge your physical presence for the crime of not owning property. Imagine the mental toll of that on people after *years*. (5/?)
I can't even begin to grasp how that would feel. What I do know, though, is that if I wasn't a user of alcohol before (I personally almost never drink)... it's pretty fucking easy to imagine using it to cope with one of the most horrific situations imaginable! (6/?)
Do you think that every homeless person who heavily uses alcohol was always an alcoholic? I'm sure there are people whose alcoholism led to being fired and losing their home. But in most cases? The trauma of homeless *begets* substance abuse. (7/?)
The fact of the matter is that if we had universal housing - which, yes, is an attainable policy goal, even if it seems inconceivable! - homelessness as a mass phenomenon would cease, full stop. Suggestions to the contrary deliberately obfuscate the issue at hand. (8/?)
It's downright extraordinary how the issue of homelessness, whose root cause is literally in its name, has been obfuscated the way it has. It's an issue that can be solved as a *phenomenon* through guaranteed housing of some kind of another. (9/?)
This is the other thing: The conservative politicians who refuse to support universal housing because homelessness is a Complex Issue™ consistently oppose increased funding for mental health services. https://twitter.com/darealwiles/status/1335778573806931975?s=20
