The primary cause of homelessness is bad life choices.
There’s no doubt a lack of affordable housing will become increasingly problematic and factor more heavily in politics.
The major cause of homelessness is mental illness.
Mental illness released to the streets accounts for some. But most are dope, drink, laziness, and bad character.
I’m interested in this piece, but not tonight.
And as insane as it sounds, I think some do it because it’s fun and government makes it easy. Go to a coastal city, set up a tent, learn the local grift and feed centers. Then all day you get high, get drunk, wander around, sleep late. Go to the beach, whatever.
Lots just take the east way out and skip being responsible.
No, no.
The base reason is that it takes two to pay the bills.
Before, one employee was paid enough, after a while, to support a household.
Since women were put into the workforce to keep labor costs down it now takes two.
No room for error by the workers.
Having 1/9’th of Mexico’s population here doesn’t help either.
Drug addiction.
Alcohol addiction.
Mental Health Illness and other Health Issues.
(Those are the same. one can have a heart attack, stroke, cancer or mental breakdown. They are all the same and largely beyond your control)
Being without family or friends.
Destroying any relationship you had with friends and family.
That said, excess housing regulations drive up the cost of housing.
What are we left with? Refugee camps?
Yep, before Trump, housing prices never changed and there was no inflation. I bought my first 2,400 sq ft house for $20,000 and sold it fifty years later for $20,000. Then Trump got elected and it was worth $2 million a mere one year later. If only I’d hung on to it, I’d be a rich man.
Anecdotal bullsh!t
The vast majority go homeless because of repeated dumb decisions. Get that tat or put the money in the bank. Buy a couple of six packs a night or save the money. Etc.
As a small time landlord, I can tell you that the so-called "no-fault eviction", which in reality was nothing more than simply not renewing a lease benefitted tenants much more than landlords.
Tenants find it very difficult, bordering on impossible, to rent a new place if they have an eviction on record, and especially a recent eviction.
If a tenant started doing undesirable things: loud drunken parties, drugs, engaging in prostitution, domestic arguments requiring the police, etc. we would not renew their lease. This got them out but did not require a court finding that their behavior was undesirable.
My state changed the law and made this illegal for me to do, so bad tenants now must go to court and I must present evidence of their misdeeds. No landlord wants to lose a good tenant, there are always costs with a turnover. But they have taken away my ability to get rid of a bad tenant who has the potential to reform if given a sufficient shock.
I’m fortunate. State pays most of my housing costs and I kick in the rent as copayment.
I got evicted from my old apartment due to catastrophic illness. Sometimes its bad luck.
Happens to all of us. I love my new place and I’ve no complaints.
Over a long life, I’ve had a number of friends hit bad times. They moved in with me until they got things back together.
How dysfunctional would a person need to be, to have nobody willing to let him stay over, rather than see him sleep on the sidewalk?
As a single father, I raised 4 kids, put all thru private school and 3 thru college. 3 did well, but the 4th has health problems due to drug use, not well in the head, irresponsible and lazy. He is in and out of homelessness.
So basically the main cause of homelessness is the investor trying to maximize profit from his investment. Greedy bastards. /sarcoff/
Most of the time it’s drugs and/or alcohol.
#1 Methamphetamine
Poor life choices.
Finally the low end jobs just don't pay enough to live on. 30-40 years of massive immigration, H1-B Visas and outsourcing of jobs have amounted to massive wage supression.