Ending the Homeless Lifestyle

That’s exactly what homelessness is for most people on the street, a lifestyle. Much like any other lifestyle, the homeless lifestyle has a negative aspect that can and in most cases, does entangle people. In some of those cases, for a very long time. In a way, the homeless lifestyle can be considered an addiction. Like all addictions, whether mental or physical, the homeless lifestyle is not broken nor left behind without a lot of effort and pain.

One common misconception is that if you take the homeless person out of the homeless environment and place them in an environment that is closer to what is considered “normal” then the problem or addiction will solve itself. Just like trying to keep alcohol away from an alcoholic does not cure alcoholism, keeping a homeless person away from the streets does not cure that person’s homelessness.

Each homeless person is homeless for a reason. Financial problems, problems with family, problems with keeping a job, addictions and other issues contribute to that person becoming and embracing the homeless lifestyle.

Personally, I like using the addiction example because in order to eliminate an active addiction one must eliminate or at least have an active plan to fix the underlying problems that the addiction is covering up.

I fought alcoholism and failed many times before I really knew that I had to address all my issues. I’d fought my homelessness with the same lack of success. An alcoholic cannot just stop, nor can a homeless person just stop being homeless. There’s much more to a persons homeless problems than just getting them off the street and into housing or just giving them some sort of income and expect them to fix themselves. That is the path to failure.

In my case, I had to deal with alcoholism, drug abuse and a whole host of personal issues that were preventing me from dealing with any of my deeper issues. These were the very same issues that were either directly or indirectly keeping me homeless. Which meant that I had to deal with them all and not just a few of the easier issues before I could even consider making whatever changes necessary to get me out of this camp and my homeless situation. Not an easy proposition, nor something that would be accomplished overnight. I’ve been at it for more than 5 years and only just now can I see any daylight at the end of the tunnel. That’s not to say that I am completely ready to leave my homeless lifestyle but if I had the opportunity to make the change today I would have a better, if fact almost certain, chance to succeed.

The reason I bring this up is that by getting a homeless person into a home or apartment, by providing them with an income either from a job or some sort of assistance, will not break that person’s homeless cycle. It is almost a certainty that without dealing with the underlying issues that caused that person to adopt the homeless lifestyle in the first place, he or she will certainly fail and return to the street.

We are all unique, complex individuals and there is no one size fits all solution to our homelessness problem. My solution will not work for anybody else. The only thing we have in common is that it takes time. A lot of time. All of us require something different in the way of treatment, help or education to eliminate our personal addiction to homelessness before the housing and income issues can be addressed.