The homeless are still humans

People tend to be afraid of what of what they don’t know or understand, and it can be really hard to understand why people end up homeless. Because of this fear, people either look down upon those on the streets, or flat out ignore them altogether. However, society has ignored the homeless for too long, and we must accept them first as humans if we are ever going to help them. In this blog post, we will go over why people land into homelessness, why it isn’t entirely there fault, and what you can do to help others not misinterpret the homeless.

They are just like us

Many people believe that homelessness is someones “fault.” However, after months of being on the field and speaking to real people experiencing homelessness, I can say that a lot of the time, becoming homeless is just bad luck. Now of course there are factors in play that one could control, but for a lot of the time, people just get unlucky. Think of all the people living paycheck to paycheck in this country. What happens if they loose their job? What if they can’t find another job? Many people on the streets faced this same dilemma, had no backup plan, and was forced to live on the streets.

So now you know that people don’t have as much control as one would think when entering homelessness. But how do we end stereotypes that homelessness is a “choice.”

The best way to end any stereotype is to get to know the group of people you are stereotyping. Ill admit that prior to working with the homeless, I thought that people who were homeless just didn’t want to work. However as mentioned above on my new perspective, my opinion changed when I saw what was really happening. If we could only share these stories and these experiences, then we can end this stereotype around homelessness and treat them humanely.