You know, guys, being homeless isn't that bad. If you have a means to scavenge or hunt food and maybe a beater car or something you can get by alright. I mean, yeah, it sucks pretty hard, but it's not the end of the world. I'd certainly rather leave myself to the elements than commit crime for a roof over my head.
Are you kidding me? Why don't you go try it?
You don't think it's "that bad" to have to
scavenge for food and not have a place to even sleep that isn't exposed to the elements? Before you say you'd rather sleep outside every night, not have a place to bathe, and have to scavenge for food, you should probably consider what it would be like to actually have to do that for a year, and what that would mean to you.
The life expectancy of someone in LA County, for example, is 62% that of the general population. You think there aren't reasons for that? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they have terrible nutrition, next to no health care, are constantly overexposed, and are subject to disease and crime. I've heard an interview on the radio with a man who runs a mobile medical service for the homeless (I forget which city), and these are people who can't even get the kind of medical care that
most people with no health insurance get, and that's not much.
From that site that was linked:
I spent nearly five years, from mid-1996 to the beginning of 2001, homeless, or as I liked to call it with a distributed household. I had storage, shelter, mailbox, telephone, shower, bathroom facilities, cooking equipment, and transportation, even access to television, radio, computer equipment, and ac power. I had the essence of a home. It was simply more geographically scattered than is traditional in our culture.
This is by no means what "homelessness" is to the majority of homeless. Most homeless do not have the opportunity to have those things. I admit that "homeless" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and that there's a difference between the homeless out on the street and your traditional "hobo", but to say that homelessness "isn't a big deal" is completely ridiculous. Maybe you ought to try thinking from another's perspective before talking about how you'd rather sleep out on the street in the middle of winter and dig for food out of trash cans than steal a few bucks from some corporate-owned business... people don't do that kind of thing unless they really have to, and at that point it's a matter of survival. I've seen people like that and I'm at least vaguely aware of what it does to them, and it's pretty disastrous. I'm not exactly a fan of crime, but I absolutely would not blame someone in such a situation if they had to resort to it in order to get themselves fed or clothed or off the street for the night, and I at least try not to be so arrogant or presumptuous as to think that I wouldn't do the same.
Author
Topic: American man robbed a bank for $1 so he could go to jail and get health care (Read 32119 times)