I know the conservative stance on homelessness is that it’s basically a long-term vacation for the lazy, but that seems a little unlikely so fucking stupid. Posed with this question, I imagine Michelle Bachmann would reason that, “You should never give a homeless person a million dollars because they will probably spend it on drugs,” and Dick Armey would add, “Welfare mothers have already got it too easy without a million of my tax dollars funding their jihads.” (Get it? These wingnuts are crazy and make no sense!) I actually considered this dare for a bit, and ultimately, I settled on very, very NO. Not just for the obvious reasons, which I don’t think I need to enumerate or explain. But also — and maybe mostly? — because our society essentially turns a blind eye toward the homeless, which is not totally unlike giving a tacit thumbs up to the kinds of people who prey on them. And that leads — or at least contributes — to the occurrence of things like this:
[A]dvocates and homeless shelter workers from around the country have received reports of men, women and even children being harassed, kicked, set on fire, beaten to death, and even decapitated. From 1999 through 2007, there have been 774 acts of violence by housed people, resulting in 217 murders of homeless people and 557 victims of non-lethal violence in 235 cities from 45 states and Puerto Rico.
And those are the crimes that were reported, and which the cops took seriously.
Homeless women are particularly at risk:
Thirteen percent of homeless women report having been raped in the past 12 months and half of these were raped at least twice. In yet another study, 9% of homeless women reported at least one experience of sexual victimization in the last month. Women who do not have children with them are at particularly high risk for sexual violence after the age of 18, in part because they are more likely to sleep outside than are women with children. Also disturbing is the finding that compared to their low-income housed counterparts, the sexual assault experiences of homeless women are more likely to be violent, and to include multiple sex acts.
And again, you have to know that there is likely some serious underreporting going on here.
I’m not sure what else to add, since the answer seems obvious to me. This is about a lot more than just not having four walls and a roof to keep out the rain. So, no for me, since I have the choice.
