Americans, even if they know otherwise, take comfort in feeling like they live in a meritocracy, and that while there are problems, things will eventually work out for good people. So it’s easy to dismiss the idea of offering help to the country’s half a million or so homeless. Even if we think of ourselves as humane and liberal-minded, we might find some part of our minds categorizes homeless people as having messed up somehow and brought their condition upon themselves. Maybe they didn’t work hard enough. People who consciously identify with this view love to cite studies claiming that it's possible to make surprisingly large amounts of money panhandling, the implication being, I guess, that they are making a sacrifice by not living on the street.
This is, by and large, wrong. The vast majority of people without a place to stay on a given American night are not devious moochers who have rejected the Protestant work ethic, but regular people who are temporarily going through a hard time. Only about 15 percent of the homeless population are long-term, “chronically homeless." Additionally, about 43% of homeless people have jobs. Even if one is able to make a decent living while homeless, either conventionally or by panhandling, that doesn't mean it's desirable-for one thing, it means you're 35 times more likely to suffer sexual assault or other forms of violence.
Even if we, as a society, decide we don’t really care about the homeless and don’t have any responsibility to help them, we ought to anyway for pragmatic reasons because our huge homeless population is costing us money. Illnesses leading to, caused, or exacerbated by homelessness and left untreated for long periods of time mean that a homeless patient in a hospital is likely to stay longer than a non-homeless person. A homeless person is also more likely to spend time in a psychiatric hospital or jail, which leads to further expenses. A study by the University of Texas study found that every homeless person costs taxpayers 14,480$ a year.
Shelters are not a viable solution to this problem, either. Not only do they not guarantee an improved quality of life for their residents-those in shelters are often sent out very early in the morning, giving them little time to sleep-they are still costly. Grants to shelters cost at least 8,000$ more than housing subsidies. It would actually be cheaper to help homeless people pay the rent for one of America’s many unoccupied residences than to let them remain on the street.
Even if you’re a reasonable, decent person and don’t have an active hatred for the homeless, it’s still a problem you may not spend much time thinking about. If you do think it would be nice to help the homeless, the reality of doing so, much like the reality of nearly anything else, may not be what you expect it to. If you pass out change or lunches or volunteer at a soup kitchen, you may not have a romantic experience of receiving gratitude from a serene, Jesus-y beggar. The fact is homelessness in America is not being sufficiently addressed because it is not seen as profitable, glamorous, or fun to do so. If you interact with a homeless person in your city, it may be a pleasant, rewarding experience. It’s also possible the person in question might be irritable, incoherent, suspicious or ungrateful due to a mixture of lack of sleep, hunger, shame, and/or untreated mental illness. We shouldn’t punish people for not living up to our bourgeois fantasies of cheerful, content vagabonds who have gained some kind of special wisdom about the meaning of life from poverty.
LGBTQ people, people of color, and the mentally ill are present in way bigger proportions among the homeless population. If these are issues that concern you, this should be, too. It’s easy for us to pick one particular cause, like a favorite Marvel superhero or flavor of ice cream, that we talk about with friends and post memes about on Facebook because it’s “our thing” and promotes our identity. However, in the end, all causes are connected in the human cause, the cause for greater compassion.
