Homelessness Does Not Begin in Adulthood

If any politician tells you they can eradicate homelessness - E.g. Los Angeles' losing Mayoral candidate Rick Caruso - don’t vote for them because they can’t. They can forcefully move people out of your city, like San Francisco's city officials preparing for the 2016 Super Bowl, but they can’t eradicate homelessness.?

You see, homelessness begins in childhood, not adulthood. Homelessness begins in poverty, in areas of low educational attainment, in the projects of Chicago and the mountain ranges of Appalachia, in food desserts, in areas with high crime rates, and in homes riddled with physical, verbal and sexual abuse.?Homelessness begins in students who missed Preschool and Kindergarten, in single parent homes, in teens who self medicate, in families destroyed by crack/meth/heroin/opioids/weed/alcohol, and in the big homie that’s the only male "mentor" around. Homelessness begins in taking the easy way out, in succumbing to challenging situations through drugs and violence, in an inability to control anger and rage, in situations that create anger and rage, and in kids who fall through the cracks. Homelessness begins in the child that has to work to support their family, in the 18 year old reading at a 2nd grade level, in the child repeatedly raped by their relative, in the family that turns a blind eye to the rapist relative, and in the fetus born with several deficiencies due to the mother's poor health prior to giving birth.

But we all see homelessness in its adulthood. We see homelessness in the man who drinks himself to sleep on the block, in the woman whose makeup is 12 days old and 5 layers thick, in the begging teen who could pass as an adult but we don't care too much to report it anyways, and in the schizophrenic man that's fighting his invisible opponent on the sidewalk. We see homelessness in those we say made their bed so they lay in it, in those whose bed is underneath the overpass, in those who have committed crimes and can't access any of society's "safety net resources", and in those distant relatives that our families have turned a blind eye to. We see homelessness as consequences of poor decisions, as charity cases not worth charity, as soup kitchen photo opps for comments and likes, and as a choice even though no other options were given.

I believe we marginalize and ostracize homelessness in adulthood because we are ignorant of its inception in childhood. I believe if people became more aware of how the homeless became homeless - and actually gave a shit - then the political promises would focus on peoples first five years of their lives instead of their last five. Going forward, if any politician tells you their aim is to reverse or remove the adverse childhood experiences of traumatic childhoods, vote for them.*

*Well, first, ask them their plan. Second, make sure their plan is doable and something you could become a part of if need be. And third, quickly research what work they have done; if this doesn't match their political history, they're lying.