Homelessness & the stigmatization of poverty

Almost on all of our city’s streets you can see them, weathering the dangerous elements as they eat, sleep and exist. Despite their pervasiveness, those who are homeless remain largely invisible to the general population. It’s a skill fine-tuned for years, wherein we learn to automatically tune out their existence; noticing only when they come too close or act a little too excitable for our liking.

This fear towards the homeless is fostered and carried around with us daily. For many, street dwellers represent a nagging reminder that failure in today’s economy can see one’s home situation changing very quickly. Sharpening this fear with their own insecurities, the homeless are labelled as dangerous threats. By selling this worn narrative that aims to demonize those who are homeless, we make it easier on ourselves to believe that once we do not make the same mistakes they did, we will be safe from the crippling woes of poverty.

The ways in which we talk and write about the homeless indicates how we view them as lesser than. Conversations surrounding them almost exclusively focus on how much of a nuisance they are thought to be. There is this limited belief that those who are homeless are there because of their own personal failings. Surely, they must have done something or ruined their life in some way to end up living under such circumstances… There is the frequent questioning as to why seemingly able-bodied persons cannot work and pull themselves out of their poverty. They are branded as lazy and content with their lives. This view purports that those who are poor and homeless deserve to live the way that they do as it all comes down to individual error and failure. This is a required myth that seeks to place the blame on the lone individual rather than systemic limitations that serve to disenfranchise them.

Our latent fear towards the homeless often develops into outright hatred towards them. They are branded as a problem that needs to be aggressively clamped down on.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if plans targeting homelessness were focused on ensuring access to housing and economic opportunities rather than criminalizing those who are poor?

Instead of addressing that the cause of homelessness directly stems from unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities, the conversation never moves past the view that the homeless themselves are the problem. In acknowledging that the cause of homelessness is due to our current economic system that enables and promotes inequality in the face of blatant wealth, we would begin to see that the homeless are not the ones who deserve our hate.

Those engaged in the art of moral superiority often seek to cast all homeless persons into the group of mentally ill drug users. While it is acknowledged that mental illness and substance use among people in poverty is high, reducing them to their illnesses and behaviours further dispossesses them. Substance use and mental illness amongst our poorest is not that starkly different from their housed counterparts, nor does it exonerate the state or society from their failure to care and provide for them.

The reasons for homelessness do not lie in the worn narratives of substance abuse, mental illness or the supposed laziness of the homeless. The fact is that persons cannot afford housing, how they got to that stage should not be the only issue constantly rehashed. Homelessness is not some chance accident, it is structurally mandated due to economic inequality, making it very hard for persons to be able to afford housing and proper healthcare.

With every citizen born into the role of a consumer, their life according to capitalist tenets must be lived to satisfy their purpose of being good and productive members of society. In hoisting up a strict merit-based system where inefficiency is quickly and effectively punished, it is no wonder that poverty is often recast as being virtuous and being the motivator needed to develop and pull oneself up by their bootstraps. Personal willpower is not by any longshot the only thing needed to lift someone out of poverty. We live in a world filled with structural barriers that disproportionally affects minority citizens, limiting their chance of ever escaping poverty - particularly if adequate community and state support is not provided.

Even those who want to pursue the ideal of working their way up are faced with barriers that the average citizen might not consider to be such. Small but standard requirements to gain jobs such as simple baths and clean clothes are often unavailable to these persons. Those who do secure some sort of employment rarely make anything substantial enough to lift them from their situation. Added to that is the fact that we still retain many colonial era laws that severely limit the rights and protections of many minority groups, including the homeless. Many vagrancy laws and policies perpetuate stigmatization and discrimination against these vulnerable groups. Many homeless persons are frequently imprisoned for the simple act of existing in a space; particularly if that space happens to be close/nearby businesses. In this society, it really does cost to be poor.