Course D4-100 Homelessness Causes and Solutions 

This course was taught in 2010, and is for the not-so- bright college freshman, curious about the homeless.  A more complicated intro course, for those college freshmen who will be entering the field of dealing with the homeless, is Homeless 101.

Homeless 100, the easy course:

Causes of Homelessness:

1.)  Handicap.  2.)  Poverty.  3.)  Greed.  These are the 3 things that cause people to be homeless.  Of these, which is the fault of the person victimized?  None.

Handicaps fall into two categories, physical and mental.  Physical handicaps occur when someone gets shot up in war, or gets into an auto accident, other accident, suffers from a disease, and many other causes.  Since disability income is not enough to pay rent, being handicapped means being homeless, unless you get donations or have a rich family.

Mental handicaps come in two basic types, classical mental illnesses (bipolar, schizophrenic, etc.), and the other kind of mental disorder, today called substance abuse.  With the closure of most mental health facilities to save money, many of the classic mentally handicapped are out on the streets.  And, once again, disability income isn't enough to pay for rent.

The other mental handicap, substance abuse, comes in the form of cocaine addiction, heroin addiction, alcoholism, addition to amphetamines or barbiturates, or even the sniffing of glue or inhalants.  Often, the person has underlying mental issues, a classic mental illness, and they are trying to "treat" this illness by escape.  Dope makes people feel better, and that makes everything seem temporarily okay.

Do addicts bear some responsibility for their illness?  After all, we do think that they have some hand in their own fate.  The most unusual of the substance addictions is food addicts.  Food is everywhere, 24 hours, and things like anorexia, bulemia, and such, are just as much an addiction as if food were cocaine.

The second cause of homelessness, poverty, has four basic possible components:  No employment, usually due to a poor economy; laziness; a criminal record; or a poor education.  Here, too, it is possible to blame homeless people, maybe, for having some part in their problem.  I can see blaming people for having a criminal record, but even then, they should be able to get some job, right?

The economy and usually education are usually out of the person's control, and having a criminal record might be, too, depending upon the circumstances.  Laziness, of course, is strictly to be blamed upon the person themselves, if applicable.

The third cause of homelessness is greed, and that comes in several flavors:  High housing costs, housing shortages, real estate deals (gentrification and development), and corruption in media and government resulting in unfair housing laws, exaggerations about there not being a problem, payoffs, kickbacks, schemes, and similar.  Not much a homeless person can do about that, nor could they have done something.

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How do we define Homelessness?

A person is homeless if they do not use their own money to pay rent, as an adult, unless their rent is paid for by a spouse.  So, a parent receiving child support payments is, functionally, homeless, unless they are separated as opposed to divorced.  So is an adult child living with parents.   Ditto for aunts, cousins, nephews, etc., who are homeless in any other family than with their parents.  Children do not count, unless their parents are homeless.

   One popular flavor of homelessness is Sex Housing.  This is when a person, usually a female, trades temporary housing for sex.  No, I am not talking about a wife, as there is no relationship at all here.  Her clothing and furniture are all in storage.  Anyone who permanently "lives out of boxes" like this is homeless.  And, something like 99% of all Storage Units represent the belongings of the homeless.  Makes counting the numbers easier, doesn´t it?

     If you compare the numbers of male homeless with female homeless, the difference is due to Sex Housing.  Of course, Gay Sex Housing does skew this number a little, too.  In truth, equal numbers of males and females are homeless.  It is a little easier for some of the females to hide and/or deny it.  We still treat the sexes much differently in the US, even long after the advent of birth control. 

     Many homeless live at illegal campsites in urban or rural canyon areas.  Some areas are actually legal for lodging in permanently, but most are not.  Finding people who are trying to hide from you in a rural area is a challenge, and that is how 60% of the homeless live.  That is made even more challenging, as none of them admit being homeless, either.  I am not homeless.  I live under that pine tree, which is my home. 

How many Homeless are in San Diego?

200,000 is my educated guess, with about 10% admitting same.  Conduct a survey where a man dresses up like a bunny rabbit and looks for all the homeless.  Try very hard to find everybody, and then tabulate the results.  How many homeless, total?  Now, part two of this survey is to ask a sample of the homeless, "Were you counted by the Bunny Rabbit?"

     This gives you an idea of what percentage of your total is really true.  You must also add in the females who represent the Sex Housing.  So, the Bunny Rabbit found 20,000 homeless, and the later survey found that to be 10%.  That was exactly the way I arrived at 200,000 homeless.  Bishop John Schlitz (my alter ego) knows were the secret canyons are, too.  This is Clinical Psychology, not Rocket Science.

     It is not Social Welfare, nor is it Sociology, because these are populations that are actively trying to hide from you.  I used statistical methods taught in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee which are no longer used today, because today we are not interested in the truth.  We are interested in trying to prove whatever the grant donors want. 

     As I say in my first editorial on Homelessness, how much money does a census missing 200,000 hiding people deprive San Diego County out of?  So, there are economic implications that are stark.

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If you paid your dollar to enroll in this course, you also got a lot more info by e-mail, and you should have your first quiz graded by now.  Hope you did well.  I am trying to keep as much as possible a secret from the Internet Gestapo Big Brother Google Corporation, by using the Moscow servers, and new anonymous mailboxes from internet cafes in Tijuana.  You don´t want to be labeled a "Communist Pinko" just for learning the truth!  You will lose your job and become homeless yourself.