They’re gentrifying the downtown of where I live, so all of a sudden homelessness is a problem. It’s always been a problem but now because of tourist and northerners buyin up properties, there’s a focus on them. Cause of my current job, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of these homeless people and speak with them.
A lot of them like living on the streets, they like living the way they do. They like the hustle of day to day shit. They like stealing shit, they like begging, they become a part of the community in a strange way. “That’s old Ralph right there, he sleeps at the old bank and collects bottle caps”..they be digging the sense of Identity.
And when it was real cold, the city made warming centers but there were rules so a lot of them chose to sleep in the freezing cold, than be told what to do, even if the rules were reasonable. At the same time I know people that have been in the homless shelter and they fought like hell to come up and not be homeless.
How do you fix a problem when the unpolitically correct way to explain it is, a lot of these people that stay homeless..wanna be. What can you do? I mean when you leave em to their own devices, their encampments become rampant with drugs and sexual assault. So you can’t just let them rock and victimize each other.
Cause they get too comfortable with that and they might victimize someone’s mom or daughter coming home late on a bus. Shits…when you see and hear the shit that ain’t shit to empathetic about..I mean, one was really explaining wit joy how good he can beg these rich white tourist for money. He was proud and I just felt for him.
Like brotha, there’s so much more than that shit, but…some shit you can’t fix