Posted on 12/28/2019 5:28:31 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Common life events that can cause homelessness
Youve heard it before: the root cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing.
Thats still true. However, anyone can become homeless. Setting aside the structural factors and systemic failures, here are the most common individual causes of homelessness.
Because this is a more personal look at the subject, Ive included examples of someone who became homeless in these various ways.
Eviction or Foreclosure
Unsurprisingly, losing your home can result in homelessness. It did for William when he lost his Detroit home to foreclosure in 2007 while undergoing treatment for colon cancer. Its a huge change, and with the limited notice youre sometimes given, its incredibly difficult to scrape together enough money for a security deposit along with first and last months rent. Rosalind is one such person who was evicted from her apartment and subsequently became homeless. That was four years ago now.
With housing prices rising across the country, many find themselves suddenly priced out of an apartment theyve rented for years. Without the extra funds when prices increase by 50, 100, or even 200 percent, people must prepare for eviction.
Even worse, you may not even be given the option of paying ridiculously inflated rent. Your landlord may just decide to kick you out in order to sell the property for a hefty price. Or, he may turn your unit into a more lucrative, short-term vacation rental. This increase in malicious evictions is what led the UK government to ban no-fault evictions, though many individuals and families who became homeless as a result of these evictions in previous years are still without housing.
(Excerpt) Read more at invisiblepeople.tv ...
Poor life choices.
Finally the low end jobs just don't pay enough to live on. 30-40 years of massive immigration, H1-B Visas and outsourcing of jobs have amounted to massive wage supression.
In the old days, you could buy a home with a low monthly payment.
Those are as good as gone and no point to being locked into owning a home where youll never get the mortgage paid off.
And leftist politics exacerbate the problem.
common theme with homelessness is a bad rental history... More then half the people who are homeless can not get into housing because they have bad rental histories. I am poor but own my home. to help pat the bill I rent out a room. I have gotten three room mates over the years by advertising a room for rent on Craig’s list. 3/4 of those answering my ad are people that cant get into a place because if a background check is done there are issues big time that keep them from being rented to by a rental agencies. when I rent out a room to someone I take a risk that they will move in and stop paying rent. the cost of an eviction is about 750-1250 in court fees and can take up tp 3 months to do longer if the person has a child living with them. this makes it so people don’t want to rent. if you want low income rentals you need at will evictions that are enforced with the home owner being able evict with only a two week notice if there is no contract written.
Im the youngest of the older people in my building but getting three meals a day, having a place to relax and enjoy life for a change - cant put a price tag on it.
I absolutely hated life in a nursing home so this is exactly the change I wanted - to live life on my own terms.
I understand homelessness but it angers me that liberals think there is something wrong with rent increases. I am dropping increases at the post office tomorrow and they are
pretty large. Our rents have been below market rate for awhile. Also what is wrong with selling a building?
Landlords have to keep a building forever?
So glad to hear that. Electricians and mechanics are the backbone of civilization. Or the musculature... anyway- important.
Bet he makes more in the private sector than a utility man though.
Of course the mechanical/electrical trades haven’t suffered as much from the influx of women as other fields. As the media constantly complain.
You’re terrific.
Would have been better for you if you made 50% more though.
No.
If its not public housing you can charge what the market will bear.
Only issue is whether your rent hikes will make up for the loss of tenants.
My wife being able to stay home and educate my children was worth far more than money.
I’m in Oregon. Landlords are being driven from investment properties because of rent control. System development fees stifle new building. And I don’t think requiring solar panels on new construction is going to help anyone except the solar panel manufacturers and installers.
That why we don’t invest in California.
So much more! Known laborers who have done amazing things to keep their children out of the public schools.
To return to my point here...
In the Sixties, when the youngest went to High School, my Mother took a job and we instantly went from lower middles class to upper middle class.
Families today are much less blessed.
>> Its truly incredible how many poor people are tatted up and have cell phones.
I have a dentist friend who volunteers in a church free clinic. Stories:
1/ Young gal having cavities filled is squirming all over the place in the chair. “Are you all right, miss?” he asks. The answer: “Yeah - I just got a $500 tattoo on my back and it itches like all get out”.
2/ Guy having tooth pulled: “Glad to get this done before we go on our cruise next week”. When he sees the doc frowning at him he says “Oh, we didn’t pay for it - we won it.” And after a long pause: “In a casino”.
I would say that is the secondary.
The tertiary is not taking care of people who can not, not will not but can not, care for themselves.
The primary is the government attempting to keep people homeless by making it easier for them to be homeless. The government also removes the cheapest and easiest housing solutions by declaring them "sub standard".
It was not that long ago that ten or fifteen people might live together in a old multi bedroom house. The owner charged a small rent for a semi-private room and the borders got two meals a day included.
The government shut down these boarding houses by passing ordinances that no more then four people not related by blood or marriage could live together in the same house.
So renting out rooms when things got tight became illegal and not only the would be borders no longer had any place to live but without the income the owners were forced to sell.
Homelessness is not that easy to pigeonhole. It can happen to hard-working, sober people. I have seen it several times.
there are the truly destitute, usually mentally ill and with poor judgment. and there are the grifters.
As a landlord for 20 years, I found the problems were primarily car troubles and layoffs from work. Both of these require savings to solve and at this income level, it is practically impossible to build up any reserves. So if they dont pay, they dont stay...
I remember about ten years ago, a hurricane hit the north east and seeing a man, roughly 55 years old, being interviewed going into a storm shelter. Of course he gave the "woe is me" routine, and got sympathetic response from the "reporter".
It struck me, you've lived more than a half a century, and in all this time you are neither able to provide shelter (this was in an upland location in an urban area) for yourself, or have established relationships of any kind that you can turn to in a life endangering situation. No family, no friends, no employer, no church, no neighbors. Demonstrably, everyone who knew this man would rather he risk death than inviting him into their home for one night.
Not having known this fellow, I do feel comfortable in saying with one hundred percent certainty, he is a horrible, horrible person who society would be so much better if the storm sent him to his final reward.
Family made sure everyone didnt live under a bridge if they were managable.
Crazies roamed the country side until compassion took hold and the state mental hosptial systems were developed.
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