It is absolutely a choice, both on the individual and community level. Some individuals (after consulting their trusted subject domain experts) even choose to give their children the opportunity to suffer from Meningitis and other serious illnesses.
Until a society arrives at a consensus in which a sufficiently large quantity of individuals with access to sufficient resources are obligated to offer free housing and other benefits to everyone, that society has implicitly chosen to accept the existence of a population of individuals who live in tents alongside sidewalks.
>It is absolutely a choice, both on the individual and community level.
Eviction, the gateway to homelessness, is in no way a choice. Inability to accumulate, pay or borrow capital is so seldom a choice, the word is effectively meaningless in the context.
>Until a society arrives at a consensus in which a sufficiently large quantity of individuals with access to sufficient resources are obligated to offer free housing and other benefits to everyone, that society has implicitly chosen to accept the existence of a population of individuals who live in tents alongside sidewalks.
That is true, but it has to be said it totally contradicts your first point, because sufficient and sweeping redistribution of housing and housing capital is the answer to nothing but the coercive suffering felt by those who lack capital, not the answer to some alleged "choice" taken by the sufferers.
> It is absolutely a choice, both on the individual and community level.
You are correct. I'm one of the few people who actually deliberately chose to be homeless, but I was a rarity. Even so, most of the people who wind up homeless have made one or more decisions that led them to their current state. They made a choice among the options they (thought they) had. A few, like me, were making a lifestyle choice. Most of them just made a bad choice.
> Until a society arrives at a consensus in which a sufficiently large quantity of individuals with access to sufficient resources are obligated to offer free housing and other benefits to everyone, that society has implicitly chosen to accept the existence of a population of individuals who live in tents alongside sidewalks.
Again, you're correct. In Utah they are building houses and giving them to homeless people.
In SF we spent about a quarter of a billion dollars (~$250,000,000) on homelessness last year, and we only have at most about ten thousand homeless people. Most of them would really like some better choices. Not just for housing but also for jobs (a lot of people I met on the street were willing to work if they could.)
So, to answer your question from above, that's what makes it dystopian: we as a city are willing and we have the resources, but we're just failing.
Until a society arrives at a consensus in which a sufficiently large quantity of individuals with access to sufficient resources are obligated to offer free housing and other benefits to everyone, that society has implicitly chosen to accept the existence of a population of individuals who live in tents alongside sidewalks.