This is one big root of the problem. There are very few resources that someone falling into homelessness can lean on, that are not their friends/family.
People who have that safety net can spend a few weeks or months crashing on couches until they get their housing situation sorted out. People who, for whatever reason, don't, are the ones trying to hold a job while living out of a car, and one bad encounter with the police can cause them to lose that job.
And once you fall into the same strata as the chronic homeless, it is almost impossible to crawl out of it.
If you want to reduce the number of chronic homeless give years from now, we need services for the temporary homeless, today. If you're getting kicked out of your apartment next Tuesday, and have nobody you can lean on, what you need is four walls and a roof so that you don't land on the street.
Neither section 8 housing, nor the current shelter system supply that. Especially if you're a man, or are queer, or, or, or...
People who have that safety net can spend a few weeks or months crashing on couches until they get their housing situation sorted out. People who, for whatever reason, don't, are the ones trying to hold a job while living out of a car, and one bad encounter with the police can cause them to lose that job.
And once you fall into the same strata as the chronic homeless, it is almost impossible to crawl out of it.
If you want to reduce the number of chronic homeless give years from now, we need services for the temporary homeless, today. If you're getting kicked out of your apartment next Tuesday, and have nobody you can lean on, what you need is four walls and a roof so that you don't land on the street.
Neither section 8 housing, nor the current shelter system supply that. Especially if you're a man, or are queer, or, or, or...