Christmas thought on 'experiencing homelessness'

What about homelessness and the explosion thereof in the recent decades? Yes, it predates Trump. Contemporary mention, and the beginnings of the stoplight beggars, came in the late 1970’s when the economy was suffering double digit inflation and became a staple news item during the early 1980s. One thing you see mentioned often is the change in hospitalization/confinement protocols for the seriously mentally ill, but that doesn’t even begin to address the large numbers of homeless we see creating tent villages in major U.S. cities.

But an explanation for the rise of homelessness I hear often is that there is a housing shortage, by which they mean an affordable housing shortage. Various reasons are cited for this, including heavy regulation that drives building costs up, zoning and use prohibitions, rent control that discourages additional rental space, and an unstable relationship between earnings, the housing rental and sale market, and mortgage rates.

It's also not clear to me how, in an environment of a housing shortage, adding some 8+ million people through an open southern border is appropriate.

One thing of note in the lexicon du jour is descriptions of the homeless as people ‘experiencing homelessness’ that strips the subjects thereof of any personal agency in a manner similar to how the use of the term ‘opioid epidemic’ removes instrumentality from the individual addicts. Much the same operates from using the phrase ‘gun violence’ that attempts to shift responsibility from the wielder to the instrument.

This is expressly not meant to diminish the difficulties individuals face when trying to overcome a serious drug habit or flat broke down and out homelessness. To quote an NIH site Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Updated 2019 [Internet].

Motivation is a critical element of behavior change (Flannery, 2017) that predicts client abstinence and reductions in substance use (DiClemente et al., 2017). You cannot give clients motivation, but you can help them identify their reasons and need for change and facilitate planning for change.

Devaluing the individual’s contribution to changing their situation does not help them.

As of now it seems the political climate is unlikely or unable to alleviate the situation.