What Helps The Homeless

The need to have paperwork in order to legally get work, pay your taxes and generally function as part of the economy is a relatively recent issue. As little as a few decades back, this was not an ubiquitous need to function in society. One of the most common problems homeless people have is that they lose their ID and birth certificate. They can face significant barriers to getting new documentation. This becomes a substantial barrier to getting their life back. Some homeless people are like illegal aliens within their own country. They have no ID and this is a barrier to getting a job, accessing benefits they are due and generally connecting with society. In this Reddit discussion: How to get an I.D if you never got a birth certificate or S.S number? the OP says: It was a home birth and I was home schooled growing up. Parents never took me a to a doctor either during my childhood. There is a long comment by another Redditor that spells out how this can happen and how probl...

Most homeless people are not simply poor, they are people whose lives have come unraveled. This is not something that happens simply because you lost your job or even because you drink too much. The fabric of their lives has come undone and a large piece of that is the social fabric. Lots of people have some sort of personal crisis without ending up on the street. For example, you can lose your job and not wind up homeless because your spouse has a job or family takes you in until you can get back on your feet. People who are homeless are people who have not just run out of money, but have also run out of all of those kinds of options as well. In fact, hard to solve social problems are often a root cause of homelessness. Some people wind up homeless because they are fleeing an abusive situation, and they have nowhere else to go. So, this isn't necessarily a case of someone being difficult themselves and wearing out their welcome with all of their friends and relatives. Some peop...