Homelessness decreases life expectancy. Poverty is a death sentence.

in #homeless5 years ago

The chances that you will outlive me are about three to one. You see, life expectancy is decreased for people who live outside. We will likely die in our forties or fifties. Where people who live inside live to be in their seventies.

It’s been difficult to research this topic. I have had to come to terms with some uncomfortable realities, and this while already being homeless.



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I had read before that homeless people have a shorter life expectancy. I knew it someplace in the back of my mind that I was going to have a shorter life because of my choices, but I hadn’t really reflected on the fact that I won’t be able to enjoy as much time with my daughter, and potentially my grandchildren.

This time around that reality set in. I have been homeless throughout my life at different points, beginning when I was a kid living with my biracial parents and siblings in the Arizona desert. This time around it’s largely by choice, I have options. I just understand that the liberty I gain through these choices free up my hands and mind to be in pursuit of the work this world is calling many of us to do. Fighting back against the oligarchy and it’s machine of ignorance with a voice of descent. That and enjoy as much time with the people I love as I possibly can.

It’s a choice to a certain extent. I am living in extreme poverty, and in a part of the country which has been rapidly raising the rent. So even with money and credit, it is still difficult to afford the high cost of living here in Oregon. Having a long history of homelessness makes landlords hesitant to sign contracts with the chronically homeless. Same with employers. It’s difficult to find places to work or live. Again, I am fortunate to have somewhat of my mental capacity still in tact, and stay away from alcohol and drugs. I am able bodied and have a lot of mental snap. Still it’s difficult to cope with the challenges of outside life.



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Living outside causes a decrease in life expectancy for many reasons, chief among them increases in the levels of cortisol in the body. Living outside means just about never having a sense of security, this leads to a constant fight or flight response.

There is a physical response in the body to not having a home. In terms of psychiatry Maslow’s hierarchy of need goes almost completely unmet when you are homeless, unless you are relentless in your pursuits you will be unable to meet at least a portion of your life essentials.

Living outside means you don’t have running water and electricity. Living outside means food storage is very difficult, you constantly face eviction and being forced to pick up your camp and leave. This leads either to enormous amounts of waste or a very light lifestyle where you can pick up EVERYTHING and leave at a moments notice. Because of these realities unhoused people often don’t have the ability to cook for themselves, or keep a kitchen. That means that all of the food we eat is either prepared by churches, soup kitchens, or restaurants. Eating out all of the time is very expensive, eating out is also unhealthy. Soup kitchens are often serving food that has come directly from hospitals or prisons. The quality is not good. Eating an unhealthy diet and living in uncertainty of where your next meal will come from is very stressful, and the federal government has restrictions on how long you can receive food stamps without working. This policy leads to unhoused people having their food subsidies taken away, because it’s difficult to find a job as a homeless person. After all who wants to hire someone who may not show up to due to being taken into custody during the night, for not having a place to legally sleep.

A trend which has been emerging in the USA is a criminalization of feeding the poor, so organizations who once helped the people who had previously lost access to food stamps are now being fined and punished for their works at aiding the less fortunate. This trend has been dramatically exposed in Tampa Florida where a 94 year old man was repeatedly arrested for feeding the homeless. All across the country there are laws being created, AND ENFORCED, which criminalize sharing food. Whether it’s Los Angeles or Las Vegas there are fines being handed out and prosecutors are showing their bias against the poor by punishing organizations who provide the bare essentials to the needy.





Police and legislators along with the aid of prosecutors offices are colluding to attack the poor. One of the laws created to harm the poor outlaws begging. In order to prevent people from helping the destitute cities and counties will outlaw the transfer of items from vehicles to individuals.**

This is done to prevent roadside begging. It doesn’t really stop people from helping if they are genuinely interested in helping a poverty stricken person. What it does do is give law enforcement a right to ticket the individuals who are actively helping or asking for help. You can imagine that a person holding a piece of cardboard on the roadside is in pretty dire straights to be begging. The last thing that person needs is an additional fine or bill. These laws do create extra safety, in so far as individuals could be run over, or wreck into each other when there are distracted drivers. But reflect for a moment on the statement our society is making with these sorts of laws, that we would rather punish the people who need help, and those who are helping than to stand aside and let the kindness of strangers uplift those who are down and out.



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In places like Columbia SC, and Wooster MA the very existence of a person without a home can be considered a crime. They create “incentives” for people to go into shelter. Those incentives come in the form of fines or jail time for the homeless who decline the “offer” of shelter.

These cities lack the actual bed space for the homeless who live in their municipalities, still they have created laws which cause the very condition of homelessness to be a cause for jail time or fines. It is similar here where I live in Corvallis OR, where the law says that using a blanket or tarp is cause for citation. Further the law here makes it a crime to cook. So a person who lives outside can be cited for the act of cooking out, an act which fans of the Oregon State Beavers do on a weekly basis at tailgate parties all across campus.



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The reality for many homefree people is that they don’t want to be in shelter spaces, even when there is room, which there is an enormous shortfall where shelter beds are concerned. For me I went to shelter last winter, it was an easy choice.

The shelter here is what is known as a low barrier shelter. This means that you can arrive drunk or stoned. They don’t turn people away based on their ability to stay sober or clean. This is the best sort of shelter in my opinion. Many people lack the basic health needed to walk miles with their packs on, I can haul myself and my gear out of town to a safe location if push comes to shove, but many of the homeless are disabled or handicapped. Many also struggle with substance abuse. When organizations create barriers to shelter the suffering increases.

My reason for leaving the shelter was to do with racism and bigotry. There are a lot of white supremacists in Oregon, and the skinheads bully people in the shelter. I faced down a guy who wanted to fight me, but I was definitely shaken. The fact that the shelter staff stood by let me know that they were ultimately willing to wait and watch while a violent person threatened me with a beating. I lost faith in the good intentions of the shelter providers at that point.

Among the reasons there are not enough shelter spaces for the ever growing number of homeless people is a lack of funding. The organizations who create these spaces are often operating on a shoestring. When they lose state or federal funding it can mean the difference between expanding coverage to help even more endangered people, or losing bed spaces. In Seattle WA the county has benchmarks they set for their shelters to transition homeless into homes, when the organizations fail to meet these benchmarks the county is supposed to cut their funding. This stick instead of carrot approach to improving outcomes seems to be both mean spirited and cruel. Especially in a nation where such a disproportionate amount of our budget is spent on war.



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In Eugene OR over ⅓ of all police stops are of people who have no residence. The charges brought against these individuals are by and large charges with no real victim. They are nonviolent crimes of need. Whether it’s trespassing or disorderly conduct the tickets which are given to the homeless in Eugene are generally not going to change the behavior of the person, especially the camping tickets.

You simply cannot arrest a person out of homelessness. They will still need to camp once they are released from jail, all that has happened is that the person arrested for camping has been robbed of their dignity, while the municipality isn’t actually creating change for the community. It costs the courts, the police, the jail, and the individual with no tangible benefit.

If I had to sum up the failure of law enforcement and prosecutors to address homelessness it would be best embodied by the city of Eugene. They spend hundreds of thousands if not millions to prosecute a legal war against the condition of homelessness, rather than taking the same money and creating low income shelter that is safe, legal and accessible.



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There has been a trend emerging in the steady attack on the homeless, the use of hostile architecture. Whether it’s homeless spikes on ledges, or rocks cemented in places of shelter. The use of hostile architecture is on the rise. I see it all over the place. In Eugene the city has placed planters in places where homeless once were able to sit.

The city has also put miniature fences along benches in the downtown area, benches that were actually designed and built to make downtown more welcoming during the time when Broadway was a pedestrian mall. Hostile architecture is society saying we don’t have money to address the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, so instead we will further marginalize those who have no place to be by creating actual pain for them if they should chose to remain. This trend is best embodied by the sprinkler system built by a local company in San Francisco, this company built a sprinkler into their awning with the intention of drenching anyone who was so unfortunate as to choose “their” portion of sidewalk as a temporary shelter.



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Property ownership is a baseline for rights in our society, whether we acknowledge it or not, those who don’t own land have fewer rights, and face more attacks by law enforcement. The fact that the vast majority of people in the USA are one paycheck away from homelessness isn’t lost on me.

But somehow our society has been led to dehumanize the homeless. It is my gut feeling that the homeless it the USA are just a few short months or years away from being rounded up and killed. I understand only too well how the process works. At this very moment the homeless of the nation are being characterized by media and politics as an unwashed and diseased mass of humanity who refuse to even look out for themselves. The irony of this dehumanization is not lost on me in the face of the Paradise fire, where so many upright citizens have now found themselves among the countless and uncared for masses of the homeless. The direction things are going, where sitting, standing, laying, eating, sleeping, or praying are all considered criminal acts for the homeless lets you know how close we are to being considered better off dead. It’s a dark way to end this post I know, but with all of that said, I will see you in the streets.



Thanks for reading this far!


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Very eye opening perspective. The gov can manipulate economic statistics like the unemployment rate, but there is no hiding the increase in homelessness everywhere in the last decade. Stay away from fema “help” be safe 🙏

I want to say good luck. Hopefully your situation gets better, and all the people going through this type of stuff merry Christmas and a happy 2019

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