Homeless People are Problem People

The common media would have us feel sorry for homeless people. If you Google news “homeless”, you’ll see all sorts of ‘Boo Hoo’ stories about this ‘problem’ called homelessness. The problem? Is homelessness in itself a problem or it is just a collection of ‘problem people’ (people with severe problems) that make up the collective problem of homelessness. I think the latter.

Consider the the homeless man who stabbed a woman to death, the homeless man who used the church phone for a sex line, the homeless cop killer, the homeless brutal rapist, And of course, the homeless sex offenders. These are just a few recent stories.

It’s true that you can take any group of people and find criminal elements among them. However, homeless people have at least their share. Even the famous “homeless guy” Kevin Barbieux, admits that most homeless people have some form of dehabilitating and/or sociopathic mental illness. So homeless people are not necessarily going to be docile and harmless.

At the same time, the ‘problem’ is not going away any time soon. Most so called solutions try to fix the problem from the outside (more housing, housing vouchers, free meals, etc) rather than from the inside (helping to fix the ‘problem people’ by getting them to become self sufficient).