Denver

Likely the same misconceptions I had before I became homeless -- All homeless people are drug addicts. They're lazy and choose the "lifestyle". They must have "burned everyone they knew" in order to end up like that. They choose not to work. They're all guilty of a crime so horrible nobody will hire them.

The reality is 180 degrees from what most people think. Most homeless (myself included) don't use drugs at all. Many are disabled. Able-bodied homeless come and go, many of those are back in housing of some sort in 3-6 months (they usually still have a car to sleep in and use for work). Many homeless are orphans, zero family support. Others, like me, are just older and came from small families that are gone.

The fact is the homeless you see are addicts. The homeless you don't notice stay clean and stay hidden. The latter outnumbers the former, and on the whole you wouldn't know they were homeless unless they told you.

I was born in the early 70's, so the whole "work your way out of it -- pull yourself up by the bootstraps" still rings in my ears. But the reality is nobody hires a homeless person. I've taken jobs before the stenosis got bad. As soon as someone found out I was homeless (someone always does), that was it. "We really feel bad about your situation and we wish you the best but we just can't have this kind of image..." and you're cut loose before you even have the minimum number of hours to collect unemployment. Back to square one, only with your pride hurt that much more. The flip side is you do take a job, issued uniforms, and then an addict steals them (or police sweep your camp) while you're at work. Occasionally you get the "nice guy" who offers to pay you to paint a shed or something else on his property. Only after you finish he refuses to pay and then calls the cops on you. That's happened to me twice.

About the drug issue -- there is one and it is a real problem. But I do have to say that in my 13 years I've seen plenty of people who otherwise never would have touched a drug end up addicted within a 6-month time frame. It's always the same story. Starts with "I'm going to get out of this" and ends with futility. After a few months the reality sets in. Too damn hard to shower and panhandle to eat everyday and then try to get a job on top of surviving. And many have the same employment experiences I just wrote about. After that, they lose hope. Starts with weed, ends with meth or heroine. Just last month I got a phone call from a guy I know in Houston. A young kid we both liked was found dead under a bridge with a needle hanging out of his arm. Turned out to be fentanyl. He was 22 years old. The mortality rate for young people on the street is far greater than for older people (to a certain age). There is a dynamic there but I'm already a little off-topic.

So to sum things up, there's really no "biggest misconception" about homelessness. It's the entire view of homelessness that is a misconception. You don't need to be a criminal, you don't need to be an addict, you don't need to do anything wrong, you don't need to be lazy -- it can, and does, happen to people from all walks of life. Once you're there, you're generalized into extreme negativity. You're viewed as an addict even if you've never touched a drug. You're viewed as a criminal even if your record is clean. You're viewed as lazy even if you're a very hard worker. Heck, I have a 738 credit score and 4 major credit cards, all with zero balances. Most housed people don't have that. But I'm less financially responsible, somehow. Thank you for your question!