Homeless and pregnant in Toronto: 1 woman tells her story

The problem is homelessness, and the precursor conditions in life that lead to homelessness, are wildly contrary to the necessary personal resources to "display home personal accountability and responsibility".

Responsibility isn't something that you pull out of nowhere, and it's not something you're born with. It's something developed from childhood, through social re-enforcement, life routines, and is maintained by having a long-term outlook in life and being in a generally good place mentally.

Homelessness offers exactly the worst possible conditions for that. You don't have much if any positive social influences in your life, you have no routines because you are subject completely to the whims of others, and you have absolutely no long-term outlook because everything is a setback and you rapidly learn both to hope for nothing and to put all your effort into your immediate short-term needs.

Speaking from personal experience, life on the street is like a continual sleep-deprived haze. The days turn into weeks into months and it all just blurs together. I often didn't know what month it was, let alone the day of the week. You lose interest in the future, you start to lose your concept of self in relation to the rest of the world. There is no future, there is no past, only a very long protracted chaotic period of being.

The homeless often have learned helplessness, and frankly I don't blame them for it. Most homeless people are denied agency almost completely. Can't sleep where and when you want, can't eat where and when you want, can't do anything or go anywhere without dependency on another person. A person can only try to act positively for themselves and get swatted back onto the street so many times before they simply stop trying.

So yeah, it's easy to say homeless people need personal responsibility but it's very hard to develop that mindset in the conditions they live in.

/r/toronto Thread Parent Link - cbc.ca