‘Experiencing Homelessness’ in the Face of American Structural Oppression
Above: Me Glamping in my carport.
For reasons to be shared at a later date, for a good month or two in 2020 and 2021 I slept outside in my carport. I had blankets and a sleeping bag and pillows. I could come inside any time I wanted to use the bathroom, get warm in the heat, take a shower, or make and eat a hot meal.
There are a lot of people out there in this world who sleep outside because they have to. They don’t have a warm home waiting for them, endless hot coffee to keep their bodies warm, a safe place to use the bathroom, a warm place to sleep with multiple blankets and a sleeping bag and pillows.
I may have slept outside, but I was never homeless. I learned that I never want to be.
Awhile ago I wrote a series of essays that didn’t go where I wanted them to. So now I’m sharing them to my blog in the hopes that, someday perhaps, they will touch someone or help someone.
The homeless epidemic in America is a growing national shame and humanitarian crisis of potential epic proportion that not nearly enough people are paying attention to. Like other social and humanitarian crises in America, the broad majority of American people refuse to look at the reality and our own role in it unless they absolutely have to. Even then, we are too busy Keeping Up with the “Distractions” to care enough to fight for quality of living for all and for sustainable change.
There are various causes of homelessness, but it is my opinion that there are three main ones: 1) Untreated societal-caused post-traumatic stress syndrome and/or “mental illness”; 2) lack of personal, familial, and societal resources; 3) Anger and despair caused by structural oppression and abuse in America, i.e., choosing to sleep on the streets and struggle materially in order to obtain freedom from that which is viewed as a slave society that doesn’t care about you unless you can make it money. People belonging to the homeless community of America may actually feel that being poor and homeless is a better quality of life than working one or more jobs just to afford a place to live and feed themselves or their children.
The goal of American society seems to be to keep people beaten down and tired just enough that they become quiet and obedient. John Lennon said it best: “They keep us doped with religion, sex, and TV.” They also work very hard to make sure we can’t afford proper healthcare, real food with actual nutrients, and high-level resources available only to the very wealthy. However, over time we have become so broken, so much a system run by abuse and oppression and hate that more people are falling right past “quiet and obedient” straight into “mentally ill”, dissociative, apathetic and, indeed, homeless.
In the small Capitol of Washington state, Olympia, the homeless population is unreal, and a tragic problem in our community. A small town by population, our homelessness problem may actually match that, per capita, of large cities like Seattle.
The community in Olympia is strong, and for the most part organized and incredible empathetic to the plight of the downtrodden. Yet, even here, conversations about what truly is the cause of homelessness occur all the time. A favorite catch phrase you hear often in this homelessness conversation is “experiencing homelessness”.
The etymology of the term “experiencing homelessness” seems to stem from the feeling and argument that a large portion of those homeless in America is due to a choice being made to become homeless in order to escape the individual responsibilities necessary in life. While the surface sentiment seems to make a certain emotional sense, it is both ludicrous victim-blaming and dangerously apathetic on the micro level to the plight of real Americans facing very real problems. More importantly, this viewpoint willfully ignores the stark equality issues obviously apparent on the macro level of America’s societal policies and political goals.
Instead of blaming our citizens who have given up on a system that openly attacks them or create political policy that oppresses their ability to live fulfilling lives, we should face the reality of how structural abuse and oppression is used to create more money for the ridiculously wealthy and take power out of the hands of the people and into the hands of business and commerce. Again, between facing an unhappy life full of drudgery that won’t pay a living wage, all while watching elected officials give tax breaks to the already way-too-wealthy who avoid paying their taxes, can we really state that the homeless population is simply choosing to “experience homelessness”?
Perhaps we could, instead, realize people are simply trying to experience life free from structural abuse, oppression, and poverty. The executives and shareholders of private companies dance away with billions made for them on the backs of and at the detriment to hard working Americans who can barely afford rent, and the rights afforded to them by the Constitution of the United States of America.
There can be no greater injustice than this and we should all be ashamed.
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