how do homeless people become homeless?

Answer 1

because they are homeless.

Answer 2

What's with all the stupid answers here on laziness??? Yes, some homeless people get that way through laziness, but there is such a thing called natural disasters or "not enough money".

Which, by the way, is a lot easier to come upon than people think. If you grew up in a family without much money, you can't afford education. If you can't afford an education, you can't really be considered for a good enough job to OFFER you enough money to get out of homelessness.

Plus, along that career line, people generally like hiring people who look like they have an okay life. Fed people, healthy people- and you can't very easily get there as a homeless person.

Once you're homeless, it's your job to find a way to get yourself out of that position. Whether it's teaching yourself to not spend money on **** like drugs or alcohol, finding where help centers are, or keeping yourself out of trouble, you've got to work for it.

Laziness isn't always the issue because through having to do this, you often have to rely on other people's charity and other people's will to help YOU.

Natural disasters, sometimes laziness, how you grew up, where you're trying to go can all be factors of being homeless.

Answer 3

Everyone hears about the guy with severe mental problems or the guy on drugs, but
I heard a statistic that one if 3 americans are only 3 paychecks away from being homeless.
It could happen as a result of someone loosing a job or being in an accident that keeps them from working.

I believe this as I think about my own life.
If I had no parents or friends to mooch on, what would I do if i lost my job and could not find another one. IF you had 3 or 4 kids it would be hard to convince someone to allow yo to move in for more than a day or two.
I personally only have a couple of grand I could put my fingers on in a crisis, but that would not last very long after paying rent and other monthly bills. I think I could make it for about 2 months.
anyway, I think that it is easier than you think to become homeless.

Answer 4

I wonder if it is sometimes to do with pride. They feel ashamed to ask for help from relatives once they have been caught into trouble -- and probably don't want to hear the 'I told you so.' phrase. That is such a shame really as one's home is where support should be given. I agree about people with specific metal illnesses too, some may have wondered off and forgot where they belong. Those on drugs need the most help as they are not in their right minds and can't get out of the state within which they get caught. All drug traffickers should be considered a security problem to any society.

Answer 5

A spiraling series of events, one worse than the one that proceeded it. Your ultra conservative Christian family, upon learning that you are gay declares you dead to them. Not having flourished under those jolly circumstances you find yourself a little shy in the finding new friends department, but you do meet someone and fall in love and move in together. And you're happy. For years. And he dies. And his family takes everything, even though they shunned him, and there's nothing you can do because there wasn't a will and you don't count for sh!t unless you were married, and you collapse from the sheer utter horror of it all. Then the insomnia comes. You're a zombie. You're f@cking up at work. And then one day it happens again and they fire you. And you're ok for a while, and you collect unemployment, but your older now and its harder to find a job than you expected, and you're late on the rent. The unemployment check stops and you realize you only have a few hundred dollars. You don't pay the rent for months until you eventually get evicted and by then all the money is gone. And so, you are on the streets.

Thats One way it could happen!

Answer 6

Wow, some people are awfully harsh. Have they not seen Pursuit of Happyness? I'm not saying that every person who is homeless has just had a run of rotten luck, but you have to realize that not every homeless person is homeless because of laziness or alcoholism or drug addictions. Seriously. Just because you're lucky enough to have money and opportunities, don't think it's necessarily because of your own brilliance. Sometimes life just gives you s*** and there's nothing you can do about it.

Answer 7

There are so many reasons, divorce, alcholisim, death of a loved one, mental deseases. Bankruptcies, physical or mental abuse.
The cost of living costs more than what they may earn, there are people who work every day and go home at night, what they call home to sleep in abandoned cars or houses.
Governmental agencies are allowing people to fall through the cracks and are doing little to deal with the problem. Not that there is money lacking in the coffers, they have money for wars and to assist third world countries and In the meantime they neglect thier very own citizens of this country.

Answer 8

Today with the so called welfare reform, a mother of infants who's husband leaves puts them in the street, others just a lay off since you can only collect unemployment now once every year or two.i had three small children, laid off from job, homeless in less than one month.

Answer 9

I passed by two homeless guys talking in a parking lot last year. One said, 'I never expected it would happen to me -- to be brought low.' I think we are all a lot closer to this then we know. All it would take is one major economic downturn, a big drought and crop failure, a big depression. That's what Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was all about. One minute you live in the land of opportunity, the next minute you lose everything.

Answer 10

Well there's lots of reasons, it's different for every person who is homeless on what circumstances led to that...I know for me, I not long ago became homeless and was living in my car for 2 months with my younger son, I am a single mom, I lost my job and was unable to pay the rent or bills , I was actively looking for work but nothing was turning up, I asked my brother who lives in another state to please help me because I had recieved an eviction notice with a court date, I went to the court date and payed up my rent with money I had borrowed from someone (not my brother) but couldn't pay the court cost of 86.00. I was told I could pay it with next months rent but instead they took me back to court and said again I failed to pay and I was given 4 days to come up with rent wich wasnt even due yet and court fees, my brother then said he would help and was wiring the money, the night before I was supposed to go to court and pay my brother told me to pick up the money in the am before court, the money never came, he never sent it, the police threw us out and our belongings were destroyed, we were homeless with nothing and nowhere we could go.

Answer 11

Some of them, by loosing ambition and not working at all. Some were born that way, others have lost everyting due to some tragedy And of course there are the runaways or fugitives, and those who are left stranded far from home somehow.