For a whole lot of homeless people the answer is nothing. Nothing happened. They just slowly slid into homelessness as they were slowly priced out of society.
About a month ago I was at the gas station filling up my 24 year old clunker when a homeless guy came up and asked if I would give him enough money for a coffee. I was going to lie and say I didn’t have cash on me, but it occurred to me that I’m one bad day from being in his shoes every moment, so I checked the emergency stash I kept in my car and on impulse just gave him the whole pile of it. Idk how much it was, not a ton, but a handful of ones and maybe a $5 or a $10. And yeah, a week ago, that bad day happened. My husband dumped me via text message, and now I’m very, very close to homelessness in the next few weeks or months if I can’t find a place to go soon. It’s not always drugs, or addiction, or laziness. Sometimes it’s making what look like good decisions and just getting fucked over.
