Housing Alone isn't Enough

 

Jim believed that housing was a right and a necessity, but only a partial solution.  For most of the Street Team's patients, and for many rough sleepers in other locales, housing without adequate social support often led to eviction and worse.  Most people who briefly fell into homelessness could probably manage apartment life well enough on their own.  But for everyone, a dilapidated and poorly situated place could be a poverty trap and a way back to homelessness, or the site of an early death.  

A study in Boston had shown that average life expectancies varied dramatically between the city's rich and poor neighborhoods, by thirty years in one pairing.  Environment was destiny in neighborhoods where violence was common and residents lacked access to anything except fast food and convenience stores.  

Rough Sleepers, written by Tracy Kidder, about Dr Jim O'Connell's career in bringing medicine to the streets of Boston, pages 212-213.

For chronically unhoused people, adjusting to living indoors after years on the streets can be a nightmare.  How do I keep this place clean?  Why do I even need to?  What are these [appliances] for?  How do they work?  I'm used to convenience foods, and now I'm supposed to cook?  How does that work?  There are hours of the day [night, mostly] when others expect me to be quiet?  I just lost my keys for the 5th time, so I think I'll just leave the place unlocked.  Now my meds are missing.  None of my neighbors will talk to me except to yell at me to turn down the TV.  I give up...why even bother?   

A person who has been periodically or chronically homeless for a long time will probably need more than just a room or an apartment.  They will need social support to figure out how to live there in a healthy manner.  These are things that those of us who are privileged to never have been homeless, or only homeless for a very short period of time, don't automatically think of.    

Image: Kay Smith