In a lot of ways, homelessness is such a complex issue that it’s hard to think about, much less solve.
Who qualifies as chronically unhoused? How many people like that are out there? What policy, or policies, might help one person get a roof over his or her head, or significantly reduce the broader problem for lots of unhoused people? None of the answers is easy.
But in one way – at least in one way expressed loudly this week by a man sleeping in an aging Mustang parked near a gas station in Costa Mesa – being unhoused boils down to a single word.
“Money,” he said.
“If I had more (money), I wouldn’t be sleeping in my car,” he added as he moved some toiletries (a bag with soap and shampoo; a toothbrush) into his back seat.
“I’m homeless because I don’t have enough money not to be.”
The 52-year-old man – contacted around sunrise on Tuesday, Jan. 23, by volunteers participating in the Everyone Counts, Point in Time survey, a once-every-two-years census of the unhoused that’s held in communities around the country – doesn’t want to disclose his name because of the stigma that comes with sleeping on the streets. (“Do you know how hard it is to get hired if somebody knows you don’t have a place to live?” he asked. “Not easy.”)
The man, a Marine Corps veteran, said he’s slept in his car for brief periods a few times over the past five or six years. But he doesn’t define himself as “homeless.” During that same period, he said, he’s attended school, worked as a computer installer and been a parent to his now adult children.
“I’m just stuck for this moment,” he said.
He also doesn’t fit many of the (fading) stereotypes about the unhoused. He’s not addicted. He’s not obviously mentally ill. He’s not fresh out of prison or chronically unemployed.
He doesn’t prefer sleeping in his car or otherwise outdoors.
Instead, he says, he’s “working, but still poor.” The pay he earns in his current…
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