A Case Study: Homelessness

Of all my dreams as a child being homeless and destitute had never entered my mind. During those years and even as I grew into adulthood I had no true concept of what it means and the resources of lack of them that it entails to be homeless. I had seen news documentaries and news reports that mentioned or had the homeless as its primary subject matter but there was no way that I could really personalize a subject matter that was so completely alien and foreign to me.

If I even thought of homelessness, which I basically did not, I always associated that lifestyle to external circumstances that overwhelmed an individual forcing them unwillingly into that position never thinking or even imagining that that particular lifestyle could be a conscious choice taken by anyone. I never really looked down on the homeless basically because I never really gave much thought of them and for that reason ignorance is bliss when one has no personal contact or experience with a particular matter.

On a day that will live in infamy, or at least until my time here on the planet earth has expired, my concept and my understanding of homelessness and the homeless drastically changed when I viewed my current status and surroundings and came to the very unsettling conclusion that I had now formally entered into a new way of life. Using my VA benefits I had build a nice home in a new housing development that is unlike today's standards of housing communities that are very cramped and packed, where there is plenty of yard space and no sense of being hemmed in by allot of housing clutter.