Homelessness, seen from the distance of a home, looks like an individual failure.
Seen from the distance of a service provider, it looks like unmet needs and their consequences.
Seen from the distance of a policymaker, it looks like a problem of available housing options and supports.
Seen from the distance of government, it looks like a funding request.
Seen on a human level, though, homelessness looks like violence.
@cedar No homelessness is not violence, and any human who sees it that way really needs a better sense of perspective because they are misidentifying the problem that needs to be solved.
They are not being violated. If they treat it as violence then they will find no enemy to attack. There is nobody doing it to them. There is no face that they can punch to resolve the problem.
To sanction or support the treatment as a form of violence is to promote a perspective that is no good for anybody.
No, homelessness does not look like violence. It looks like a problem of getting someone what they need, it looks like a system that has failed to get someone what they need, and so we need to fix the system.
We should absolutely not buy into the idea that it's violence, since that stands directly in the way of fixing the system that is failing them.
@volkris @cedar people sleeping rough - which isn't all of homelessness, but - suffer severe physical harm. Attacks on mental health. Physical attacks from public, others in their position, and police. They have their belongings stolen frequently. Many never physically recover even if they move back into a home.
Hidden homelessness causes other kinds of psychological and physical stress.
I don't see what's non violent about it when it doesn't have to be and so many suffer so much.
@noodlemaz Yes, exactly, so that's why it's so important to identify where the actual harm is coming from.
Just for example, a physical attack from the police absolutely needs to be dealt with by laser focus on the police, holding them accountable for doing harm, fixing the police, and I wouldn't want any distraction from that by trying to blame homelessness itself for the harm.
All too often the abstract ends up distracting from responding to the literal when that needs to be what we do to move forward and improve things for everyone.
@noodlemaz
If I'm understanding @volkris correctly, the objection is that framing homelessness as violence is not solutions-oriented, whereas looking at it as a systems problem lends itself to finding solutions.
My original post probably wasn't clear that both things are necessary. Someone who is excited about the rights framework might have said "homelessness is a violation of human rights" instead of "homelessness is violent", but in some ways the goal is the same: inciting action to fix a violation some people are experiencing.
@cedar thanks!
I'd say that's close, but with one key step: yes, let's be solutions oriented, but part of getting to the right solution is properly identifying the problem.
To say homelessness is violence is to misidentify the problem, and that stands in the way of finding a solution, both practically and in terms of getting people on board.
On that last point, you mention inciting action to fix the problem, and that's one way this is counterproductive: if you say homelessness is violence, that will turn a lot of allies off as they say, "Well, that's clearly false" and walk away from the effort.
@volkris @cedar I think I don't really understand your objection? Homelessness is a state of being, not an actor - it has associated issues & harms, but obv isn't the root cause? Doesn't fall off trees!
It's a complex problem with lots of causes, we can talk austerity, employment law, housing crisis, addiction, immigration restrictions, intimate partner violence...
I think it's fair to say that the forces making people homeless are violent. Homelessness existing is societal violence at scale.