Once-Homeless Redditor: "I never met a woman who didn't have a building to go home to... I think it has a lot to do with the both the locations I was generally in (far from major city centers) and the fact that there are more institutional protections in place for women than men in this situation."

evenlesstolose · 2010-05-01T13:53:47+00:00

I live in a town with 5 colleges (+ 2 community colleges) in the area, so there are lots of homeless looking to mooch from the students. I've talked to plenty of them, and there are lots of women. The difference I've observed (and been told) is that the homeless men tend to be in the "once was a normal guy but lost his job" situation, whereas the women are all either mentally unstable or homeless by choice. And, not once did I meet a woman with a child who was homeless. The sheltering services around here are heavily biased towards anyone with a child, and seeing as how women are obviously going to be stuck with the child far more often in a hobo situation, they get taken in first because they have kids.

I did once meet a hobo man with a hobo girlfriend. Never met her, but he was telling me about how she made him buy a pay-as-you-go cellphone so he could call her, and he's pissed because he has no where to charge it. It's always amusing to hear a grungy homeless man do the classic, "SIGH...women..."

Liverotto · 2010-05-01T10:39:42+00:00

Homeless women quickly become hookers.

YesImSardonic · 2010-05-01T18:48:31+00:00

I live in Seattle - there are plenty of homeless meth addicts of both genders.

Edit: In general americans don't give a shit about homeless people regardless of their gender or mental situation. We're a cruel nation when it comes to those less fortunate than us - at least on an institutional level...the sentiment that those who are homeless "deserve" their lot in life is well entrenched and just one more way the ruling class pits workers against each other.

mistyriver · 2010-05-01T16:16:28+00:00

Yes, that's true.

And thus the problem becomes the homes that they go back to. That's why people focus so much on women when it comes to domestic violence. Women feel that they need to put up with a bad situation when they are economically dependent on the situation. Men feel that they can strike out on their own, even if it means being homeless.

I think that women need to reclaim their right to be outside in public alone. They shouldn't be afraid of the night. They shouldn't be afraid to walk a city street. The fact that they choose to cower, rather than to assert their right to have these experiences is part of the problem which oppresses them. I firmly believe that if women, as a block, commonly did choose to go out alone walking in the city at all times of the day and night... then pretty soon society would reorganize its values and its customs and mores to accomodate this - and those women wouldn't be accosted in the way the sporadic woman out there might be now.

From that point, you'd start seeing more of a balance in genders when it comes to homelessness.

It's all about understanding systems.

yogan11 · 2010-05-01T10:45:33+00:00

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