by Lana L. Evans

Created on: September 09, 2008

There are the homeless, and there are the chronically homeless. The chronically homeless make up 25% of the homeless population. Unlike the former, these people are homeless far less because of circumstances, and far more because of ridicule, rejection, and a distrust of the mainstream. They aren't all mentally ill, either. I think that more of these individuals are social runaways.

You see, chronic homelessness is a little less an issue of lacking a roof over one's head, and is actually caused by the lack of connections with family and others, to include co-workers and neighbors. These are adults who are often the victims of power and authority abuses as youngsters. I'm not talking about people who simply tell them what to do, then insist it get done. Rather, these unusual authority figures are in the habit of using the scapegoat and the black sheep as the subjects of their power abuses. Everyone has seen or heard of someone abusing power or authority. We like to call them dictators, whether they are oppressing entire nations or bullying a meek and troubled child.

The child, through a series of complex social interactions with family members, peers, and others, learns to be ridiculed. I'm talking about extreme cases, and within the lower class, generally.

What happens to a lonely, friendless child who is the teasing stock of so many other children, who is afraid of standing up for herself, who is rejected, criticized, insulted, and discouraged by the adults who only ignore her at other times? Or the child with no self esteem, who is so young and impressionable that he believes he is truly unwanted and longs to run away from home? Or the child who learns to be withdrawn, over sensitive, and longs to hide in the shadows? That child becomes an adult, and it is that adult who runs away and hides in the shadows from a whole world of known faces and strangers he's never learned to trust.

Can we give the chronically homeless person a job and a place to live, believing he will feel truly welcomed, believing he will suddenly shed tons of burdening beliefs about himself and society and just wake up and feel like he can expose his disfigured soul to the speedy, laughing, spinning world as though he really believed he belonged there with everyone else?

These people seek unity, but they trust few. They seek laughter, but fear that others will laugh at them. They seek community and a sense of belonging, but are cautious and leery about those who reach down to them. They seek

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