by Tracy Lewis

Created on: January 15, 2007   Last Updated: May 12, 2007

Many MYTHS exist about poverty that are damaging to both low-income/homeless individuals AS WELL AS society. Here are 3 prominent myths about poverty and some appropriate rebuttals to those myths:

Myth #1. People are poverty-stricken because they're unmotivated, can't keep a job, and are lazy.
Myth #2. People are on the street because they use all their money for drugs and alcohol. Street people are bums and junkies. They deserve to be where they are.

Myth #3. Some people don't deserve to be at the poverty level - such as single moms...

Rebuttal to Myth #1: Most poverty-level, low income, and even street people aren't unmotivated. They have slipped through the cracks of capitalist systems, government and medical services (many of the homeless are afflicted with mental illness). Quite often they have also had unsuccessful interactions and limited life-skill training while growing up in dysfunctional families. Consequently, they are 'punished' and 'financially abused' by government, social structures, and individuals in society - simply for lacking skills which were never made readily available to them in a healthy manner. Many people who are presently homeless have had jobs with insubstantial wages that couldn't help them meet their basic needs. Many people who are presently homeless are still working - and their wages STILL ARE NOT allowing them to gain their basic needs.

Face it - those people that are seen living in and off the streets didn't start out as little kids just dreaming and DESIRING to grow up to be homeless and broke! They are not lazy. They are not receiving enough money for their efforts.

Rebuttal to Myth #2: People are on the street (or at low-income facilities, or even just a step away from 'shelters') because COSTS OF LIVING GO UP without wages following suit! If 'regular' people lose their homes, cars, other belongings, shelter, and relationships with family, they often turn to drugs and alcohol to cope. SOME people have addiction problems that, yes, culminate in the loss of everything and they end up in low-income facilities, homeless or in shelters. Often, addiction is a REACTION to already-present poverty and should NOT BE CONTINUALLY deemed as THE CAUSE of an individual's state of financial poverty.

Rebuttal to Myth #3: Poverty doesn't differentiate between genders. Men often leave their homes to live in shelters, travel to urban centres, work temp-jobs by day and sleep on shelter-mats by night. Fathers, husbands, brothers, etc., in this situation

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