Photo: 6asscat / TikTok
He says "They're just unlucky," and the data says he's absolutely right.
By John Sundholm — Written on Jun 10, 2023
Study after study has revealed that America's staggering homeless problem is more than anything due to a lack of affordable housing.
Nevertheless, many people still insist that the main cause of homelessness is people with drug addictions who refuse to better themselves. One guy has had it with people demonizing the homeless in this way — and the data is completely on his side.
A TikToker says he's tired of people in America treating the homeless like 'Disney villains.'
The TikToker, who goes by the nickname Dale Limpson on the app, says that he has no problem with people not giving the unhoused money if they can't or don't want to. But refraining from donating and making homeless people out to be monsters are two different things, of course, and he's had enough of the latter.
"I think my least favorite kind of person in the world is people who s*** on homeless people for no f***ing reason," he said in a video he posted on the matter.
The TikToker says he's personally witnessed how the perception that homeless people will just use donations to buy drugs is absurdly overblown.
Addiction is absolutely one of the causes of homelessness in America, but nowhere near the degree that people think. According to the National Institutes of Health, roughly one-third of the homeless population have drug or alcohol problems, but studies consistently show that in many cases homelessness is the cause of those substance problems, not the other way around.
Nevertheless, as Dale points out, many people reflexively assume "oh, they're going to buy crack if you give them money" or demonize the homeless as somehow nefarious.
Photo: TikTok
But Dale says he has personally witnessed how untrue these perceptions are in his own community.
He told a story of when an unhoused man once knocked on his car window asking for money for food. After digging around in his car for some change, he handed the homeless man "a fistful of quarters" and sent him on his way.
Rather than wander off to buy drugs, the TikToker sat and watched the homeless man "[go into] Save A Lot, come out with bread, bologna, cheese."
He went on to say that the suggestion that a dollar given to a homeless person will end up in the hands of a drug dealer doesn't really even make much sense. "Listen, dude, I'm not a crack expert, but do you think crack is a f***ing dollar? Really? You think crack and meth would be in business if they were a f***ing dollar?"
Photo: TikTok
Studies have consistently shown that a lack of affordable housing, not substance abuse or mental illness, is the leading cause of homelessness in America.
Despite being the richest country on Earth, America has one of the worst homelessness problems in the world — one that's only getting worse — and the data has conclusively shown that America's soaring rents and home prices coupled with its lack of adequate housing supply is the primary cause for our high rates of unhoused citizens.
University of Washington Professor Gregg Colburn and journalist Clayton Aldern quite literally wrote the book on the subject, "Homelessness Is A Housing Problem."
As Colburn explains in the video below, this is precisely why America's homelessness problem tends to be clustered not where America's biggest poverty and drug problems pervade, but rather in the wealthiest cities in the country.
“Housing market conditions explain why high-poverty cities like Detroit and Cleveland have low rates of homelessness,” Colburn and Aldern write in their book. "High rental costs and low vacancy rates create a challenging market for many residents in a city, and those challenges are compounded for people with low incomes and/or physical or mental health concerns.”
This also explains phenomena like the one explored in the video below, in which a Wyoming man is homeless despite making $20 per hour.
This all serves to underline Dale's point, and he called on people to have a bit more empathy and not "villainize" the homeless, whether they give them money hand-outs or not.
"You're not, like, lacking humanity for not giving homeless people money," he said, "but you are lacking humanity for seeing a homeless person and going, oh, I'm not going to give him money because he's probably going to go f***ing do crack in the alley."
Photo: TikTok
"No, dude, he's probably going to eat," he went on to say, "he's probably going to get a f***ing water because it's 110 degrees out and his throat feels like f***ing gravel." Or, as he put it in his video's caption, "They're not Disney villains, they're just unlucky."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.