Deprivation

These images were modified using AI to prove a point. Everyone has an opinion about homelessness. Here is mine:

The vast majority of homeless individuals struggle with ‘substance abuse’ issues. These people can wake up tomorrow morning and choose to change their lives, or continue down the path they are on. The solution is not remotely complicated.

America is truly the land of opportunity for everyone except those with serious mental illness. Homelessness among people with serious mental illness began over 50 years ago, when state-run psychiatric hospitals were shut down. Society has had many decades to reopen them, but likely never will. Excuses abound, absent the logical solution. The mentally ill do not have the same binary choice a drug addict has to stop being homeless.

What is complicated is that society allows ‘substance abuse’ homelessness. I personally do not understand why, but I assume it has something to do with dopamine: people “feel good” when giving food to the poor. I clearly understand the monetary angle with nonprofit organizations though. It is profit, at the expense of other human beings’ misery.

There are people with mental illness who wish they could understand reality and normal people who turn to drugs to forget it. Americans simply walk by them, purposely oblivious. None of these images should exist, yet here they are, for the world to see.