I am a veteran. I am an English literature major. I am an artist. My favorite superhero is Spiderman. I have never done drugs nor have I ever committed a crime. Oh, and I am a homeless woman.
And as a homeless person myself, I’ll be the first to say the vast majority of homeless people are awful. I mean awful. It is not some of them — it is most of them.
There are a few homeless like me who want to work, are sober, hate being homeless, and are actively trying to get out of homelessness. Then there are the dangerous drug addicts and thieves who go around attacking people, trash public property, and act disgracefully.
My tent was set on fire by another homeless person. I get it.
But how are housed people inherently better and more worthy of kindness and decency than homeless people? Housed people are not perfect saints. Many of you are completely empathy-lacking and no better than the homeless you so shamelessly despise.
Sleeping in a tent instead of a bedroom doesn’t automatically make someone a lazy criminal or a drug addict.
Having no family or friends to help you also doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. My family is horribly abusive, mentally disordered, and homophobic, which is one of the reasons I am currently homeless.
I suppose it’s difficult for people privileged enough to have loving families and great childhoods to imagine that.
I am not a bad person and I do not deserve the daily ridicule and abuse that I endure from housed individuals. Yet I have been homeless since COVID, and I have witnessed the excessive cruelty and maliciousness of quite a few “decent” and “upstanding” housed people who “contribute to society.”
Some of your behavior has included:
- Throwing water balloons at my tent
- Shooting pellet guns at my tent
- Attempting to tear down my tent with me inside
- Kidnapping me to another state (yes, this happened)
- Walking past my tent and making nasty jokes
- Leaning down and screaming into my tent to wake me up
- Calling me lazy for having the gall to attempt to get eight hours of sleep uninterrupted
- Giving me tampered food and drinks
- Throwing garbage at me as you drive by
- Watching me get beat up by a man and doing nothing
- Refusing to call an ambulance for me
- Lecturing me randomly about drugs as you pass
- Treating me like a thief every time I enter a store
- Assuming I’m a prostitute
- Repeatedly being awakened and told to “get a job” so that I’m exhausted at the job interview the next day
- Driving your car straight at me across the parking lot, then swerving at the last minute to frighten me
- Walking in front of me without saying “excuse me” as if I weren’t even there
And the list goes on.
I do not expect housed people to not care about the destructive homeless attacking them and leaving trash everywhere. Feel free to hate and resent the destructive thieves and the dangerous, violent people because I do too. And I guarantee that as someone who lives on the street, I have been victimized by the destructive homeless far more than you have.
Be wary of the homeless but do not be cruel.
Ashley Gray is an Army veteran and Ashford University graduate who has been homeless for over two years.
