I had to fire a family member

I offered my homeless brother a place to stay, in exchange for maintaining the property.

He did not perform any of his assigned duties, so I threw him out.

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ArtieKat · M

Without knowing any of the background of WHY he was homeless in the first place, I wouldn't like to venture an opinion. My experience of homeless people - one of my friends helps to run a homeless outreach charity in Liverpool - is that the vast majority have mental problems and suffer from addiction in one form or another.

firefall · 61-69, M

@ArtieKat That was my experience in London, too

Quite different in the USA, where I'd say the predominant reason for homelessness is a run of bad luck - lose your job, then your credit rating plummets because you cant pay credit card bills,

or you have a serious illness, lose your job whlle in hospital, medical bills wipe out your savings, lose your home that way b/c cant meet mortgage.

And once you dont have a home, its really hard to get jobs here - even getting interviews is tricky. I've had up to half a dozen acquaintances use my address as a fake address to get around some of this, at times (currently one woman is doing so, plus there's one staying in my spare room while she tries to get another job).

The USA is brutal on the margins