This YouTuber interviews homeless people in my city

@ChiefWalksWith40oz I've always been very anti recreational drugs - even cannabis. In fact, after the recent death of my mother, my younger siblings put an insane amount of pressure on me to smoke weed with them. I didn't need to be battling them for my beliefs at a time when I was already grieving my loss.

I know that homelessness, in general, tends to be worse for men than women because there tends to be less help out there for homeless men. Women and women with children are more likely to be placed in emergency accommodation because of their vulnerability - while the men who are unlucky enough to get a bed in a shelter are left to fend for themselves unless there's a risk to life out on the streets that night.

@HootyTheNightOwl I don't agree with talking people into smoking weed. I think if anyone wants to do it they'll do it 🤷 it's just not for everyone so I don't blame ya at all.
But true, because I'm general men are seen as stronger & honestly I get why women would be put first. They're the ones who carry the children & who have the kids no matter what whether the father leaves or not. But it definitely leaves the truly helpless ones out there alone without help & it's messed up

@ChiefWalksWith40oz It wasn't a simple invite, though. I must have spent half an hour telling my sister that I don't want to join them and explaining why - like no still means no even when it comes to someone not wanting to smoke with you.

She knows my reasons well enough... both my mother and I have been telling her about them for years. In some ways, it feels like I'm eleven years old again and being pressured by a bunch of bullies at a party to smoke a cigarette again. They left me with no choice, too.

Usually, when there are deaths among the homeless in bad weather, it is typically a guy who has frozen to death trying to keep warm overnight. The fact that a homeless man died should not be used as a marker that it's too cold for the homeless to be out there on the streets this December.

We all know that the coldest months of the year are cold for anyone to be outside, never mind the fact that there are people (usually, but not always, men) who are still living out there.

We have the ability to provide homeless shelters and take them to the "unseen homeless" (the areas that don't seem like they have much of a problem with homelessness, for those who may be wondering) - but no one thinks to take shelters to the people rather than having the people come to the shelter.

Then, when they get to the shelter, no one can help them because they don't have a "local connection" to the area. They had a problem with begging in the cities, so they made begging illegal and tried to force the homeless into shelters.

We wouldn't have big issues with begging in cities if we spread the homeless out and enable them to find shelter in their own towns where they have local connections and are more likely to be helped.

We had a homeless shelter here in town one winter a few years ago - so it is possible to set up a shelter... though funding it and making it accessible to all might be a bit of a problem as I found out recently when I spent 3 hours back out there.

Even if the shelter had been open... it was still out of range for someone with limited mobility to walk to. I couldn't have made it to the only homeless shelter here in town.

@Straylight sadly I know a lot of people I grew up around who live their lives this way. One of them being a close friend of mine. He's currently in prison dying slowly & I haven't seen him in a year. Last I saw him he told me he'd stand for me before he stood for anybody in his family & that hurt to hear.. because I'm close to his family too.

I used to do a lot of drugs but idk.. I don't preach it because of things I've seen. A lot of my friends never made it out

@Jeephikelove they've been homeless since they were 16, which is around the time I knew them. That was before the drugs hit them as bad as it's gotten. But I also find it so sad hearing the young man speak. Hes intelligent, he still has love in his heart. & To hear him say things like "I'd rather do this than do what I used to do" & "just don't do it. You'll lose your family. You'll lose everything. You'll even lose yourself" then carry on to tell his family that he loves them no matter what. It's just sad. I feel for him a lot right now because Gabby's mom said herself that she doesn't know if he knows she's dead yet. She overdosed in jail

@alainc2490 I'm glad you took something from it. That one hit me too because they were people I knew... It's always sad to see someone so happy & full of life, then the next time you see them they're long gone. I've seen it so often.
Sadly Gabby passed from a fentanyl overdose. But I still feel for Tyson. I wonder how he's doing rn

Btw "I can't let my life become this" is one of the most powerful things to tell yourself

@SW-User a lot of people don't know this about me but I was homeless for a period of time as well. I sold drugs to get by & mostly stayed away from the hard stuff, but I dabbled into that too before I walked away from it.
You're right. It doesn't take much

@empanadas shit I used to be in that life with 'em. But even being in that life I felt like an outsider watching so many of my friends die or lose everything. Even seeing friends die from the exact same drugs I took.. & knowing it was [i]less[/i] than what I took. Shit makes me wonder why I'm still even here

@Jenny1234 that's exactly how I felt. She kicked all of her kids out & all of them got into the street life deep. Her youngest is still out on the streets too. Oldest is a dude named Slumps & he's been locked up for a while. Her main reason for kicking them out was she didn't have any room for them 🤷