Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The word “homeless” is a modern construction: it means people living in such a way that it makes other people uncomfortable. Peoples all over the world once lived in animal-hide tents, giant dormitories, and rough log construction with dirt floors where everyplace was a toilet. Obviously, anyplace can be a home; it doesn't even take much getting used to because routine itself provides the sense of “home.” The choice to live in a tent on the sidewalk in the downtown of a vibrant city rather than in a ramshackle house in Nowhere, Montana, is one lots of intelligent people make.

The most insidious moral peril is that posed by those who want to provide homes to the homeless because that it incentives more of the same. There's always the people just on the other side of the cut-off point that see the advantage in being taken care of, and so limit their own volition. They are instead motivated to fit whatever requirements are needed to reduce stress, and being homeless is a small price to pay if the option is a daily grind of mind-numbing work and insecurity. Combine that with an ideal of personal autonomy that has no penalties for irresponsibility, and homelessness is not a aberration, it's the expected state of affairs.