We asked 12 homeless people what happened. Their answers show how close we all are to the streets.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Invisible to many who walk by them, more than 7,000 people live in San Francisco without permanent housing. Each of these people face daily struggles living on the street, working jobs while living in a tent or shelter, fighting addiction and mental illness, finding places to shower, and always figuring out where to sleep that night.

Their lives are mind-bogglingly difficult, but how did they get there? Where did things go wrong? We talked with some of these individuals, both men and women of all ages and all walks of life, asking how they fell through society's cracks, and about their experiences surviving the streets.

This is the start in a series of profiles in which we'll be posing the same question to a group of people faced with homelessness. For the first story, we asked 12 people, "How did you become homeless?" We hope you'll share ideas for future questions; email them to [e-mail].

How did you become homeless?

Most of the people we talked to faced debilitating health issues, heartbreaking loss and terrible bad luck.

"I was hit by a drunk driver. I got addicted to pain medication. I was driving from California to visit my mom in New York and I was hit. I was in a coma for 10 months. I could live with my mom but I don't want to impose. —Keith, 48, living on the street off and on for 17 years, recently evicted, hometown New York City/San Francisco

"I was living in Pacific Heights and had a great job. I had a miscarriage and took time off from work. San Francisco is great, but there's no bumper." —Shondi, 45, living on the street two years, home state Arizona, lived in SF since 1995

"It's very complicated. My son was killed. I lost my job. I ended up in jail for a year. It was an accident. I was driving and I crashed. I wasn't drinking but I ran into a city truck. I worked in construction, and I worked at the post office. My wife and I had a home and when we divorced, we had to sell it." —Juan, 58, living on the streets for 20 years, hometown San Francisco

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poverty/we-asked-12-homeless-people-what-happened-their-answers-show-how-close-we-all-are-to-the-streets/ar-BBOPcaG?li=BBnb7Kz

[RKP5637]

1. Under the right circumstances, it can come on quickly. Sometimes shit just happens. n/t

[hunter]

2. No matter how crappy your job is, never forget you could be homeless.

I think that's the reason there are such great holes in the social safety nets here in the U.S.A..

The people who actually control this economy want the rest of us to be afraid.

[DBoon]

9. being unemployed must be more painful and humiliating than the worst job

they need a fearful, desperate workforce to maintain their control and their wealth

[misanthrope]

21. Precisely

If you can keep those on society's lower rungs divided and desperate then profit margins inflate easier. Feudalism might have been formally buried but much of it actually has just become subsumed and refined.

[Glimmer of Hope]

3. This and other reasons are why I get so angry when people disparage

The homeless. Life can be very unfair.

[SimpleC]

4. I've been Homeless

You're right... the right circumstances can hit you all at once and leave you in a world of shit...

In some ways, it's made me stronger and also more sympathetic to those in that plight...

There are a lot of people out there in this world that help the homeless...

and bless them all...

[byronius]

7. Me too. Same.

[Volaris]

14. Me three..

It was either pay rent to the roommate, or cover tuition.

And UP is the only way out.

The first night I slept in my car, I was terrified.
3 years later, I have 2 full-time jobs, a key to the office if it's REALLY cold out, and 2 full-time class schedules (I'm almost done with the first...Valentine's day I should get to walk).
It's tough. I get it, and it's massivley unfair.

I've never mentioned it here before, and very, very few people actually know...I've managed it in such a way that it...produces , rather than takes at this point.

But there are days when I miss having a kitchen to keep a crock pot in. Holy God, are there days...

[hunter]

17. My fallback, natural, hunter-off-his-meds state, is affable dumpster diving homeless guy.

One of my great fears is that I might return to that state, and that it would feel once again to me somehow normal. My fate.

I've been homeless, unemployable, and alienated from family and friends.

I've metaphorically ripped the arms off people trying to shelter and feed me, people who saw there might be something more to me.

The scariest damned thing in my life is that I'm fearless when I'm in that broken place.

Always the first damned thing that flies out the window, has landed me in locked psych wards, is my ability to judge my own mental state.

We have to think beyond "circumstances."

Aside from a few bad episodes, and thanks to modern crazy meds and therapies, it's been my good fortune to be considered a functional human being most of my life.

Some people are not so lucky, but they still deserve a place to be, a home they can call their own, a healthy diet, some kind of intellectual life, and appropriate medical care.

I've existed without any of the above but it never made me a better person.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

20. glad you're here to tell that

I can't define or describe all the emotions that evokes.

[elocs]

5. Being homeless means there is nobody left for you to stay with.

There's nobody left in your family or friends who have a place for you any longer.
I worked at a Salvation Army homeless shelter for the last years of my working career and I saw a lot of different kind of homeless. The woman, mother who has escaped an abusive partner and has little or no money or skills. The guy who spent even a year or two in prison as a young man and now well into his 30s he is still repaying his debt to society as his prison time still haunts him in finding a job or a place to live even though he has been on the straight and narrow for years. And lots of kids. People in my small city would be surprised at how many homeless children are in the schools here.
But there are lots of reasons and ways to become homeless--people who so desperately want that number on the street, that address all their own that makes them an actual person in the eyes of our society.

[hunter]

19. At my very worst I've gone out of my way to avoid anyone who still cared about me.

If any reach out to me I might reject them, I might hurt them.

Human desire, deserving or not, is a place to simply be.

As human beings, good or bad, we all deserve comfortable shelter, healthy food, appropriate medical care, and some kind of social life.

[Stuart G]

6. k and r...nt

[ProfessorPlum]

8. Thank you for posting this

so many people seem to think the homeless are a different species. We need to remember how vulnerable life can be.

[Johnny2X2X]

10. You are closer than you think

I’ve been really close. Had to move back with my parents once. If not for them I would have been couch surfing.

People think it can’t happen to them need to talk to some homeless people. These stories are a good sample. Every person has a story.

[warmfeet]

11. It can happen without notice.

I am my brothers and sisters keeper.

We all are.

[Stuart G]

12. Short story about a homeless person..

It was a very cold day in Chicago where I lived. I was on the way to work and walked down the stairs of an apartment building with 6 apartments on 3 floors, (2 on each floor) So I walked into the hallway where the mail boxes were. There was a locked door, that leads up to the steps, and another door from the outside that leads into the mail box area. (about 6:30am)
...That outside door was unlocked. I walked down into the mailbox area and there was a huge kind of what looked like a rug all over the floor. As I tried to open the door into the mail box area, the rug started moving, and a person started to get up from the floor. The rug was his winter coat. He put it on, it seemed to be covering him, and got up and walked out. Evidently he had slept in the hallway that night. I had never seen that before and never saw it again..I would say it was 84 or 85..That neighborhood was a typical middle income community with no reputation for homeless people. But there he was. People who are homeless often are not known. Poverty is often invisible. Very sad for such a wealthy country as the U.S.A.

[Stuart G]

13. The invisible nature of poverty in America..

Clothes are cheap, and people can stay clean in shelters. It is possible not to look poor and be very poor in the U.S.A. People have jobs, but sleep in their cars..This book is almost 50 years old..I will never forget it..
.......The Other America by Michael Harrington.

....first published in 1962, with additional material in the 70s and 80s from Harrington's journals and articles.....

Today, not yesterday, I read a story about a couple whose house burned down in California. There is a link somewhere on DU. The 5 or 6 children are staying with grandparents...and the couple whose house burned down are sleeping in their car. There are no places available for 100 miles...Who would know that people are sleeping in their cars?... Some all night food stores have very large parking lots..and cars seem to parked there all night. They are in the back of the lot..sometimes people sleep in them, or there other vehicles with space to sleep in.

Harrington's thesis is that poverty is invisible in the U.S.A. We really don't know. And because of cheap clothes and the ability to stay clean, poor people often don't look what we would call "poor looking"

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/16/us/paradise-california-camp-fire-mother-evacuation-trnd/index.html

This is the story referred to...when you read it, you will read that these people are living in their cars..no one would know (because their house burned down) ..Below this post, is another one about people living in their cars....And I believe it is not one or two people, it is tens of thousands in the U.S.A. who are homeless. perhaps hundreds of thousands...

[elocs]

22. Homeless invisibility happens

when those who want to survive being homeless well do not 'look' like they are homeless.
For instance, when an adult who is not a traditional college aged person is walking around wearing a backpack they may as well have a sign reading, "HOMELESS". It's even worse when they are pulling a rolling suitcase.
When you don't look homeless it's far less likely you will be hassled by a cop or asked to leave the warmth of a local library or business. If you ask somebody for help you are more likely to get it. If you are living in your car, your vehicle doesn't look like someone is living in it. So the homeless learn there are good reasons not to look homeless, reasons that make their daily survival easier.

[appalachiablue]

15. 'Invisible people, vehicle dwellers' Palo Alto, California.

[colsohlibgal]

16. Sobering

Don’t ever think you are immune from things going due south, no matter your current circumstances.

I couldn’t be more secure and comfortable right now but you never know.

[Demovictory9]

18. kick

[Achilleaze]

23. "Pull yourselves up by your own damn cardboard boxes." - KGOP republicans