I have interacted with homeless folks for several years. I have listened to community talk and I have read the Herald reports of community comments about homeless.
As a licensed psychologist before retirement, I know we humans lean into stereotyping. It is efficient emotionally and cognitively to stereotype and put aside objects and situations that don’t match our comfortable templates. However, consider: Many of the previously housed folks in North Carolina and Florida, who lost communities, livelihoods, vehicles and uninsured homes will have to migrate. Some will become what we call “homeless” and will be unhoused in new communities. If they linger in that situation, many may will give up trying and will stay on the street. Even in dire situations humans often choose familiarity over change. Further, some disaster survivors are left mentally ill and are cut off from fragile treatment arrangements, being too disorganized to regroup.
All of the above is true in Durango. Across the world, adversity survivors, finding few options, often will descend into quick and easily available drug and alcohol relief, sometimes chronically. I think most of us know how effective alcohol and drugs are at relieving acute or chronic stress. I just request we consider that many on the street were “like us” with jobs, homes, families and healthy intentions. That certainly will be true of the newly homeless out East as well as here. Perhaps we can all push pause and rethink how we think about the homeless.
Tamara Hoier
Durango
