What do you believe causes some people not to view the homeless as people?

Loitering around where you need to go and aggressive panhandling. I was homeless for a week and I still didn’t go to the free meals, because I was bullied as a small child and I stay away from certain groups, especially adult men. I can’t go even now and I am still scared of being confronted.

Superiority complex. They would never find themselves in that situation because they’re too smart.

If one is supporting their own existence and one is not, then while they may both be human, they are hardly equal.

Because many of these people have mental or drug problems. when offered help, they refuse it. No one in this country has to go hungry on sleep on the streets if they don’t want to.

@josie If one is supporting their own existence and one is not, then while they may both be human, they are hardly equal.
There are many people who are not supporting themselves, and i9f they are, it is off the backs of tax payers, but they are still viewed as humans; people in nursing homes, people on government money, etc.

@BeenThereSaidThat Because many of these people have mental or drug problems. when offered help, they refuse it.
Notwithstanding the dope fiend, if a person is two tacos short of a Mexican salad, would they even realize the desperate situation they are in, much less seeing a way out?

Hm. A homeless person cannot collect benefits. They aren’t getting Section 8 housing. They aren’t taking up space in prison. They might get food stamps. The homeless people I know go to the library and search for lawnmowing jobs on Craigslist, which gives them enough money to get food, and maybe a beer and some smokes, and if they’re lucky a hotel room for a night. Or they have friends who let them sleep in their sheds or front porches from time to time.

Whereas tons of people out there are given businesses by their family members and have bank accounts stuffed with the dollars earned by their employees.

Who is supporting their own existence?

Because it’s much simpler and far more convenient to pass homelessness off as just another one of those circumstances that has nothing to do with “me”. It’s the same attitude that allowed black folks to be persecuted for a full hundred years after the civil war. Those who deride the homeless invariably are people who haven’t really thought about how or why a phenomenon so pervasive in the richest country in the history of the world arose out of nowhere at the height of the Reagan administration.

I agree with dutchess. It’s the same thing with bullying, where it’s simply easier to think all high and mighty about one’s self and think these events would never happen to me because I would never allow them too. It’s a way for a person to boost their own self-esteem, thinking that they succeeded at avoiding what other’s have ‘allowed’ to happen to them.

I think there’s another reason too. Some people simply lack the ability to empathize with the pain and suffering of others.

As already explained, the main line of thinking is that in our society, a person who does not, or cannot, support themselves has no worth as a ’‘proper human being’’. They are a ’‘burden’’ and do not contribute to said society. This makes them worthless in the eyes of many.
Unfortunately, the problems which create homelessness are often denied and/or ignored, much easier to deal with it like that.

(mental illness, lack of job, discrimination) It’s all bullshit as far as I’m concerned, seeing as how poverty holds the biggest percentage of how people live on this globe.

When they act ungrateful and indignant because you didn’t hand them a $20 instead of $2. I don’t have anything against all homeless people, but there are a couple who are just really shitty people.