We as a society need to radically change our thinking about the homeless.

Homeless people and tent cities are not the problem, they’re a symptom of a lot of failings in our society.

We do need to be more proactive in helping them on their feet, getting them housing, rehabilitation and other things, But that’s just putting a patch on the visible thing for now.

Truth is the way our laws, and the enforcement of them are straying further and further away from the “don’t be a dick, contribute to society” and the way things are set up now, we’ve been conditioned to believe that if we punish or shame people for being poor, falling through the cracks, that’ll help and maybe our lives will somehow improve.

We’ve been conditioned to think there are real jobs and “not real” jobs, minimum wage jobs deserve scorn, and people who work them don’t deserve enough pay to survive or live with a little dignity.

Diversity of skill has been actively discouraged for people of the working class, art is useless, music is only for obvious prodigies, sports as a career is expensive and middle class people are rightfully afraid to encourage their kids to try things like that because if they “fail” it’s cash most people can’t afford especially these days.

Multibillion dollar companies plop their stores and warehouses in our cities, squash out small businesses, actively lobby our governments to make it impossible to fail.

They underpay and dehumanize their employees, screw their suppliers, create false scarcity, price gouge, and when their workers and anyone else start complaining and trying to lobby for better treatment, they’re painted as lazy, or communist wanting to live off other people’s money, and if that doesn’t stop the dissent, they’re painted as either threaten to pull out, or actually pull out.

Housing, groceries, commodities are all way over expensive even for those that can technically afford it, and we’re all shamed by them or some in the government that maybe we’re just overspending, we need to tighten our belts more and as usual if you’re falling behind it must be your fault, you must have done something wrong, try harder, work more, get a better job.

The homeless are our warning to stand together whether we’re technically successful in this society right now or not, we need a government with gut to make strong charges to the laws, put mechanisms in place to keep any entity from being so predominant that nothing else can survive.

We need to put things in place to foster small businesses, and give all businesses the message that either their model will succeed or fail, it’s not the workers, it’s not being made to contribute positively to the community they’re operating in, either they provide good quality services and reasonably priced goods and foster an honest and positive relationship with the community or they don’t.

If we don’t work together to make changes like these, and force equality of opportunity things are going to get far worse for everyone, including the ones who are temporarily safe.

None of us is part of the club, no matter what we do or how we try to “improve” ourselves.

The homeless are our warning and we ought to have seen that sooner and we need to stop shaming and ignoring and start working together to enact change.