It's why dehumanization of poor people is so important to the rich. Telling people that they'd rather do drugs than have a home or that they're lazy and just don't have the drive that you do.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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A 78 year old man, working in construction. The fuck?
Edit: geez, all those comments like "we don't know when he got homeless" or "doesn't say when he broke his back". Are you guys kidding? How does any of that make the whole situation less bad?
'Merica.
It doesn't specify when he broke his back.
I mean, at most he was in the hospital for about 6 months. At most. Nobody's keeping you there without going home longer than that unless you're in a coma.
So he's either 77, or 78, but I can easily see this happening. I've seen 60+ year olds in construction pretty much daily.
When something like this happens, things can spin out of control rapidly. Even if it happened in his 60s, he'd be facing age discrimination along with the other barriers to employment that go along with being homeless.
Also, some positions in construction are viable for someone in their late 70s, but the older we get the more prone to grave injuries. My great aunt was cleaning rooms in a hotel well into her 80s until she broke her hip.
It doesnt tell us when he became homeless at all, he could have been homeless for 20 years
It's says he recently started sleeping at the park, not recently became homeless. It could have happened to him at any point in his life, based on this story.
My friend's dad fell off a ladder and nearly broke his back when we was in his close to 60, if not older. He luckily had family and was about to retire anyway, but imagine if he were a single construction worker in his 60s with no 401k.
Sometimes I volunteer at a homeless shelter. I'll never forget this one dude with mobility issues that kept asking me to do things like find out if he had an appointment scheduled with a doctor, and if I told him he could just look online and find the information he would always say ok then come back and ask me to do the same thing again the next time I saw him.
Finally he admitted to me he didn't know how to read, so even things that we usually think of as simple like just look up contact information for places online to call and ask was impossible for him to do.
I was able to help him get some things taken care of and I learned that he had been helping somebody work on a car and the jack had broken and crushed his hip while he was under there.
He'd lost everything and ended up homeless, and since he had mobility issues following the accident, not being able to read and get things taken care of just caused even more issues. Things had just kind of spiraled out of control from there and he'd gotten kind of stuck in the situation
I took time one morning to help him take care of a bunch of things. We were able to call his pharmacy and figure out the reason he hadn't been getting his prescriptions was bc they were waiting to hear back from him. I helped him get set up with PT so he could work on his mobility issues, and then I found the number for a transportation service to help him drive to PT.
He left the shelter eventually, so I'm not sure what ultimately ended up happening, but the point is he had been stuck like that for over a year feeling like he was spinning his wheels and going nowhere.
He was just one person among so many that needed just a little help with something we all take for granted. Just think about how many people are in similar situations and dealing with so much more than we can visibly see.
You're a good person OP. Thank you
One scary thing is how quickly you realise how little friends you really have when you fall on hard times, even if you need to couch surf for a few days. I wasn't even mad, just found it fascinating how little we really care for one another when it really comes to it.
success is not measured by achievement, but acquisition... Ferenghi Rules of Acquisition #1
We think somehow an Errant "h" got added in there, just so you know.
Acievement*
Found it!