Why Don't Homeless People Just Get Jobs?

One reason a homeless person may not be looking for a job is that he may already have one. Normally, from one third to one half of the homeless population is employed. During the current economic situation (and due most likely to many new homeless from mortgage foreclosures), in many cities well over half of their homeless population has jobs.

This might lead you to ask why these people are homeless if they have jobs. Many employed homeless people are working at minimum wage jobs, jobs which don't provide enough to pay for basic living expenses in many parts of the country. Also, many of them are underemployed, they don't get enough hours of work to pay the bills. In fact, some people who work for low wages become homeless when company cutbacks cut their hours.

Other working people are homeless due to alimony, child support, or mandatory insurance payments for children they don't have custody for - these can easily equal a homeless man's entire income when combined. Student loans in default can garnish up to 25% of a person's income. Creditors can also garnish wages for other debts. Homelessness has pretty much replaced debtors' prison in America.

So why don't they just get more work, work two or three jobs at a time? Many of them do. But a cluster of minimum wage jobs at a few hours a week doesn't generally get them very far. Getting enough hours with multiple jobs can be difficult as well. To make multiple jobs work, employers have to be willing to work with a schedule which accommodates their employee's other jobs. Finding two (much less more) employers willing to work around other work schedules is difficult enough but each added job makes finding and keeping a balance even more difficult.

I've worked as many as five part time jobs at a time, which averaged me around a 65-70 hour work week. I had a home and a phone and it was still difficult to keep the schedule juggling up. I only worked one full time job plus odd jobs when I was homeless, though not from lack of looking for additional work, which brings me to my next point. It's hard for homeless people to get hired, for multiple reasons.

With America's unemployment rate quivering around 10% with pockets where unemployment rates are higher, this should come as no surprise. Keep in mind that the 10% figure is only taking into account recently unemployed people. The figures for unemployment often come from counting the number of people receiving unemployment benefits which leaves those who have failed to get employment before benefits run out uncounted as well as those who worked jobs which, for whatever reason, made them ineligible for unemployment benefits. That category would probably include people working multiple jobs with short hours.

With job openings being rare and many people being available to fill them, employers will understandably be choosier than during better times. Homeless applicants will go to the bottom of the application pile for numerous reasons.

A large number of things make homeless people less likely to get hired. Lack of an address can be a huge factor. Many homeless people do not have a mailing address they can use on job applications or have the address to a PO Box, Church, or mission to use. Employers are put off by irregular addresses on job applications. Don't kid yourself; many employers would never consider a homeless person for a job opening. They have the same misconceptions about homeless people that everyone else does.

To get past this problem, some homeless people lie on applications or find a homed friend to provide an address for them. But this presents its own problems. Once caught in this lie, some employers are less than understanding.

When choosing between applicants that can be contacted by phone and those who can't, most employers won't even bother to contact those who can't for an interview. This makes having a $10 pay-as-you-go phone a life saver for many homeless people.

I've seen a number of people on the Internet "loudly" complaining about homeless people with cell phones. Perhaps if they knew that a cell phone is often a homeless person's only way to get a job, they might stop the complaining.

I can almost hear the objections now. I've seen the suggestion that homeless people just don't try hard enough to stay clean and well groomed. But ponder this - do you honestly think that you could show up to a job interview with a tidy haircut, a pressed suit and tie, shined shoes, a shower fresh smell and a clean shave without a barber, a bathroom, an iron and a closet? For homeless women it's also complicated by social requirements to wear make-up to an interview.

Especially if unemployment is the cause of their homelessness, most homeless people have significant gaps in their employment history. Many applications require an explanation for all gaps in employment. So the homeless person can either lie or tell the truth. If the homeless person tells the truth, the cat is out of the bag and the prospective employer will know the applicant is homeless. If the homeless person lies, he will eventually get caught in the lie and have to face the consequences.

In many states, it's perfectly legal for employers to run a credit check on job applicants and disqualify those with poor credit ratings. As you can imagine, not having an address nor recent income, and probably past evictions and medical bankruptcies or past due bills on your record destroys your credit rating.

I doubt there are many, if any, homeless people with sterling credit ratings.

Many job applications state up front that applicants must have their own, dependable transportation. Sometimes this can be the bus but if work hours are irregular and begin before buses start running or after they have stopped, it means owning your own vehicle.

And even for those homeless people that the bus would work for, they may not have the money to pay for bus fare.

While homeless people do commit crimes, sometimes their only crime is being homeless. It doesn't take long for homeless people to get criminal records without doing anything wrong. The charges can be loitering, trespassing or unauthorized camping for falling asleep in a place not designated as a residence.

In many cities in America, the state of being homeless is inherently illegal so getting a criminal record is pretty much inevitable if one is homeless in those areas.

Employers are turned off by criminal records and few will care to listen to explanations. Even if a homeless person lucks out and avoids getting a criminal record, he or she will often be assumed to be a criminal and an addict if the applicant's homeless status is discovered.

Whether physically or mentally ill, many homeless people are disabled by their illnesses. I've read the criticisms and assertions that homeless people with mental illness just need to straighten up and get a job. The problem is that anyone mentally ill enough to be homeless isn't fit to work a job until they get at least a little better. They aren't faking; they aren't just being too lazy to work. Mentally ill homeless people are just that - mentally ill.

How could anyone possibly think that sleeping outside, getting frequently beaten and abused and suffering humiliation after humiliation is preferable to working and having a safe, comfortable place to sleep, protection from assault, and respect from your fellow man? If a person really thought that the horror of homelessness was better than working a job, wouldn't that be pretty insane in itself? It's not a choice. That strange, smelly homeless guy yelling nonsense at passersby is disabled by his mental illness.

Some homeless people are physically too ill to hold down a job, too.

So, if these people are disabled then why aren't they living in a cheap little apartment somewhere supported by Social Security Disability?

They are often still in the process of applying for it. The first denial can take up to six months and the first appeal takes around 500 days. During that time the physically disabled homeless are both unable to work and not getting any income. Also, to get Disability, applicants must be available to be contacted and able to make it to appointments, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Sometimes those aren't even possible for homeless people. Being homeless might cause them to experience a delay too great in mail delivery making them disqualified to receive assistance for missing an appointment. Food assistance is often pretty much all they can get. That covers some of why the physically disabled homeless are out on the streets.

The mentally disabled homeless are too messed up to get or hold down a job or sometimes even understand what is going on around them. If they are too disconnected or disaffected from reality to work a job how on earth are they going to navigate the process of filing for Disability?

Most people think this is the major reason homeless people don't get jobs and that may be true for many chronically homeless people. Addictions prevent homeless people from looking for work and from getting hired if they do. The perception that all homeless people are drug-addicted criminals is possibly a greater barrier to their employment than actual drug addiction is.

There's no doubt that addiction causes many people to remain homeless but it is by no means the reason all homeless people are homeless or why they are not working.

A few people have asked me "if homelessness has affected you so deeply, why don't you donate your lens earnings to charities that fight homelessness?"

I would love to donate the proceeds of this lens and all of my others to help homeless people. Unfortunately, I'm on the very edge of homelessness myself due to illness and disability.

You can read about why I'm in financial difficulty here.

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