Men's Group

For me, it's a "there but for the grace of God goes I" situation. My fears about homelessness were irrational on multiple levels. First and foremost, exactly as you alluded to, I'm among the "coddled" due to life circumstances. And, frankly, maybe I don't deserve to be, it's a matter of luck of birth in that respect, although in about almost any other respect being born in to my family was NOT a stroke of luck. It was a North Korean gulag, albeit in a great neighborhood with nice "stuff" all around.

If I were in different circumstances without the economic means to afford "the best" in terms of medical care, I so easily could be in jail or committed or dead by now, I was pretty much on the cusp of the third scenario anyway, and it wouldn't have taken much to get me to one of those other places, I was pretty much a total mess in August. And that was all a big culture shock and blow to my ego, because I had this attitude of "this kind of thing is not supposed to happen to educated dudes from the nice 'burbs".

Which is bullshit, it happens a LOT here, people here just have the resources to deal with it a different way than those of fewer means. For one thing, they hush it up as much as possible. Another good example, my boss has a developmentally disabled daughter, and as they age, they are pondering her future. So, they went in with a couple of other parents of DD women, and they just bought a home to serve as a group home for their daughters for life, and found a service organization to staff it with the SS benefits the women receive. Don't even get me started about how many times in my community people who are regarded as important end up having substance abuse issues -- the local news anchor, our township supervisor's husband, a couple of prominent auto execs. They too can afford treatment/rehab.

But for men specifically, yes, I can see how we could be "disposable" in one sense, because no resources go to us. Women with children get aid in the form of things like WIC, medicaid, etc. Single men get squat, don't let the door hit you in the rear on your way out. Why is that? Because we're supposed to tough it out and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps?