so who’s gonna take the lead connecting the dots between vacant hotel rooms and street homelessness ... like ring ring

watching this sht go down is fucking infuriating

this, literally, is the reason i became a drug counselor. living amid a crack epidemic & seeing my houseless neighbors struggling w deadly addictions was heartbreaking. but it was so profoundly disturbing to watch people not care, to walk along the street to their corporate jobs

clutching their briefcases a little tighter on “those” streets, stepping on or over blankets that someone definitely slept in last night, turning their head so they don’t have to look at “it” (“it” being a fuckin human being). this was about six years ago, before this area (cont)

got gentrified by opportunist scum and displaced the homeless population to the river or the bay, or other places where they were less likely to be counted in the city homeless census, or be targeted by dehumanizing legislation that criminalizes street homelessness... (cont)

...and a little less than six years ago i remember being super upset and ranting to my father and i said: “nobody gives a fuck! and if they do, they don’t know where to give that fuck!”

i still remember saying that, and i still think its true. how many people don’t care at all,

and how many care but have no idea where to start? i cannot count the number of “i just don’t know what the solution is” conversations i’ve had with people who actually do care about issue of street homelessness and individuals experiencing that reality

i’m gonna wrap this thread up because this gets me so heated, & then it just gets depressing and i start worrying abt not doing enough as a SUD counselor. i am... depleted. but hey, my COVID-19 test came back negative so ending on a positive note, i’m back to work on sunday