At the community consultation on affordable housing that we attended this week, I heard a couple people talking about their fear of homeless people. I got to thinking about what the fear of homeless people might be and found that I was ref electing on two different meanings.
For the forum participants (and others) it might be fear of being accosted for money, fear of being intimidated by aggressive panhandling, fear of being attacked, or fear of the unknown. As irrational as fear can be sometimes, these fears have some basis in truth. There have been incidents (well documented by media) of attacks and aggression but the inductive reasoning that someone was attacked so therefore I was attacked is invalid because the opposite is true in more instances. However, I don't want to downplay the fear because it impacts how we see homeless people.
The second meaning that arose was the fear of homeless people. What do they fear? I am not homeless, I have never been homeless, and I can't imagine being homeless so my perspective is very limited. I imagine they have a fear having their possessions stolen, a fear of not having a place to sleep tonight, a fear of not having the next meal, a fear of never getting a home, a fear of being discriminated against, a fear of being arrested or hassled, a fear of being ignored and a fear of being unloved. I don't know if any of those are true but when I think that the person I am seeing might have some of those fears, it changes how I see them.
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