When I recently spent a night at a homeless shelter, I was dismayed that members of the middle class had moved in and that earning above the minimum wage did not protect adults from having to share a room with dozens of others.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up with a family that had very little and were at times homeless.
I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.
There was an undercurrent of poverty throughout my childhood. We lived with my grandmother in her two-bedroom flat, and I slept with my parents. We had cheap holidays, I had to save for my bike and get a paper round as soon as I was old enough.
We bought an apartment building and were going to live off the rent money. We rented to people who were on welfare and a lot of times they couldn't pay the rent. We wouldn't throw them out so we lost the building.
Many hard working people in low paid jobs get housing benefit.
Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.
When we foster an economy without hope, we guarantee that a segment of our population will be destined to know homelessness on a permanent basis, and not for the one night I voluntarily spent at a shelter.
My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.
I've been homeless on a few occasions.
There is this notion that the lives of the comfortable-off middle class don't merit being treated seriously and with compassion.