[PornoDoggy]

I've also worked with homeless people myself. Folks who are homeless for purely economic reasons generally don't stay that way for long.

The majority are mentally ill.

If you sober up the alkies and dry up the druggies, underneath most of them you will find ... the mentally ill.

The idea that medical care, housing, mental heath treatment is available for the asking is ... mistaken is a polite way to put it. Between the complexity of welfare reform and cost-cutting measures in most of the financially-strapped states, many people entitled to assistance can't get it, or can't get it in a timely manner.

I had a close friend of mine shot and killed by a guy who had appeared at a state hospital several days a week for more than a month, BEGGING to be re-admitted before the voices told him to hurt someone.

The mentally ill, in particular, have been slam-dunked by both sides of the political spectrum, by the way. Between do-gooders on the left who want to give a schizophenic the right to chose not to be treated (without taking into account the fact that they lack the capacity to exersize those rights), and cost-cutters on the right who've shrunk public mental health services to levels that cannot begin to meet the needs out there, they've been well and truly fucked.