The coming homeless die-off

[Cleita]

13. He's my generation and back in his twenties he would have had what

were called flops then. These were cheap hotel or motel rooms that could be rented for $2 a day. Many addicts back then would do day labor, like work as golf caddies at country clubs for instance, and that would give then enough money for a fix, food and a flop. I knew a lot of guys like this back in my bartending days. He probably survived like this until the nineteen eighties as these flops became remodeled and gentrified and slowly disappeared from the landscape and that reduced him to using shelters. But today the shelters are overwhelmed and can't take care of the needs of these people because so many of them are out in the streets and so many are families with children that the shelters tend to give them preference.

He's never going to take care of himself because society isn't going to give him the means to. A guy like that needs a hotel room and some money for his needs so he can die at least in some modicum of comfort and shelter instead of out in the elements and at the mercy of other homeless who may be crazy and dangerous. If he has a place to go for a meal and a place to go home to at night, he might try to turn around, but he's not going to under the circumstances he's forced to live in. I don't know where you know this guy from but if it's in the LA area, I might have known him back in those days.