>>509353367 (OP)i was homeless first and foremost because i was addicted to heroin and crack but IN MY DEFENSE my landlord fucked me over,
he was turning my duplex into an AirBNB and kicked me and my roommates out with a week's notice.
i didn't have enough for a first and last month's rent + deposit on a new apartment so ended up living in my car and an empty storage for a few months.
i was working full time the entire time this was going on, but because of my low salary and the aforementioned crack and heroin addiction i couldn't save up any money to get into a new place.
finally i met a friend who introduced me to her friend whose parents were looking to fill an apartment in the house they had bought for her and her husband, and i was able to get into a new place without a deposit.
this allowed me to get on my feet and start moving towards getting off the drugs.
the 3 or 4 months i was homeless were the most dangerous of my life, i almost died a bunch of times and was in a very bad way both mentally and physically. looking back it was only God who kept me alive, and i felt the presence of my guardian angel very explicitly several times (it wasn't just the drugs). two or three experiences in particular stand out as evidence to me of direct divine intervention, saving me from what should have otherwise been certain death.
my experience with homelessness made me a very staunch advocate of adequately funded social services, mental health care, harm reduction policies and non-abstinence-only addiction recovery, housing first approaches to behavioral health. i now work in addiction recovery, i feel it's the only way i can repay my debt to God.
our society is so cruel to people who are living on the street, it's almost like the system is broken on purpose and erects so many barriers between these people and reaching some kind of safety and stability where healing can occur. meanwhile we spend trillions on the military and subsidies for corporations. it's obscene.