The Cruelest Myth

I’ve heard people say that “people choose to be homeless.” Let me explain what that “choice” actually looked like for me, as someone with lived experience of homelessness, and for many others who’ve shared their similar stories with our coalition.

I lost my wife to cancer. The grief locked me away—clinically depressed, unable to leave the house for anything beyond survival. I crashed my business not through laziness but through paralysis: I could handle repeat customers who already knew me, but every new phone call felt insurmountable. I moved friends in who had nowhere else to go, hoping they’d help me stay afloat. Instead, on a single day while I was out working, I came home to find I’d been robbed and my property destroyed. That was day one of living in my van with my dog.

As we discussed in Myth Part 1, 40% of unhoused people are employed. So the question isn’t ‘Why don’t they just get a job?’—it’s ‘Why does having a job still leave them homeless?’ The answer: Because when you’re fighting depression while living in a van, even having work doesn’t create the stability you need to escape.

That’s not a “choice.” That’s a cascade of loss that moves faster than any human can recover from.

And yet people still ask “Why don’t you just try harder?” As if depression, grief, and systemic barriers could be overcome through sheer willpower. As if the problem was my work ethic, not the fact that I’d lost everything in a matter of weeks. I was trying—every single day. I was running delivery gigs while living in my van. I was trying to rebuild my business from a parking lot. But “trying harder” doesn’t create affordable housing. It doesn’t erase grief. It doesn’t fix a broken system. The bootstrap mentality assumes everyone starts with boots—and a stable place to put them on.

The myth that people “choose” homelessness suggests that living in a tent in the Florida humidity, facing constant threat of theft, losing access to basic rights like voting (no address for registration) or even standing in a public park without being told to move along, is somehow a “preferable” lifestyle. What people mistake for “choice” is actually the absence of viable exits.

Beth, who shares her experience as @voiceofbeth on Instagram, made what looked like a “choice” to become homeless: “I was leaving a bad situation and I thought that homelessness would be better for my mental health, and it is.” But that’s not choosing homelessness as a preference—that’s choosing homelessness as the least bad option when you’re fleeing danger. When the alternative is staying in an abusive situation, living in your car or a tent isn’t a “lifestyle choice”—it’s survival.

The “Service-Resistant” Fallacy

In Putnam County, we often hear that people are “service-resistant”—that they “refuse help.” But we need to ask: What is the actual quality of the “help” being offered?

• The Vanishing Safety Net: Palatka’s only overnight shelter closed in November 2025 due to city zoning and code violations at its church-based location, leaving dozens without any local alternative. The “choice” for many wasn’t between a bed and a tent; it was between a tent, the back of a car, or a jail cell. There was no “right” option—and no replacement overnight facility has opened since.
• The Impossible Rules: With our local shelter gone, the nearest alternatives often require: no pets, mandatory religious services, or a 30-day substance-free verification. For someone with an untreated mental health crisis or someone whose only companion is the dog that’s kept them safe and gives them purpose to keep living, “refusing help” isn’t about wanting to be homeless—it’s about refusing to surrender the last shred of stability or dignity you have left. When your choice is between a shelter bed and abandoning the dog that watched over you in that van on your first night homeless, what would you choose?
• The Bureaucratic Maze: I remember sitting in a library trying to fill out a housing application while simultaneously calculating whether I had enough gas to make it to the free meal site and back to where I was sleeping. My brain kept choosing the gas calculation. Every. Single. Time. That’s not laziness—that’s survival mode.

The Neuroscience of Survival

When you’re unhoused, your brain shifts into what researchers call “Survival Mode.” Your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain used for long-term planning, budgeting, and career moves—effectively shuts down to prioritize immediate safety.

• Decision Fatigue: When every ounce of energy is spent finding water, avoiding the police, and keeping your gear dry, you don’t have the bandwidth to navigate complex social service systems that take months to yield results. You can’t “plan your way out” when your brain is wired for “survive today.”
• The “I’m Fine” Defense: After being turned away enough times—wrong zip code, missed a deadline, didn’t have the right paperwork—it becomes psychologically easier to say “I prefer it out here” than to keep admitting the system has no space for you. The “choice” becomes a defense mechanism against the repeated trauma of rejection.

The Operational Reality

In Putnam County, poverty affects about 20.7% of residents (per recent Census estimates), and unemployment hovered around 5.7% in late 2025 (higher than Florida’s statewide average). Statewide, Florida faces a massive affordable housing shortage, with only 26 rental homes affordable and available for every 100 extremely low-income households, and a need for over 411,000 more such units. When the “exit ramp” out of homelessness requires a $3,000+ down payment (first month, last month, and security deposit) plus a 650+ credit score, the path out is effectively blocked for someone making minimum wage—especially someone whose credit was destroyed during the crisis that made them homeless in the first place.

Staying on the street isn’t a choice; it’s a consequence of a market where the bottom rungs of the ladder have been removed entirely.

Break the Stigma:

The Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition is building the exit ramps that don’t currently exist. We advocate for Housing First solutions and programs that meet people where they are, rather than demanding they solve their own crisis before they deserve help.

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Guest Voice: Beth shares her experience of homelessness across multiple states on Threads and Instagram as @voiceofbeth. Her full testimony is ‘Voices from the Street // Beth: Sober, Employable, and Breaking Every Stereotype‘