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I'm strongly convinced that economic precarity, homelessness and the stressor that brings, is more likely to manifest itself as "mentally ill" than just, "well for some reason we have a lot of crazy people now", it's not too hard to maintain minimum hygiene if you have a roof over your head, three squares, and a bit of positive socialization from work/school/church/library/whatever

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Being homeless and not having a place to shower excuses you looking unkempt and smelling bad, but that's not what people are upset at homeless people for. There's plenty of people who smell bad despite being housed (eg. teenage boys, gamers, or anime convention attendees), but they get nowhere as much flak as "homeless people". People are upset at antisocial behavior like urinating in public, aggressively approaching others, and setting up encampments. Except for maybe the last item, all of those things are a homeless person chose to do.

Sure, and this is a very interesting question whose absence in American political discourse is an indictment against us.

But this meta question is not why I don't ride the bus. The structural inconvenience of it, and the odors inside are.

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