Chronic Stories

Angel has spent more than half his life living in homelessness. His mother loved him a great deal, but drug use during pregnancy led to Angel’s developmental disability and sporadic occurrences of homelessness throughout Angel’s childhood. After his mom’s death, the streets felt more like home to Angel than the strange, new foster home in which he was placed. So he ran. Since then, Angel has lived without a home for over a decade. His disability stops him from keeping a job and the lack of a support network means no stability. Angel’s doctor is the ER. His social worker is the police. He wants to connect to services and have a home, but can’t do it on his own.

For some people, homelessness has become the norm. Many of these folks also have additional barriers like mental health challenges, substance abuse patterns, or long-term physical disabilities that make finding and maintaining housing even harder. Check out these Statistics and Solutions about chronic homelessness.