TR> little bit curious about the trauma you speak of. As an example,
TR> are you talking about a natural disaster with no insurance, some
TR> sort of system victimization, a mental breakdown, or something
TR> entirely different?
It varies. Instead of system victimization it is more like social 
victimization. Usually, these are people who spit into the wind, or 
worse. They've be subjected to everything from OTJ harassment and 
other forms of mental abuse... including police, school, religious or 
just about any type of meanness any one group of humans can impel on 
another human. Any single "camper" usually has been subject to one or 
all of the above and in any combination.
I was surprised to find the great majority of the ones I got to know 
rather well were Viet Vets. Also, a great many are just people who 
can't hold a job, for whatever reason. Again, many who claim to be 
vetrans aren't; and most now are too young to have ever seen the wrong 
end of an AK, or grenade.
Substance abuse is the general underlying theme. It is_not_the_cause 
but is a symptom. Many, however, are "natural" substance abusers and 
their "hobby" usually begins to take hold around age 14-15, which 
renders them hopelessly socially unproductive. This I know about as 
I'd been an abuser of some euphoric or another for over 35 years. 
Fortunately, I'd possessed skills which society needed and also 
enough discipline to know when and when not to go nuts on one thing or 
another. (Now, I just like my beer... at home... when no 
responsibilities are pending!)  :)
Others are just mentally unsound. "Teched" if you will. They've never 
been able to quite take care of themselves and when the Regan era 
began, many mental hospitals were emptied and the patients supposedly 
taken care of in "satellite centers" until they were "well." Right, 
and I'm Napoleon!
There are a rare few who have entered the social underbelly due to 
financial loss or physical impairment. Usually they'll find some way 
to leverage themselves out of the situation in less than a year.  
Many years ago they were called "Hobos and Tramps." The difference 
being hobos were more like migrant farmworkers and tramps were just 
ne'er do wells. Their favorite form of transportation was a freight 
train. When I was a 16 year old runaway, I ended up working on a farm 
in Oregon driving a grain truck from the fields a few miles down the 
road to the grain elevators. The people who worked the harvest were of 
the train ridin' wine drinking migrant farmworking good time loving 
happy folk. Geeze! I sure learned a lot...! :) Their modern day 
counterparts are a little hamstrung by the social and economic changes 
of the times. Easy to locate work is no longer easy to find. How 
long has it been since you've seen a Classified Ad stating "Man 
wanted, or General Labor?" I left San Francisco at the end of the 80's 
to go back to Oregon. The farm was still there, now run by a 
corporation and 90% of the work being done by machine. The very few 
staff left were very underpaid. The bunkhouse condemned and the 
kitchen abandoned.  This has happened all over the country.
Last, but not least... a few of the homeless are people on the run. 
Wanted for some serious crime they feel the anonymous existence of 
the streets is a way for them to continue evading whomever it is 
searching them out. There are not very many of these, but they're 
there.
That explain it to you Tom?
DB 
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