“That’s not my fault, that’s their fault,” Roseburg police officer Tony Powers said. “It’s a lifestyle they chose. If they didn’t choose that lifestyle, they wouldn’t be out in the cold weather.”

This simplistic, myopic attitude seems to be shared by many in law enforcement and the community at large, as if having a mental illness, being poor or suffering from substance addiction is a conscious choice that homeless people make every day.  Those people are out on the street primarily because of the lack of mental health and substance abuse treatment services and no affordable housing options available to them, not because of their lifestyle choices. Sure, most of these folks did make poor choices at some point in the past, but it is the lack of social safety net in the US that results in those choices leading to homelessness. In most OECD countries these same choices result in very different outcomes.