Q: Does appreciating all the external factors at play help you to feel a bit less hard on yourself?
There can be so much stigma (which can then be internalised) about poverty, housing insecurity, and homelessness. Awful stereotypes that these can result from "laziness," or that people might somehow "deserve it." Growing up I felt shame about the precarious financial position my family was in, which still persists to some extent.
The more I understood about the global distribution of wealth, though, and how deliberately uneven its designed to be (so it is not an accident at all that many live in poverty) - this helped challenge those ideas that it was any clear fault of us as the affected individuals and communities.
Some resources to learn more about external causes of poverty, housing insecurity, and homelessness -
Wealth inequality in Australia: many of us struggle given a minority amass enormous, disproportionate, and increasing wealth: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-21/australias-rich-keep-getting-richer/10731700
A visual idea of what wealth inequality looks like globally: https://vividmaps.com/global-wealth-inequality-mapped/
Many other factors contribute to housing insecurity and homelessness, including the rising cost of living, low or no growth in wages & income support, insufficient social housing supply for the demand, the income gap for women, family and domestic violence, plus government policies (or lacks thereof) that have resulted in low rental vacancy rates and masses of empty/unused houses.
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