After a year or so most of the dwellers had gone missing, they missed the old life and the challenges it brought.
There are differences in the chronically homeless. One group has a vagabond mentality that I saw almost everyday in downtown L.A. No matter how hard the cops would try to disperse them, they would always regroup in their little communities of sorts. Most of them lived that way because that's what they wanted to do. Some of them even had menial jobs that would pay them a little.
Then there were the insane or addicted ones. They are the scariest, and those you avoided like the plague, as half of them probably carried the plague. One woman would sit at the signal on the corner with a baby carriage with a cat in it. She was covered with sores and probably body lice and who knows what else. She would rattle on out of her mind. I had to get passed her to the post office. The cops would pick her up and hospitalize her, then before you knew it, she was back on that corner again.
Some hospitals were accused of "patient dumping". One kid I would see from time to time was going through the outdoor ashtray looking for butts. He had on a hospital gown, tape around his arm and carrying a prescription bag. He's the one I worried about as he was only about 19, but you couldn't approach him, he would just take off if anyone tried.
