Do the homeless affect you?

Post Reply New Topic

^^ not in the good ol' US of A! Here people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and 'I got mine, Jack, keep your hands off my stack'. If you can't make it, well that's just the breaks of capitalism, ain't it just grand?
I was basically homeless at 17 to about 34 when I got sober. I remember being in the hospital because I had tried to commit suicide and broke my back and carved up my face, and when I couldn't pay the nurse rolled me out to the bus stop and lent me 35 cents for bus fare. I went to the bus depot and slept on the benches. I lived on rooftops at night in Berkeley, CA and up in the eucalyptus groves in the Berkeley Hills. I have lived in cars in Hawaii, in abandoned vans and buses and shacks in the woods. Once, I had a nice dry little cave to myself, and washed and got my water in the river nearby. I have been homeless, living on friends land, or in the BLM (wilderness) land three times since I got sober, so it isn't just substance abuse. It is because sometimes I can't keep it together.

Food stamps was the best I got from the government. Women that can have babies got welfare, but me, well, I have had more than 8 miscarriages that I know about, and only one child the state took from me over thirty years ago. Living in the States isn't for sissies or for people with no money or connections. Ain't life just grand?

Merle

I never give to the homeless. I don't have money to give to everyone that wants it (there's enough of them that if I give to one, another might see it and try to get money too), and I'd expect that people would do the same to me if our places were reversed anyway. The homeless annoy me rather than feeling sorry for them.

What I'd really like to see is one of those reality TV shows where they get a homeless person who really wants to change (ie: has no addictions and has a real reason for being homeless) and they set them up properly.

ie: Get them some decent clothes and somewhere sustainable to live.
Get them a job / counselling etc...

Check back on them in a few weeks.


It would be like a normal reality show except that instead of improving some rich person's garden, they'd be helping real people.

I give food. I don't give money. And I don't give either to people who beg outside of Starbucks or places where people who are "well-off" congregate and toss money at people to make themselves feel better about not doing anything useful to help them get back on their feet. If you want money, I could probably arrange for work. I know too many people who have made more money begging in 1 day than I would make in weeks. Those are the people holding the "Will work for food" signs that tell you to f*ck off when you offer them a job. They don't want the work. They want the pity cash. Pity cash can get you hundreds of dollars in 1 day.

Now, there are real homeless people out there. Not all of them are scammers. But more than a few are.

Here in Red Deer, the homeless beg for money to buy drugs or alcahol or listerine to drink.Red Deer has plenty of shelters for the homeless who give them warm food and a place to stay.I work at a store in Red Deer which is basically downtown by Ross Street, which is where the vagrants hang out.Our store has security guards round the clock as a result.They stand guard outside to ensure the vagrants don;t heckle the customers or steal the stuff thats displayed outside at the front.
The store has also had several incidences where vagrants have come in and tried to steal listerine from the store to drink.The vagrants drive the tourists away from Downtown Red Deer, and as a result, the stores, businesses, and sidewalk cafes lose business.Many have tried lobbying the city to move the homeless shelters away from the downtown core, but the city never listens.Red Deer is a college city and people prefer the south side since there is no vagrants....the southside is also where the college is...so that wouldnt be an option...the college would protest greatly since they dont want to have vagrants going onto campus begging..The city can put homeless shelters on the North side of the river though.

I do not walk downtown very far from my vehicle.I feel safer if my vehicle is around...and if I have change and say I dont, I could always say its just my car keys jingling in my pocket.I hardly carry change anyway...I always carry plastic.

We have plenty of shelters here, too. They're always full, people steal your stuff, and you've pretty much got to have kids or be a pregnant female to get in.

I would not give to an able bodied twenty something, but I would give to a homeless war veteran.

I feel crushing sadness for the homeless, but giving into the homeless is like giving into an itch. It only gets worse the more you attend to it. So... The only things I give are food to food banks, and coats during winter. The winters here are horrible (-40 celcius) and know people who froze to death from the cold. I was friends with a guy that got hooked on drugs, every coin I ever gave him was to buy another hit. He lost his apartment, his job, his child. He's just a corpse that died too early and forgot to stop breathing. However, I do give away sandwiches and apples from time to time, when there is a sale at the grocery store.

Yeah, they're easy to talk to, but if you're a girl they tend to latch on so I don't talk to them usually..;;; It's kind of too bad I guess.

But no, I don't usually feel much when I pass them. And really.. I mean.. you can't know if they're in pain. D: I mean, some of them really look like it, but most of them around here do not. Do you (the thread starter person) think maybe you're projecting that feeling on them a little bit? I try not to feel much for strangers because you usually can't tell what their own feelings about their situation are, or why they feel the way they do.

Last edited by wigglyspider on 27 Aug 2009, 4:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

I don't give money to the homeless because of my financial circumstances and also because I would feel embarassed to do so. I regularly give money to a housing charity. In the UK, homeless people sell a magazine called The Big Issue - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Issue . I am not judgemental towards homeless people. I believe that every person should be decently housed.

Mm. Some people prefer to be homeless, believe it or not. Shouldn't be illegal, but in many places, it is.

If it comes to actually donating things, I tend to buy morale-boosting items like hot chocolate, instant coffee, candy, etc. and dump them into the food pantry boxes. I used to use the food pantry and there was almost never anything good to be had; just other people's castoffs. It was always a good month when something came in the food pantry that wasn't just edible but good tasting, too. You usually got a lot of dry pasta (no sauce), canned vegetables, rice, dry beans, canned juice, week-old bread, that kind of thing... not often something really good (though the juice came close). Of course it's not enough to live on; there's never enough to go around for everybody for all month; but it'll give you enough of a boost so you can scrape together the rest.

No more than anyone else I don't know.

The food banks here in Canada as far as I know, like the Red Deer food bank, allow financial donations, so whatever is not donated, can be purchased by the food bank and given as such so there is items like you mentioned.Many stores and businesses also contribute.

That is a really great idea! I used to give food and money when I could, but now I'm a mom with 2 little ones and I try to keep them away from those areas when I can. I usually just donate to food banks and the salvation army. These days it's tough to afford to give much at all, but I think most can afford a few bucks for some gloves to donate. I love those gloves and use them myself!

fiddlerpianist, I have the same reaction, and the same apparent indifference. It's ironic that it's such a strong empathic response, yet it takes me several seconds to analyse and react to a friend's painful experience.

The homelessness in my city is serious. It's widespread and there's plenty of people just a step away from homelessess too, because there's a lot of poverty here. It also gets really hot in the summer and cold in the winter, too.
I have empathy for them because I know what it's like to not be able to find work.
The good news is there is supposedly a homeless day shelter in the works which will keep them inside more instead of on the streets all day. I hope they build it. It's too hot for anyone to be spending most of the day outside in the summer, which a lot of them do.