The Homeless - what do you do when they ask for help?

do you have a rule that you follow unequivocally?
do you vary your action depending on the situation?
do you say something back or just keep walking?
have you tried to help someone beyond just giving them some money? what happened?

i always try to give some money when asked - like a dollar or some change, whatever low denomination i have on me

when i get mugged in NYC outside the A train at 12:00 AM, i had been coming back up from a restaurant where a homeless person asked me for money. i gave him everything i had in my wallet (about 5 dollars), so when i got mugged i had no money on me. they ended up pulling a gun on me and shit it was very scary. anyway, it all worked out safe + okay and due to my tremendous superstitiousness i directly attributed that to the charity i gave earlier that evening.

when i got* mugged. i don't get mugged anymore, since i've moved.

If I'm walking down the street with spare change in my pocket and a bum asks me for money, I'll give him some. If I don't have it, which is most of the time, I'll at least empathetically say that i'm sorry I dont have any. I hope that they understand I'm being honest about it.

I gave out money when I was way younger, but then I stopped for a long period after a few bad experiences with sketchy/aggro/methy bums. I just adopted a thousand yard stare. I've never had too much money to spare anyway, so I felt like, you know, handing out money HAD to be someone else's deal.

A couple of times, I'll admit, I gave that stupid "sandwich speech" to my friends. You know "it's better to just pack a sandwich to give to them, because they'll just spend their money on heroin". Seems like a stupid thing to me now though! For fucks sake, count up those nickels and dimes and buy whatever you want with it! Buy crack if that's what you need. All the peanut butter sandwiches in the world won't sooth your drug withdrawals. I think I only took a sandwich with me a few times and each of those times I never gave it to anyone.

One time though, I was walking a bunch of soup cans over to a friend's house and she was going to give them to a food drive and this guy asked me for some change. I was like "shit! i don't have any money, but I've got a can of soup." dude whipped out a can opener and drank it all right there.

I won't like, do things for homeless anymore though. Like, don't ask me to push your wheelchair or give you a ride somewhere or some shit. Although in cases where I've seen a dude genuinely injured, I've called the paramedics.

When I used to leave the suburbs and take the subway to downtown Toronto, I had a self-imposed rule: that I'd give my change to the first person who asked me. One time two folks approached me at once, so I had to divide it up.

Most I ever gave was a $20 bill, to an old woman who didn't even approach me, she was just sitting there in the dark. (An impulsive act on my part; I was drunk and the pub had just closed.)

Still will give money to pretty much anyone who approaches me (doesn't happen very often where I live now.)

I just ignore them nowadays. I used to care til i got a job at a diner where homeless people would constantly come in and bug customers for food, or try and shower in the bathroom, or simply linger outside and harass customers. Once somebody used the bathroom to wash their change. At any rate, when i kicked them out there was a 50% chance they would threaten me.

Outside of that there've been a couple of times where i had leftovers or food and tried to give it to homeless people and they refused it, just wanting money. Plus most of the time the asking for help is "Give me a cigarette!"

I don't have any hard and set rules about whom I give money to, though, if they claim to be hungry I'm more likely to get them something to eat. There are a couple of homeless in my neighborhood who I am far more likeley to help than random homeless ppl downtown.

xp: yeah, that's sorta the general kind of shit that put me off giving money: having to deal with aggro homeless in the context of a service industry job. I think the bums in downtown dc are in general much more chill than the bums I used to encounter in San DIego.

For fucks sake, count up those nickels and dimes and buy whatever you want with it! Buy crack if that's what you need.

otm

If I have change in my pocket I usually give it to the homeless, but for some reason nowadays I almost never do. I usually have $0 or a $20. About a year ago a lady was asking for money and I offered to buy her some food instead since I was going into a coffee shop. I came back out with a coffee and a blueberry cupcake and she got really angry with me. "I don't LIKE coffee! I don't LIKE blueberries!", so i kinda stopped doing that.

i just feel so sorry for these people. in DC in particular, it just seems like a total failure of mental health care. there's a fair share of people who just seem down on their luck but a huge proportion are absolutely out of their minds and in desperate need of real help.

it just seems like a total failure of mental health care.

the mental health care system, i mean.

we must be running into different homeless people! everybody I`ve encountered in dc has been real chill and polite and unassuming.

not to say that they don't have mental health issues or that they aren`t woefully underserved. just that their craziness hasn't shown through quite as brightly as other people I've met.

i bark out NO CASH or NO CHANGE while quickening my stride and not making eye contact

I give a couple of big issue sellers some money when i see them. One of them has given me an xmas card for the past few years.

when i was younger i used to give these guys a buck pretty much any time they asked, i think partly reacting against years of hearing my mom tell me NEVER to EVER give anyone money since they'd just use it to go buy drugs. i remember when i was about 19 a guy came up to me outside the los angeles train station and asked if i could help him buy a ticket. i wound up giving him a huge handful of change.

these days i usually just say 'sorry' and don't make eye contact.

sorry, no eye contact is my norm.

I used to give money when I lived in Melb but the sheer number of homeless in Sacto when I first moved was so alarming I kinda freaked myself out of that pretty quickly. Like the Safeway by my house routinely had at least 5 or 10 hanging outside the door and I was on foot and often getting dark...v quickly felt like a bad idea

It's not as bad now but I haven't really eased up

in Glasgow the chuggers (charity muggers) are the worst and most aggressive.

when they ask me for help i usually house them tbph, unless the background check throws up something dubious.

Im a civil guy and im always polite but the chuggers I just want to tell to fuck off

one time, i think it was like midnight after Oasis at loch lomond in 96? a beggar came up asking for a quid for tea. It was in sauchiehall st. My mate sleeping on the bench while we waited on my dad picking us up. Someone called the guy "young man" and of course straight away he started singing the village people song. We all gave him money for the patter.

My only hard and fast rule is that I don't take my wallet out on the street. Any change or anything $5 and under in my pockets I'll give to whomever asks. If I don't have money, I'll make eye contact and say, "I don't, I'm sorry" and I try not to sound pitying but I don't know if I do that very well. But I'm definitely into eye contact because these are people.

And I guess I have some general guidelines, like if you are a young, white person who does not appear mentally ill, get a job and go fuck yourself for taking money away from the career street drunk one block down, and fuck you for making me think like a Republican. There are a couple of regulars a couple blocks northeast of my work who I won't give money to because one of them just sits there and leers at women all day, and the other aggressively shakes his cup once as you walk by and yells "HAVE A BLESSED DAY." I really shouldn't hold that against him, but I do.

I try to patronize the Streetwise vendors I see on my regular routes. There's a guy who sits against a building along my walk from work to the train whom I fucking adore. He blasts classic rock on a portable radio, shakes his change cup to the beat, and just WAILS the songs at the top of his lungs. He cannot fucking sing to save his life, but he seems like he's having a total blast, so I try to remember to keep some money out for him. I'm also much more likely to give money to women who are pandhandling because damn, can you even imagine what they have to deal with over and above what homeless men have to deal with?

I used to buy coffee for a guy who panhandled outside of the Dunkin Donuts near my school. Once I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the grumpy street drunk who used to panhandle in front of my apartment building. He said, "I don't like peanut butter. You got a dollar?" Which was cool - I ate the sandwich for lunch the next day.

I'm 100% down with panhandlers using their money for whatever the hell they want but I did stop giving that particular dude money when I saw him use two bucks to take the bus three blocks. I mean, come on man. That's just ridiculous.

I give whatever cash I've got, which generally isn't much, and I buy the Real Change papers with at least a $5. I got to know a few of the vendors over the years. When I lived downtown, I knit hats and scarves and left them on the sidewalk in a box marked Free. We also lived in the same block as the free mental health clinic and 5 different outreach programs - I got yelled at and spit on many times walking home from the bus stop, really challenging to not take it personally.

Now, since we no longer live downtown, I donate a pile of hats and scarves I've knit plus all the coats/gloves/mittens I can scare up directly to Real Change for their Survive the Streets program. Our current neighborhood has a large transient population and several folks who live in their cars/ancient RVs - most are good neighbors who are welcome to draw water from our outside tap and put their garbage in our bins. I leave our smashed cans out for the collectors. idk, I've gotten through some rough times in the past because people were kind when they didn't have to be. I don't like being hit up with an obvious scam, and the level of rage in some is terrifying, but it doesn't hurt me to give something.

if you are a young, white person who does not appear mentally ill, get a job and go fuck yourself for taking money away from the career street drunk one block down

how do you work out they are not mentally ill?

Didn't you know? All mentally ill people have stickers on the foreheads these days.

I'm talking about the trust fund hippies that roll through town in the summer.

i sometimes give money but mostly say sorry no. people i never give money to are those whose "car broke down" or "just got out of the hospital" or "just got out of jail [points toward jail, shows bracelet]" and "need money to get to [town 20 miles away]" because i feel insulted by how they think i am stupid and wish they would be honest about something for once.

i gave a £10 note over christmas to one of our friendly local drunks/h addicts/etc, it's a pretty nice area and our street alkies are commensurably well attired, good mannered and gracious

it was cold and i took pity and my donation reflects guilt over incapacity or unwillingness to do something useful like get them to a shelter etc

saying sorry no on my part is mostly out of hatred of having conversations with other human beings, i guess that's kind of mean of me if i have money

I probably should have just specified trust fund hippies in the first place instead of claiming to be a judge of someone's mental health. I'm sorry.

im thinking of offering my consultancy services to young homeless mentally ill people, suggest they get rid of the baseball caps and shabby coats and embrace the full rammelzee look in order to fully monetize their mental illness

i sometimes give money but mostly say sorry no. people i never give money to are those whose "car broke down" or "just got out of the hospital" or "just got out of jail [points toward jail, shows bracelet]" and "need money to get to [town 20 miles away]" because i feel insulted by how they think i am stupid and wish they would be honest about something for once.

― veryupsetmom (harbl), Friday, January 18, 2013 6:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i gave money to a just got out of jail guy once, because he appended it with '...and i could really use a drink'

there used to be a woman who would come running up to ppl sitting in parked cars and bang on the window saying she needed money to catch a bus because of her daughter something. Scared the living FUCK out of me at least twice. And I saw her a month or two working the same angle on a diff parking lot a few blocks further away.

i take them out on a boat, teach them how to fish

im thinking of offering my consultancy services to young homeless mentally ill people, suggest they get rid of the baseball caps and shabby coats and embrace the full rammelzee look in order to fully monetize their mental illness

― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, January 18, 2013 11:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know if that's directed at me, but when you've got a couple of young, tan, physically healthy looking kids who looked like they just rolled off the lot at a Further show and are asking for gas money because they are traveling through town, I'm pretty comfortable attributing their spare change requests to a lifestyle choice.

needing a drink is ok but don't ask for bus fare because i just saw you doing this last week and you were here is what i'm saying

jaq youre a really cool person

I live in a gigantic old house in the city with 5 roommates. We are all down with each other and have no issues regarding guests. Last night the doorbell rang at 10 pm and I answered it. There was a man and he asked for one of my roommates by name so I invited him in and called the roommate to the door. Turns out he's a drug addict who is recently homeless and needed somewhere to sleep. Of course it immediately became very uncomfortable. Somehow he knew my roommat'es name even though they aren't friends, just the barest of acquaintances. No way this dude was staying in our house. We gave him a beer and subway fare so he could be warm and charge his phone.

Anyways, my roommate was mad at me for letting him in, but why the fuck are homeless drug addicts knocking on my door looking for him? Dang. Last time I let his "friends" inside.

i remember years ago a crying teenage girl said she lost her fare home and needed a fiver. I gave her what i had and hoped she got home ok. I was less cynical then. that was like 20 years ago.

grumble a "sorry, no" cuz i really never do, also hate talking to strangers downtown

I decided v recently that unless I'm going to give money to every panhandler, I can't justify picking and choosing who gets help based on factors like whether I have change, whether I'm feeling generous that day, whether the person truly inspires sympathy, etc (the main factors that have informed my decisions so far). I'll give money to organizations that help the homeless.

that is a miniaturized version of why a welfare state is superior to the randomness/discretion/preference for the photogenically pitiful characteristic of charity assistance

I actually think about that a lot, like who the hell am I to decide who deserves my help (my total bullshit and gross "who is mentally ill" determinations included)? Which is probably why I had so much to say about it upthread. I think about this every day. xp

rarely do so anymore, feel the most tempted by the panhandlers who work busy intersections and walk between the rows of idle cars waiting before a stoplight

used to give a lot more in HK, think I picked this up from someone else's observation but I think there may be a difference in how panhandlers act - in HK, they never ever approached you, would always just sit passively or at most make a kow-tow or hand shaking motion, but they'd never make eye contact. feel like it was 'easier' to give because there wasn't a chance of human interaction beyond maybe a 'thank you.'

but here I'm kind of terrified of entering into a conversation with a panhandler

also much more likely to give to buskers

tempted to say something about shame societies vs guilt societies even tho that binary is dreadfully simplistic

there's also a very strong anti-panhandler strain of thinking among a lot of chinese people I know - runs along the line of, they're faking it! they own houses! they make more than you or me!

i don't like the whole 'check their sneakers, if they're good then they're not homeless' -- wtf is this I mean cmon

probably the worse were the ones who were crippled or maimed or deformed. recall running across a guy in beijing who literally had half his head missing - I think he only had one side of his brain. he was being fed by his 'handler' I guess. also remember a pair on the beijing subway train who had really bad third degree burns all over their upper body/faces; one of them spat on the floor a foot away from me and continued to panhandle

and hearing stories about the triads you never know who actually suffered their deformity or who just was late in paying a gambling debt - like, you'd see people with no arms but both arms were cut off at exactly the same spot, not much scarring, etc. - tough to think about : \

also in large chinese cities there are tons and tons of street urchins who hang out around the expat bars begging for money - a lot of them, I've heard and don't doubt, are children who were kidnapped - there'd be one 'auntie' who would be managing 7-10 urchins at once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXqyL733tYw

I generally take the view that it's not really my business to second guess how in need people are - with one or two individual exceptions, if they approach me and ask for money, i'll usually give them some change. Unfortunately, i pass so many homeless people on my way to and from work each morning it's a bit difficult to proactively do much other than sling a few quid at relevant charities now and then. If i'm in Russia or Ukraine, where there isn't much of a support network in place to help homeless people, i will make the effort to give something to every one i see though.

a friend of mine worked in youth substance abuse and would never give money to homeless people ever. food, yes.

when we were in america (sf) a homeless bloke asked us for 'money to buy food'. we offered him a perfect banana and he said 'yes but do you have MONEY to buy food'. eventually he took the banana.

bananas are not really food tho

this is making me think of what my preferences are among the different types of panhandlers and i don't think it's logical. people who stand near stoplights i don't give to. i have a major hangup about traffic safety. this is not their fault. they are often the worst-looking homeless people though. that could be just what area i drive through coming home from work. i also get mad when firefighters are collecting money in their boots at the same stoplights. panhandlers get tickets for it, should be illegal for firefighters too imo.

it's his reply that was the concern xp

and bananas aren't even drugs ;_;

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2389/will-smoking-banana-peels-get-you-high

i tried getting through life not judging ppl but the alternatives are fucking exhausting and most of the time turns out i'd'a been best off judging them and now i've always got change for the bus and a better class of friend, hurrah

xxp I can see if from their perspective - if you're cold and hungry and want something decent to eat and someone who could give you $1 towards a bowl of soup offers you some fruit they happen to have on them, you'd probably take the fruit but still want the soup.

otoh that's one of their five a day sorted, so

they are often the worst-looking homeless people though. that could be just what area i drive through coming home from work. i also get mad when firefighters are collecting money in their boots at the same stoplights. panhandlers get tickets for it, should be illegal for firefighters too imo.

― veryupsetmom (harbl), Friday, January 18, 2013 7:19 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah yeah the ones at the traffic lights often are the most beat up looking :-\

in my parents' boring suburban NJ town the firefighters collect at intersections and they will literally stand in the middle of the road with their backs turned to you while there's a green light

i tried getting through life not judging ppl but the alternatives are fucking exhausting and most of the time turns out i'd'a been best off judging them and now i've always got change for the bus and a better class of friend, hurrah

― lemmy's rabbles (darraghmac), Friday, January 18, 2013 7:25 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I think this is why I feel bummed out most days most of the time. I think too much.

my town is small and i know most of the homeless people to some extent, so i don't give anything to the ones who i know are bad-- the guy who has tried to assault me, the guy who rides around on his bike asking for two or three dollars being a total dick to everyone-- and give whatever's fairly small and in my pocket to anyone else. i used to have a lot of justifications for or against doing it but basically i just feel bad if i don't and if i do i can move on with my day. it doesn't really matter why i feel bad or if i should; it's just a fact and it's not going to change at this point. it's not some altruistic thing, i only really like a couple of these guys, it's just what i need to do to not have residual nagging bad feelings all day. in cities though i get very overwhelmed and i don't know what to do and haven't worked out anything satisfactory

xpost yeah but they might be searching for fires in that direction

also I pay with plastic like, all the time now so I never have change anymore. =\

guy on my work st has a card machine, he's way ahead of the curve

think I might just be making this up or conflating it with a bake sale but I seem to remember on one occasion there were middle aged moms raising money to buy little league uniforms

and I definitely remember once when there were lik 4 10 year olds at that same intersection raising money for charity

get your kids out of the fucking street, jeez!

if homeless people had visa paywave I'd give way more, it's true

he was all 'ey got any change' last year and he was a mess, now he's got his paypal on a sign, ppl love it, he's doin well, talkin about franchise, great to see it imo

Ask me again when I'm not so near the cusp of being homeless myself.

if you are loading out of a venue and a dude says "I'm really hungry" and you give him a bunch of the food you didn't eat that was on your rider - whether it's snacks or a plate from catering - you may find that food tossed in the garbage by the stage door a minute later, and it's a bummer. if you need money for dope tell me "I need money for dope," you're panhandling by a music venue dude we all get that. saying you're hungry and then throwing away the food. milwaukee homeless dudes I have been pissed off by, the anecdote

shit man, send that food to me

the food-related encounters with the homeless are the ones that really stick with me. particularly this one guy who not only did not want the food that i was offering him (half a subway sandwich), but gave me this look like "are you fucking KIDDING me man?!"

i try to forget that, though, and treat each person as a new individual. but what's fucked up - and it seems like it isn't just me - is that even after around 30 years of wandering around, seeing homeless people, giving them money or food or not, saying 'i'm sorry' and walking by or just staring at your feet because you don't feel like interaction and shame that day, i still have no clue what i'm doing. i have no code, i don't know whether what i'm doing is right or wrong, acceptable or shameful, i don't know how i'll feel about what i did in the future. it's this massive public problem that few people ever want to think about, let alone discuss.

ok what does peter singer do in this situation? someone get me peter singer on the phone, maybe he'll know what to do

pffft

when you get a homeless guy turn down an *apartment*, we'll talk

When you say half a subway sandwich, do they come in separate halves or were you offering him a half-eaten sandwich? Because the latter is a bit fucked up.

footlongs come in two halves!

i usually can't finish both 6" halves anyway so i figured i'd just give it to the guy

Okay, that makes more sense. I did think it was a tad weird.

a tad weird, i wouldnt go so far as 'fucked up' tho, if i'm honest.

half eaten sandwich handed by passerby probably less unhygenic but more souldestroying than half eaten sandwich from bin

only weird if it was a subway meatball marinara sub... because them shits is delicious.

just after i typed the word "subway", i hesitated. something seemed foolish. but i submitted anyway

id cast aspersions on anyone giving away half eaten food but can see how deems, more thoroughly entrenched in a catholic country, would regard any alms as beyond reproach

i used to always give one dude sandwiches and bagels when i worked in a grocery store, even though he never eats much. once i was going to a house show and i found a bag of them on the porch. i found out he had been giving the dudes who lived at the house most of whatever i gave him for months. i ended up eating a stale bagel later when i was drunk and thinking "i have no idea what i'm doing anything for."

let me be clear: i had not eaten any of the sandwich. it wasn't like a devastated memory of a 6" sandwich with my teethmarks all over it and this sad little compromised half eaten 6" sandwich rotting in a tin carcass together, this was a full 12 inch sandwich, mint condition, wrapped up in a little baggy that i'm carrying by my side

i've encountered homeless people in NYC who integrate "honesty" in their spiel (for lack of a better way to put it). in particular, i remember one guy several years ago who paraded around the Theater District with a sign that said something like "i'm gonna spend the money you give me on booze and crack -- AT LEAST I'M HONEST." my first reaction was laughter (lol yeah he is being honest). at some point, it dawned on me that that just might be this homeless guy's schtick (and not necessarily the truth). i have no idea how effective that approach was generally -- i never gave him any money, so in my case it wasn't.

the food I'm talking about is not half eaten - it's rider food. whole loaves of bread, jars of peanut butter, hot plates of food from the catering tent/area

yeah but it hadn't been made specially for dude so obv wouldnt meet nilmar's high standards or w/e

wouldnt you feel weird giving half eaten food to someone tho?

not that anyone here has done that, maybe nobody in the history of the world has ever done that, but it's 1:30am and profound moral questions must be answered

i spose i would, cos i'd rly be thinkin 'i wanted that'

half a sandwich is not really half-eaten food, it kinda depends really. "here's the half sandwich I didn't get to yet, here's the rest of this bag of doritos I was working on" - no, not really weird at all, it's the same thing I'd do for a friend if he was hungry. except strongo, you give that guy your doritos today you'll be on the hook for the rest of your life

come round my place durin dinner, every fucker eats off every fucker's plate, yerman's no better like

i sometimes give money but mostly say sorry no. people i never give money to are those whose "car broke down" or "just got out of the hospital" or "just got out of jail [points toward jail, shows bracelet]" and "need money to get to [town 20 miles away]" because i feel insulted by how they think i am stupid and wish they would be honest about something for once.
― veryupsetmom (harbl), Friday, January 18, 2013 5:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i'll give anyone a buck or two unless they are telling me a tall tale. i don't resent them for it b/c damn it's rough out there but i also feel if you are going to take me for a chump you can move on to the next person who actually is a chump.

also maybe this is inaccurate but i feel like the people who have these worked-out stories, and sometimes elaborate staging (like they will actually point to an actual car that appears to be broken down--i knew a pair of dudes in chicago who would do this routinely, their story was that they had to drive a distant relative of mayor daley [!!] to an emergency room and ran out of gas… it never made much sense) … i feel like if i submit myself as a candidate for such a scam i'm kind of submitting myself to being mugged or something. basically unless the person seems genuine and just wants to talk about whatever, i'm not going to stand a listen to your BS story while your friend is waiting for an opportune time to jack me.

everything about these situations is so horrible. if people are conning you that doesn't mean they aren't people who have had all kinds of bad breaks starting with the circumstances of their birth and are probably deserving of much better opportunities. so my reluctance to give them my money is not really about morality as such. but it just seems inevitable that living in a big city when you're faced with lots of homeless, you make these weird hierarchies based around assumptions that aren't very well tested.

also... i "quit" smoking many years ago but now and again i'll buy a pack and hate myself. if some homeless person is looking for a smoke in the next 24 hours they're in luck because i'll usually take one or two out for myself and just hand them to whole pack out of self-disgust.

catch is its all potatoes

yeah aero we're strictly considering teethmarks and drool level partial-consumption

i didn't eat any of the sandwich! it was untouched! can someone just confirm for me that there's nothing unusual about offering half of a completely untouched sandwich?

sorry guys but i 420d and now i'm paraaaaaanoid

the thing in NYC is begging for cigarettes -- nowadays a pack costs over $10 (lol Bloomberg's sin taxes) so it's not just the obviously homeless who bum smokes. that said, bumming smokes in NYC long precedes $10/pack cigarettes -- it was a major annoyance for me as far back as 1997 (when i got my first job in Midtown).

is housing a human right? id aver that everyone deserves some de minimis standard of food and shelter but apart from like sweden i dont think any country has both consitutionalized and practically ensured this

i didn't eat any of the sandwich! it was untouched! can someone just confirm for me that there's nothing unusual about offering half of a completely untouched sandwich?

sorry guys but i 420d and now i'm paraaaaaanoid

― Z S, Friday, January 18, 2013 7:34 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no that's not weird though i would make a point of telling dude "i didn't touch this part" or something.

Sorry ZS, it's my fault for misunderstanding you. Offering an untouched separate half is not weird, as far as I'm concerned.

z s read yr blogs u were absolved of any moral turpitude upthread, long may u continue to give portions of artisanally prepared foods to the needy

no that's not weird though i would make a point of telling dude "i didn't touch this part" or something.

yeah, i probably didn't make that it clear to the guy. maybe that's why he looked at me as if i was a total asshole!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9mNMXFftBA

I thought it was universal practice to leave wrapped food on top of trash cans like they are video game reup points.

it's my habit to surrender a whole roast chicken on a silver plate, with the tips of the drumsticks wrapped in white, whenever a homeless guy hits the special move button

maybe that's why I'm hemorrhaging money ... and vital protein that I need to sustain my nutrient-deprived body

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Idk about constitutional nakh but we can't leave someone on the street unless we know they have some means of housing themselves or other p specific circumstances

im guessing there are loads of homeless ppl around tho? last time i read the irish times there was a piece about a homeless person freezing to death in some scenic bit of dublin

a roommate of mine, when i lived in dub, did some stunt sociology and "spent a few days" homeless and was threatened with violence on the reg

can assure you that a score of homeless ppl will die in mpls in the coming weeks

i'm an easy mark, fwiw

Yeah there are plenty of homeless in Dublin, and yeah i'd imagine it's as rough as anywhere in that situation, can only tell you about my time out rural but the only ppl we had that were homeless wouldn't engage with us- crossover with mental health services were good, obv dub has a much bigger prob tho

panhandlers in DC are really aggressive, I've had people complain that I didn't give them enough money, or just yell at me if I didn't give them any

There's a class of non-english speaking female panhandler in dc/maryland that freaks me the fuck out because they look like they are being forced to do so, by a pimp or something but that's probably just me being paranoid.

i've encountered homeless people in NYC who integrate "honesty" in their spiel (for lack of a better way to put it). in particular, i remember one guy several years ago who paraded around the Theater District with a sign that said something like "i'm gonna spend the money you give me on booze and crack -- AT LEAST I'M HONEST." my first reaction was laughter (lol yeah he is being honest). at some point, it dawned on me that that just might be this homeless guy's schtick (and not necessarily the truth). i have no idea how effective that approach was generally -- i never gave him any money, so in my case it wasn't.

This was actually covered in an early thread: "Why lie? It's for beer."

xp, there are lots of hyperbolic stories about organised Roma "gangs" recruiting women to beg across the world. It is true to some extent, but in London tends to be limited to the metro system. Given the levels of poverty their communities are facing, i'm not sure they're much less "in need", tbh, but it's always depressing, particularly when children are involved.

This thread is making me feel heartless, but I adopted a pretty firm just-say-no policy some years ago. Maybe even before I moved to NYC, but living there definitely solidified it. I got tired of the whole emotional/moral matrix, trying to sort out who to give to, whether it was "doing any good," how much of it was for my own sake -- to make me feel good -- and how much for theirs. Plus also just worn down by years of people lying to me about whatever their imaginary disaster scenario was. It's not that I don't think panhandlers need money; I take it as a given that anyone willing to spend all day asking for spare change has some real need of it. But I don't like to encourage that particular form of interaction, I don't think it's very good for anyone involved.

I do make a point to give money to any busker worth half a damn, and I always buy copies of the homeless newspapers. Not because I'm glad to see them working or whatever, just because those interactions seem empowering in a way the alms-begging is not.

Never give money cos I'm pretty tight tbh. Fuck giving anything away ever.

i try to give money when i have some, and when i dont have money i try to make eye contact and say i dont. id probably give more if i wasnt wary about pulling $40 or $50 out of my pocket and peeling off a single to hand out -- feel like showing everyone on the subway that you have cash on you is a bad idea. but im probably also being paranoid. when i have change i always give. dumb stories, no stories, whatever.

I haven't actually encountered someone begging for about 5 years tho.

I've been burned a few times - there was a woman who used the same domestic-violence-need-money-for-bus-fare line on me twice in quick succession, in two different places in the same area, and the first time i gave her some money and the second time I said something not-very-assertive like "you asked me this last week?" (and still I think, well, she could have been telling the truth, there's no way i'll ever know).

But I'll give money, still, when I feel like it, a pound here and there, and buy the Big Issue if I've got the change on me. I try to always make eye contact when I apologise, because it's only polite. Sometimes I stop to talk. The homeless population of my town is large but quite settled, so I'm pretty familiar with who has what pitch, and when people are squabbling over pitches. The usual thing they say is that they want money to get a room in a shelter for the night, and that's fair enough, and I don't really mind if they're spending it on something else instead.

Because there's historically been such a large homeless population here, we've got quite a lot of soup kitchens and drop-in centres, so I don't ever think to offer food instead of money. (in fact last year, when i'd picked up two sandwiches for the price of one, I asked a homeless dude I passed on the way if he'd like one, and he said 'i'm afraid someone's just given me one already?')

Don't give money out, because I'm generally skint - but I always make eye contact when I tell the person this.

ignore

The Homeless - what do you do when they ask for help?

do you have a rule that you follow unequivocally?
do you vary your action depending on the situation?
do you say something back or just keep walking?
have you tried to help someone beyond just giving them some money? what happened?

― Z S, Friday, January 18, 2013 12:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Thread title has been bothering me, and here's why:

1) Not everyone who is "asking for help" on the street is homeless -- is this thread about people who approach passersby and ask for money?
2) I think there's a lot of conflation going on here -- mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, begging -- those are all separate (related, but discrete) issues in my mind and I don't have a policy for how I treat people with one or more of these issues because I try to treat everyone as an individual, which they are.

But in answer to the questions --
do you have a rule that you follow unequivocally? no.
do you vary your action depending on the situation? yes, because every situation is different -- if there is a homeless person applying for GED classes, that person is not the same as the person asking me for money
do you say something back or just keep walking? i respond to people when they talk to me, if that's what you're asking
have you tried to help someone beyond just giving them some money? what happened? yes, it's part of my job, it turned out fine (usually)

I dunno -- I never give people food or money, but I do like to help homeless people. I'm just not sure that's exactly what this thread is asking.

sorry that was so long and annoying
i felt like i had to clarify what this thread was really asking vs the question everyone seems to be answering

How can one be most helpful without giving food or money, I would like to know, since I would do that thing if it didn't require too much of a time commitment for each supplicant.

As one of a subset of ILX folk who actually spent time being homeless, I've got v. weird and nuanced feelers about panhandling. My practice basically boils down to recognizing that the askers who can self-advocate (ask for whatever succor is available in an "acceptable" way) are most likely to benefit from the aid. So the guys who walk along median strips day after day are most likely to get my aid, as are those who can't ask at all - silent, sleeping, obviously disabled. The paranoid/aggro/snarky/generally dickish panhandlers don't get as much charity, because there's only so much symbolic help I can give, and I'd like to aim it in the most efficacious direction. Perhaps it's ego gratification (rewarding the "right" kind of poverty) but I think the universe benefits more when I help either the speechless, most denigrated,or the just-on-that side of unfortunate who have the greatest chance of improving circumstances. And yes, I'm aware of the arbitrariness of judgement here.

there's a Dickish impulse to say "get a job" to anyone with a hand out but that's probably better than my thinking of panhandling as a job no less legitimate than anyone else's and therefore lumped in with all the solicitors and telemarketers who I also ignore.
Basically treating them with contempt is weirdly less depersonalizing, and maybe it's easier to get society to consider the situation as intolerable from this oafen "get a job!" dickishness than through compassion.

Sure if I have change in my pocket, but I never do. I refuse to take my wallet out on the street. Homeless people have suffered more since the rise of debit cards popularity.

Have yall ever been given something by a homeless person? I think you have to bypass some rare threshold of craziness in order to start giving things to people. I've seen bums give my friends cigarettes out of nowhere. One time someone had this book of numerology or the hidden meanings in first names. He was going around asking peoples' names, then finding the corresponding page and ripping it out to give as a gift. These people are borderline saints they just smell dirty and have substance abuse problems.

There was this one guy in ATL who was kind of like Pig Pen from Peanuts, he was always covered head-to-toe in red clay dust, he almost looked like some kind of absurd bronze statue. One morning i saw him across the street. There was a church doing a renovation and a huge pile of freshly dug dirty on the front lawn. There was the homeless dude, wearing a completely clean outfit, starting the day off by taking clumps of dirt and powdering himself up with it.

Also there's another guy that always wears really zany clothes and blankets that has the nickname "Andre 300".

I think you have to bypass some rare threshold of craziness in order to start giving things to people.

no offense dude but within the context of this thread (and without, tbh) this sentiment is a little...tone-deaf

like if you see charity---even in the basest sense---as the product of a totally natural human compulsion (debatable, but that's how i roll), then there's nothing strange about a homeless or just-seems-like-s/he-might-be-homeless person bumming (!!!) cigarettes to ppl. smokes are currency in certain circles (ie those that are home to smokers), and giving them away is just doing a solid and who knows maybe you'll get something back (probably a cigarette) at some point down the line when you're in dire need (...of a g-d smoke).

also, and i don't mean this condescendingly, giving stuff away---cigs, prophecies, directions---can be very empowering. imo ppl in general like being useful. everyone (again, imo) takes some pleasure in feeling that a casual dispensation of something you basically don't need is going to make someone else's day, somehow. give a bum a dollar, you're bootstrapping poverty or something. give a drunk guy outside a bar a smoke, you're a "(hic) acshually pretty decent" homeless guy that had something the drunk guy didn't. or you just had some spare change or another full pack of cigarettes in your pocket that the drunk guy doesn't know about. most of the time i think the decision to part with something is pretty instinctual. perseverating over street charity is for message boards and those instances---stop light, long empty sidewalk---when you've got an uncomfortable amount of time to think about an impending decision to give or not-give.

an aside since i'm procrastinating: as a person that thinks other people are interesting, i'm all for delighting in the weird behavior of back-alley evangelists/eccentrics and that guy that's seemingly always around doing something (sup sc-tt s33kins). life's rich pageant, etc. but i try to be cautious about letting that supplant the completely factual understanding that "street folks you might give money to" are coming from all sorts of circumstances. some of them are bona fide havers of Sever and Persistent Mental Illness, some are just weirdos, some have bigtime chem dep issues, some are exaggerating, some have had for-real bad luck, some are casualties of systemic processes, and some are straight grifting. and with that in mind i think it's totally OK to schematize how you approach people, as la lechera* and soda did. better to give consideration than none at all.

*i know you went for a "my style is no style" thing but "weighing each situation individually" at least suggests a process. vs: having a flat policy towards beggars, be it all-yes or all-no, which imo is an easy way to get out of having to think about homelessness as an issue. to wit: there's at least a handful of folks out there that do amazing charitable things 94/7 but who still have major blindspots re the forces that produce ppl in need of radical charity in the first place (lookin at u, papalists)

tl;dr - ppl like being nice, some street ppl are rare birds, some aren't, homelessness is like an ~issue~ man, catholic church has messed up priorities

I think Adam was referring to homeless people giving things to others. His prior sentence was "Have yall ever been given something by a homeless person?"

Oh wait, reading the rest of your post now, sorry, you made that clear.

Been given a ton of cigarettes by homeless/panhandling people; often someone will ask to bum a cigarette and when I say I don't have one they'll offer. Once I told a guy I didn't have any and he gave me five bucks? A local guy will buy everyone at shows a pizza when he gets his check at the beginning of the month, or he used to try to give me an airplane shooter of jim beam if I looked like I was having a bad day at work. A bracelet, a knife, a little stash bag, a bowl, relationship advice, Werther's Originals, a food stamps card with twenty bucks on it for ten dollars...

I dunno, it's not like The Homeless is an alien species-- it's often a pretty nebulous line between Officially Homeless and "having a weird time right now," and I've been there. Still doesn't take the uncertainty and triple-guessing out of getting asked for money every single time, though

really great post gbx

& z s talking about the weird absence of a code for this, too. tbh the best ground i can land on thinking about this kinda thing is remembering the few times i reflexively gave more than a dollar to somebody by bypassing thought & just being confronted by someone's need. you know. i remember going to california for the first time & walking around san francisco & being really shocked by the homelessness, by shirtless guys battling up the street or some young, you know, cute young people outside stores, not shocked because california has a terrible homelessness problem, but just because the slight differences in generic-homeless-person-character ate away at my schematic categorisation of homeless people & made me think Whoa That Guy Has To Live On The Streets anew, which you can kinda internalise & know & so see past, most of the time (p much necessarily, because it's probably better not to walk around all day constantly exposed to the harsh nuances of everything you encounter) when you're in your own neighbourhood. homelessness is just too big a gulf for me to be able to bridge & so i feel okay about not having figured out anything smart to do. like i cannot imagine the grind of asking 1000 people a day to give you a quarter & hearing no or being ignored for an hour straight; this would not condition me to think well of humanity. i am not super invested in an economic analysis of this because it's the thing that bugs me about the charity-collector-hey!-funky-pants!! people but most any objective reading of me walking down the street with a dollar i don't need past ten people who could use it to get food they're hungry without means i should give those people money. i don't, like 99% of the time, but sometimes you just should without thinking, right. positive guy talking about your daughter near key foods i am thinking of you tonight.

you know when you never know whether or not to correct somebody, i remember somebody telling me that when you walked past a guy selling a big issue/comparable region-specific magazine vended by homeless/difficult circumstances folks in your town, you shouldn't say sorry you should say no thanks. it was such a valuable thing. the whole at least look at somebody or say sorry thing is important, i think; like it's a whole other difficult area - like sometimes i feel like i am training somebody's eye just to advertise that i am not going to give them money - but it is what you should do imo

I get offended when someone throws that "I'm locked out of my car and my family's trapped inside" spiel. I know it's downtown in the club district, but I just work here — do I look like a fucking frat boy?

many years ago, when i first lived in a city where i would get asked, i used to give a couple bucks mostly unconditionally (sometimes would refuse for like elaborate gotta-get-bus-fare-across-town-in-45-minutes-for-my-broken-down-car-urgent-appointment stories). i think i even started holding a couple somewhere convenient when i was out so i would not have to rifle through my wallet on the street.

after the financial crisis, after which i was repeatedly unemployed (and also after which i became a lot less tippy for like quick coffeeshop purchases, which i think like someone said above, has a lot to do with the shift to debit cards), for a while i just didn't have any money at all, i needed money from other people and was reactively inclined not to be generous or charitable. it feels weirdly guilt-free to refuse someone money when you're unemployed. but also when you do give, not the exceptional act of graciousness you might expect. it's just a little money here, little money there, helping people for a little bit.

there's been an uptick in homelessness in my town recently - to the point there people are asking city officials and the officials are like uh yes we had noticed that ermmmmm. and they seem to be making further-ranging excursions, or even just residing more, in my vicinity. not quite the neighborhood you would expect to see as much begging in - the governor's mansion is down the street, there's a stripe of quite comfortable/wealthy propertyowners, there are several private universities - so it's all the more noticeable. and i spend a lot of time in my neighborhood, getting around by walking, so i have been approached for money or help a lot more than i can ever recall. i don't really have cash anymore, but lately sometimes i am holding a little for some regular things i do every week or two, and i never want to give it up. typically i will say i don't have any cash without really thinking about what's in my wallet. but that doesn't always stop the conversation. the other week i was sitting in a burger joint waiting for my order, and a kid came in and asked me for money. i said i didn't have any cash and he asked if i would mind buying him a burger. after i said no he went over and ordered himself some fries with the money he already had.

once a guy in his 20s was limping down the street, lugging a cooler, wearing a t-shirt and shorts or whatever, and he stopped me and said that since he was an active duty servicemember away on leave and had to get down the street with his cooler by 2 o'clock or whenever, he needed to take my umbrella to use as a crutch or cane. that... was a no.

there's a woman i've seen around repeatedly, who recognizes me, too. i tried to be friendly once when she asked for money and i said no, and i think she's started lingering around a bit, following me into coffeeshops and the like. she's got a little bit of mental illness maybe. i'm wary of giving her anything because i don't want to be stuck with her asking me forever. in grad school one of the faculty had apparently sometime(s) given to a campus-area homeless man, a really recognizable one who would always wear big suede coats and go around urging people to sign them with a sharpie. and that guy would always be coming up the several floors to the department to check on the faculty member and hit him up for a little cash, like i remember months and months of him passively trying to dodge the guy and make nice and talk him back out the door down the elevator, without (!) just shelling out.

i can generally spare a little now where i couldn't before (and even objectively, when i was most broke, i still could've). but looking at where i am, the more i get hit up for money, the more irritated i get, not at the person who's asking, but everyone around - like, why me? why can't genuinely needy people just walk into the grocery store across the street, or into one of the many churches on the street? why not the thousands of residents with money and comfortable lives who don't get asked?

sigh.

I just go with my gut. if i don't get a negative vibe, and i can afford it, i will give something. lot of assholes out there though.

(a fake/slick/hustler vibe counts as negative to me)

usually i hiss 'no' at them and keep walking but i was downtown a cpl weeks ago + saw a dude holding a sign saying "tryin to get higher than giraffe pussy" so i offered him a hit off my pipe and he said "i don't think i'm smoking what you're smoking brother". so i gave him a dollar.

Hi5

OH YEAh also there is this older mostly blind guy who stands outside the bookstore downtown selling the homeless-advocate newspaper who has been there every day since i moved to Denver and surely long before that who i had never really talked to until recently. i gave him 5 bucks and he looked at it really closely, then told me about this program where someone set him up with a tablet computer so he could do forex trades... it was bizarre

usually i hiss 'no' at them and keep walking
― sleepingbag, Thursday, December 7, 2017 1:25 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey, the guy that is an asshole online is also an asshole to homeless panhandlers. who would've thought?

bunch of white transphobic catcallers mostly, maybe ppl like y'all were the ones who put them out of work in the first place.. really makes u think

cool story

What a complete fucking twat - seriously, fuck off and kill yourself sleepingag.

and have a blessed day

hahaha

Generally try to give change when I can or food, but I have two recent cases where the individual tried to take my kindness too far and asked me to put their tent in the dryer as the rain got it wet. Also bought this homeless dude Jeff I've seen around for years a pack of smokes. He told me he would pay me back and yeah that hasn't happened. Basically short story is you can't be too kind or you'll be a sucker

Sorry formatting was terrible in that post

What a complete fucking twat - seriously, fuck off and kill yourself sleepingag.

How do you hiss the word no? It'sh imposhible shurely?

i give smokes sometimes. occasionally change. but i generally don't have either of those things so usually just say "no change, bud" and shrug.

will give a beer to the dude Roger who collects the cans in the park by my house, once took his empties to the nearest liquor store for him because he's barred from there.

although Roger isn't homeless when I think about it. Though he has been in the past for long spells and now lives in supportive housing.

Do we really believe a word out of sleepingbag, folks?

Really?

Seems a strange one to spend energy on.

I buy the big issue and pay over the asking for it, otherwise I'm a carry-on-walking guy

Don't the homeless have a bad enough time of it:

The rough sleeping event will be hosted by the comedian Rob Brydon, with bedtime stories read by John Cleese and busking sets from Liam Gallagher, Deacon Blue and Amy Macdonald.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/09/bob-geldof-john-cleese-join-sleep-in-the-park-event-homeless-edinburgh-scotland

if that doesn't get them off the streets they must be genuine

I tend to give whatever singles or $5 bill I may have on me, but I often don't have cash. whatever they want to use it for is their business, not mine, so fairly indiscriminate.

I do have anxiety about being approached on the street by strangers of any type, though.

that Sleep In The Park thing makes me so annoyed. Homeless isn't about some romantic idealised fantasy of buskers, and it isn't about choosing to sleep rough independent of other social issues (eg substance abuse, familial abuse etc), and it isn't about being able to go back to normal the day after or being able to pull out of the situation if it doesn't work. The event is just pity and misunderstanding under the guise of charity, and while money raised can't be a bad thing, it just seems so... misguided.

John Cleese and Bob Geldof are involved, how could it be good?

You don't like montys?

:)

There is a horrible fucker in my area who is a psycho domestic abuser and a thief, who has tried to reinvent himself as Mother Theresa giving out chocolate and cup-a-soups to homeless people. He is doing it all wrong by posting pictures of homeless people and using insulting + victimising slogans like Beggars Can Be Choosers. It is a fucking mess and he shouldn't even be allowed near vulnerable people because he is seriously dangerous and unstable and has a long history of violence towards women.

by all means raise money for the homeless, god knows they need it, but their energy would be better spent (especially those CEOs doing sleep in the park) canvassing politicians to effect the real political change that could eradicate homelessness. britain had almost 'solved' homelessness prior to 2010, but since the coalition government the spike in rough sleeping has been pronounced...

the best model is finland's 'housing first' approach, of course, but would need some radical political change to start enacting that here. reading the the research on homelessness is infuriating: there's a pronounced drop in rough sleeping post-1997/louise casey and then a rapid uptick again to even worse levels post-2010.... hmmm, wonder why....

the number of rough sleepers in Hull is way higher than i've ever known it, and it's all happened over the last 5 years or so

Same in Leeds, Hudds, Dewsbury and even locally I have seen people who just been evicted. My sister saw someone getting evicted and all her furniture was unceremoniously dumped into her front garden. And she was seated in a chair in her garden all evening, burning the rest of her furniture.

I haven't read the Guardian article yet, so I don't know if it's giving a poor impression of the Sleep In The Park event, given the comments here? Said event is organised by Social Bite who definitely know what they are doing. Their ultimate aim is to effectively end homelessness in Scotland: https://www.sleepinthepark.co.uk/our-plan and as far as I understand their work and its scope and political support I think there's at least a chance of success.

It is obvious that there are significantly more affluent folks about, as well as more indigent about, which means that group in the middle is vanishing

I don't remember much homelessness in Scotland when I lived there because COUNCIL HOOSES.

Is there anything the HOOS cant do

What I meant to say was, of course, was COONCIL HOOSES.

from the guardian article: Scotland, which had almost eliminated homelessness after pioneering legislation passed by Holyrood in 2003, has recently experienced an increase in rough sleeping as welfare cuts have tipped more people into domestic insecurity.

My purely anecdotal personal perception is of a significant increase in rough sleeping in Glasgow city centre over the last year or so. I hope last night was a success (not withstanding the largely dire celebrity guests) with longer-term positive repercussions.

I think the actual event seems a bit tacky in execution, however worthy and necessary and urgent the solutions required are. Like I've seen loads of social media posts, selfies of cold people looking forward to waking up and getting some breakfast and I'm like... no way is this accurate. When you don't have a home you aren't carrying a smartphone to take snapshots and you don't know when your next dinner is and you're sleeping with one eye open because anyone could steal your stuff or harm you. I'm distrustful of "raising awareness" campaigns because generally, people are aware that homelessness is a problem. But to treat it like a novelty and like it exists in a vacuum without other society problems is naive.

I agree with you in general, but just didn't quite have those some perceptions of this particular event. I think the main aim was to make as much money as possible rather than raising awareness. Anyway, the good news either way is that they reached over £3 million apparently and have had over 400 homes donated by housing associations/organisations in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

To direct this convesation away from the UK, where I think that some of the root causes for homelessness are slightly different than where I live (ie: there is more of a social safety net in the Uk for people in these situations)....Homelessness continues to be a horrendous problem in the Bay Area, and by my observations has gotten multitudes of times worse in the past year. The last time I remember it being this bad was when there was a tent city in front of SF city hall in the 80's or early 90's. Though it's possible these numbers have been constant ever since but the tents were relocated to areas I didn't have reason to be in; I'm just not sure, but it sure seems worse. There are tents lining Mandela Parkway in Oakland, which I drove down often in the past several years; There's a huge encampment outside my recording studio, directly adjacent to new condos. Potrero district in SF, which used to be largely uninhabited blocks with some warehouses and then some actual residential houses, is bombarded with tent cities. It's so overwhelming it's unfathomable. It's easy to say that 'affordable housing' will fix this but I don't know that it will. In Berkeley I'm quite positive that the perception that there are endless services for the homeless leads to an increase in the population; anecdotally I've heard that people are sent on buses from out of state to the city.

I give if I have cash in my pocket which honestly is almost never.

if used to work at a diner and homeless would come in. i couldn't let them stay, even if i wanted. they always abused the amenities, they would try to bathe in the bathroom, they would ask customers for their food, they would threaten you when you threw them out. what could you do? in that case, on the job, throw them out.

my general rule is to never engage, but if someone has a friendly enough vibe, i will. i don't smoke so i never have cigarettes. i take the bus so if i have any cash chances are i need it for the bus and can't give it away. people that are just sitting in a spot and asking for something over and over, i just ignore.

i used to see them a lot downtown, all over the place. the stadium was there and they had draconian business laws that ended up turning the surrounding area into an effective ghost town after dark when games were not taking place. now the stadium is gone (demolished like a week ago) and the new one is out in the suburbs. im certain this is having a massive effect on the homeless ecosystem, and it's hard to be optimistic about it when every time i read a story about homeless shelters in Atlanta it is that they are being shut down. meanwhile we have a brand new football stadium and a brand new baseball stadium, each costing over a billion dollars to build, one named after a car and one named after a bank, where people can sit and watch other people hit balls around a field.

You

You actually went there

I've always had a mostly subconscious fear that one day this will happen to me. Not like a big fear, but enough that its a contributory factor to anxiety. If things started to go wrong my ability to deal with navigating to safety would collapse.

I give money if I have any, it depends.

A few years ago I was out with some friends about 7 on a Sunday morning and a homeless man at the bus stop asked if we were selling pills, and my friend sold him two.

two of what?

Two pills!

An old friend of mine has been homeless for most of the last year. I only found out about this recently via a desperate email. I've offered him a place to stay for a few days next week, which is not ideal tbh, but I don't think I could live with myself if something happened to this guy, or if he killed himself. My wife is a bit irritated, which I fully understand - she works from home, she doesn't really know this guy (she's met him years ago but doesn't remember) - I felt as though I was in a position where I couldn't do anything right. So when our current guest leaves next week, he will stay for a few days. I spent a day with him last week. He probably needs mental health resources, a job, I don't know what else. I don't really know what I'm asking, here, maybe I just needed a minute to write down my thoughts. I feel terrible because I know I can't solve the problem, and in trying to do my best to help my friend, I've made my wife unhappy. Shrug sorry

hey ian, it's a really tough position to be in. i have a couple thoughts, from my own experience a couple years ago. but, and i think is common with the topic of homelessness in general, there is rarely an unambiguously correct answer or an obvious thing to do.

one issue is with your partner. just curious, did you ask her about it before inviting the friend to stay, or tell her after offering the invitation? a few years ago i was kind of in your wife's position - my partner wanted to help someone that she had met while doing community jail support work, someone who desperately needed somewhere to stay. i don't actually recall if i was asked beforehand or not, i just know that it felt like i had no choice, which left me feeling a little bit like an afterthought. even if i had been offered the choice, i don't know how i would have turned it down. no one wants to be the reason that someone else is left out on the street.

it was rough, to be honest. she had quite a few mental issues, and then tended to manifest most strongly at night. there were some screaming arguments with her bf over the phone in the middle of the night, as well as some complaints from neighbors because she would step outside for a cigarette before the sun came up and talk to herself quite a bit, and do more phone calls. there was one particularly bad night where she found the alcohol i had hidden away and pretty much drank all of it, including a full bottle of whiskey and plenty more besides. she was struggling. there were also a lot of really sweet, tender moments. she treated me like a son, and i stayed up all night, the day before she left, to do a portrait of her in watercolor. it was very bad and she hated it, but it's indicative of how being around her had added something to the household and changed us. by the time she left, it was my partner that thought it was time for her to go, and me who thought she should stay a while longer. it was very hard.

i guess one key thing is to establish some boundaries around the length of the stay, and it sounds like you've already done that. one awful thing that comes up was wondering what to do the next time that she needed help again. it's one thing to upend your life for a week, but it's hard when you start thinking about it becoming a semi-regular occurrence. it brings up awful thoughts and decisions (things that are so uncomfortable that i think it's why so many people avoid helping the homeless in the first place). you would want them to leave your household on steady ground, some sort of hope for the future, a reliable job, better housing situation, something, anything. often, the reality of it is much, much worse. the person who was staying with ended up going back to her abusive boyfriend. we spent days trying to talk her out of it, and she did it anyway. it was horrible.

sorry if all of this sounds negative or hopeless. you said "i feel terrible because i know i can't solve the problem", and that sums up a lot of my thoughts too. you will probably not be able to solve your friend's problems entirely, or maybe not at all. but you can be there for him during this really difficult time, for at least a while, and do your best to give him support and a nudge in a better direction. as for your wife, she may very well be pissed for a while, and i'm sure at least some people reading this would disagree with everything i said and advise not to do it at all if it makes her uncomfortable. if anything, make sure you talk about it some more, before the friend stays, and maybe talk about some boundaries, both in length of stay, making sure your partner is able to do the work she needs to do.

don't beat yourself up too much. it's a very difficult situation.

being someone who has unhealthily tried to be a people pleaser my entire life and often can't tolerate upsetting anybody, I empathize here.

you acted out of goodwill to a friend in dire straits though, and you aren't in a position to solve their problems - but giving them a place to stay for a few days at least gets them in safe quarters and away from harassing police or nefarious people, maybe a little time to clear their head.

I understand why your wife is concerned. but it doesn't sound like your friend is going to be the type to take advantage of your respect.

all I'd suggest is letting yourself off the hook a little - no matter what choice you made, it was bound to upset someone and yourself, but you made the decision you made out of pure compassion, and you didn't over-commit, but kept within acceptable boundaries (a few days). I think you did ok. and I think your friend is lucky to have you.

Thank you both. I did ask my wife before extending the invitation. I think she will be fine, I don’t even think she’s really angry with me. She understands that I’m that kind of person who can’t turn away someone so obviously in need. If I did nothing I would have felt worse, probably.

Ian, I had a friend who dropped out of high school, got kicked out by his parents and was homeless when I was away in college. He froze to death on the streets during a cold winter and I have spent my life since then feeling overwhelmingly guilty for not finding him and helping him when I had the chance. Take that for what it’s worth.

When I was driving to pick up a pizza for dinner tonight, I saw a guy sitting/lying on the lawn in front of a closed business, kind of rocking back and forth and trying to lie down but then getting up. At a glance while I was at the stoplight, he seemed probably messed up, he was contorting his body in weird ways — didn't appear physically disabled that I could tell, but likely on something or other. But what alarmed me was it looked like he just had one layer of clothes on, and just a sweatshirt, not even a coat. It was already 30 degrees at that point and headed lower. I drove back by on my way home and saw he had gotten himself standing but was having trouble staying that way. He had a big backpack and was wrestling with it. I circled back around just to get another look and see if he was still in the same place, which he was.

So when I got home a minute later I did the only thing I knew to do, which was call 911. I know, I know, I would not normally call police on a probably high probably homeless guy. But it's super cold out, and knowing where the shelter is from where he was, even if he had together enough to try to walk there I don't think he would have made it. I was just hoping they could get him inside somewhere. Usually they drop people at the mission if they just need to get inside.

ian nbd at all if you'd rather not share - there are all sorts of reasons, probably most importantly including "none of your damn business!" - but i was just curious how things ended up going with your friend

Hi Karl.

He stayed with us for a few days and it was pretty much OK. No extreme weirdness, I think he is struggling to be normal and put on a lighthearted face. Since then, which was a few weeks ago, I think he has been sleeping on the trains again and spending his days in various libraries. We text every week or so. Sometimes he asks if I can hang out, or if he can borrow some money, but sometimes just to say hi and maintain some kind of social interaction. Another friend and I saw him last weekend for lunch and a coffee. Honestly it's still really hard but I'm not sure what I can do.

This has continued to be incredibly difficult.
I got a call on Thursday night from my friend. He was basically ranting and raving and yelling about how he is going to die and he can't handle being on the streets and the trains and how nobody cares about him and so basically i ended up getting yelled at for an hour by someone i have been trying to help. I sent him some money for a hotel so he could at least get a decent night's sleep and a shower. He was very thankful and seemed to have leveled out when I talked to him the next day. But I can't do this indefinitely. And after the dealing with him having a breakdown and yelling at me on the phone, I really don't think I can let him stay at my house again. I don't want my friend to kill himself, or to be assaulted, but I do not know what to do.

I'm losing my mind.

definitely tread carefully here - although you care about your friend, which is admirable, you yourself can't be fully responsible for his wellbeing or solve his problem. which doesn't mean you should disengage, by any means, but setting boundaries that you are comfortable with and holding to them.

when someone needs help and they're primarily getting it from one source, they will tend to return to that source when they need it. and then that source can get easily burnt out and then they are no longer able to help. the key is to widen the support system so that they have a community rather than a sole individual. Many can do what the individual alone is not capable of.

I will admit to not knowing the best way to do that - does your friend have other friends that you know of that might be willing to help, or are there any groups/organizations in your area that you know of that can provide support?

if he has other resources besides just you that he feels comfortable with, it has the benefit of improving his life, as well as allowing you to continue supporting him without getting overwhelmed and drained.

You're a good person with a good heart - and that can't be said enough. but you also do need to take care of you as well. it's a tough balance knowing where the dividing line is for how much you can give.

are any social services involved here? like, has your friend gotten on food stamps? can people get subway vouchers and things like that? I imagine the shelter scene in NYC is ludicrously overcrowded, this sounds awful and I wish I had better ideas.

So sorry ian, that sounds terrible.

Sleeve - yes, he has EBT so he can eat food. He rejects the shelter system which I guess I understand even if I think it's maybe kinda stupid.

He was just texting me again right now and I'm honestly at my wit's end. I'm not even in NYC right now. I'm with my family because my grandmother, age 92, is injured and trying to recuperate. I can't be somebody's savior and honestly it makes me feel TERRIBLE because I do, genuinely, want to help him get better. But he needs mental health treatment, which he rejects out of hand.

Feel like i'm being emotionally blackmailed here, like it's going to be my fault if this guy kills himself (which he has continued to threaten). And this is, again, someone who pretty much disappeared from my life for about ten years! And somehow I'm the last person speaking to him and willing to help him. But I'm overwhelmed with my own dumb fucking life and I just can't do it.

it is not your fault, and you can't help somebody who rejects the available options

and yes this is emotional blackmail, maybe not intentionally but still what's happening

Yeah man, I have been where you are and frankly you're dealing with your own situation right now. It's ok to prioritize that.

The hard to swallow fact in these situations is that when it comes to harming himself, it will always be possible. No matter what action you take.

You care about it,you don't want it to happen, and it would hurt a lotvif it did, but you also unfortunately don't have a lot of control over it.

The feeling is awful as it can hurt no matter what choice to do.

But a friend of mine said the one thing that cut through to me - "you do not get to consume me to restore yourself". It is not a net positive of rescuing one person sinks another person.

It just sucks because the people who should be helping here (Social services) are hamstrung by budget cuts,a lack of funds, by bureaucrats who don't care about the poor and homeless.

So other civilians foot the bill.

*no matter what you choose to do

Thank you both. I appreciate the perspective and consideration.

<3