What do you find abrasive? The only thing I am trying to say is that for most of the homeless, it is their own fault they are homeless.
I don’t see how being a kind, generous person would change that (and I agree that many of them are indeed kind and generous people).
I do not mean to say they are not worthy of assistance, but simply that they are not, for the most part, victims.
My post was actualy directed at the OP.
You can thank the %$!!# government for most of these addled ones. In the 70s, the budget for Mental Health was savagely truncated and has never recovered. Even today, with the ‘budget surplus’, the funding for mental institutions has not increased much at all and has not kept up with inflation. The government prefers to spend millions on programs shoving these people in jail, shoving them in temporary clinics, sponsoring food programs and letting charities do the rest than return needed funding and get them the care they need.
State hospitals can no longer take them off of the street for lengthy care, having major problems in caring for the dangerous ones they have now and getting competent help.
You ought to write to your Senators and Congressmen and thank them for that.
Most of these people are so used to being treated like pieces of human waste that the LEAST bit of kindness on your part will reflect upon them 10-fold.
How about vetrens that were discharged from the service with undiagnosed PTSD, which means they do not have health insurance once they are discharged, but are in such a state of mental health that they can’t funtion in society? People who get shuffled from one advocacy group to another until they get the picture that no one wants to deal with them, and they begin to really loose all hope, and all contact with reality?
Or what about the couple I met yesterday who are living in temporary homeless housing because the fact of the matter is that the economy is too damn good, and the local companies are importing employees, which displaces the locals? Both the husband and wife work full time, they have a car, and a one year old son who goes to day care, and they simply can’t find a two bedroom apartment? Or what about the other families in that some homeless shelter, which was formerly a dorm, who are being kicked out of the shelter because the housing authourity exceeded the fire department’s capacity by 30 people?
I know you guys didn’t mean any harm, but through various means, I’ve met and talked to these guys. Most of them have fought hard thier whole life, and just slipped through the cracks. The only “group” of homeless that I can’t stand are what are locally referred to as the Reagan Hippies (hippies without a cause), people my own age who take mom and dad’s rent money and spend it on drugs, then sit on the corner in the shopping district and beg for change. I just can’t have empathy for them. But the majority of homeless people I’ve met and talked to are just lonely, and feel forgotten. Sure, some of them are crazy, but that’s because we don’t automatically instutionalize people anymore. Or at least we like to think we don’t.
I think it was Dennis Leary who said “You ever consider the idea that maybe that homeless guy babbling to himself is really talking to someone else? Maybe he’s getting instructions from God. [Godvoice] ‘Go forth and spread my word’ [Homeless guy’s voice] ‘No, I can’t. I can’t. Can’t do it.’ of course, I just assume he’s a drunken bum, so that’s another reason I’m going to hell.”
Actually Swiddles, that’s from Comic Mark Marin, San Francisco resident, so you know where he gets his material from.
Swiddles, I admire your kind heart, but your empathy is misplaced. The homeless, by and large, deserve their fates.
I see homeless people every day in the Metro DC area, and they are either crazy or crackheads. It is possible to be displaced onto the streets by bad luck or job loss, but I have yet to see any women or children, just mentally ill or addicted men(and if anyone says that you can’t spot an addict by behavior, then you haven’t been around them enough).
Don’t believe the media myth of homeless vets. Most of the guys on the street who claim to be vets are lying. I mean, I don’t think someone who looks to be thirty served in Danang or Pleiku, do you? Check out “Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History,” by B. G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley for the real stats on homeless vets.
The obviously deranged need to be institutionalized, and i’m all for allocating state funds to build the sufficient number of facilities to house them.
the working poor need a hand up so that they can hold their heads up and take care of themselves. There needs to be some way of forcing landlords to take Section 8 recipients instead of turning them away. If someone wants to work, they deserve help.
Crack addicts should die, as far as I am concerned. I have no pity for some drug-addicted loser who wants me to give him funds to feed his addiction. They are parasites, and they deserve nothing.
I have passed beggars on Dupont Circle, with two working legs, two working arms, no obvious physical or mental illness, jingling their little coin cups right outside a line of stores with Help Wanted signs in their windows.
Why on Earth should I give them the money I work for?
My little friend Mr. Hart.
At the age of 9, Mr. Hart was orphaned. His mother died of pneumonia when he was 4 and his father died in a mining accident when he was 9. He was sent to an orphanage after being bounced around to different relatives, some who were abusive.
When he was 14 years old, he ran away and joined the circus. (This sounds very cliché, but I saw documents to prove his story legit.) At first he cleaned tents but later he worked as a boxer in the “after hours” matches held behind the tents. Although he was small, he was an excellent fighter and won enough money to survive.
At the age of 18, he joined the U.S. Army. He served 3 years and then was honorably discharged when he injured his leg. After his discharge, he tried to find work but didn’t have the skills or the strength to perform. He went back to the circus and fought for a few more years until his body finally gave out on him. By the time he was 30 years old, he didn’t have job skills, he couldn’t work, and he could no longer fight. He was homeless.
The period between the time he became homeless and the first time he walk into my office is something I never learned. He didn’t want to talk about all those years in between.
I can still remember the day that I went out to the reception room to call him back to my office. He was sitting there in a dirty trench coat that was a few sizes too big, his boots didn’t match and one looked to be 2 sizes too big and the other even larger. His thin white hair was sticking straight up on his head and filled with dirt, sticks, dead leaves, and who knows what else. I could smell him before I saw him.
I greeted him, and to his surprise, offered my hand for a handshake. I didn’t grimace when I felt the dirt and grime rub off onto my hand. I took him back to my office and began what would become a great friendship.
For the next year, Mr. Hart would show up in my office almost every day. His pockets would contain a jar of peanut butter, a dirty tissue, his “important papers” (to him, and which included my card), the change that he had panhandled, and an old key that he had found. Also in his pocket would be a candy bar or an egg McMuffin that he would stop off and buy for me no matter how many times I told him not too. Other days, he would bring a cup of orange juice or coffee that he had carefully carried the 4 blocks from McDonalds. No matter how firmly I told him, he would still bring these things to me. Sometimes, especially after I ripped him a new butt for wasting his few cents on me, he would shuffle in really fast, leave my present, then shuffle out again, hoping I wouldn’t see him.
He used to make me laugh my ass off. He would make bets with me that he could come closer to guessing his age than I could. I knew that he was 78 years old because I had his military records, VA records, and other personal records. His guess always varied but he would forget about it the next time he came in. He didn’t drink or do drugs, but he suffered from schizophrenia. Things were always interesting with Mr. Hart. 
One day we decided to set him up with a bank account so he would be able to have his small VA pension sent direct deposit. Trying to cash his check was getting to be a joke. First, we copied his military discharge papers then scheduled the veteran’s rep at the homeless shelter to take him to the DMV for a picture ID. He combed his hair the best he could and was real excited to get his “drivers license”. Afterward, I took him to the bank and we opened an account for him. He was really proud.
Later that day, he came back to my office with tears on his cheeks. He had accidentally pooped his pants and was washing them out in a public restroom. The ID was in the pocket and he accidentally flushed it down the toilet. He was brokenhearted.
I could go on and on with stories of Mr. Hart, but this is already long.
The last time I saw him, he was sitting in my office complaining about his back. He was coughing and sounding horrible. I begged him to let me take him to the VA Medical Center so they could look at him. Like always, he absolutely refused. Because of his mental condition, he was convinced that doctors wanted to remove his legs. Nothing I could say would convince him.
For the next week, I didn’t see or hear from him. I started to worry and began calling local hospitals and shelters, although I knew that he would not go into either one voluntarily. I began taking one of the office cars and started driving near the foothills during my lunch hour to see if I could find him.
A week and a half later, I received a phone call from a town 40 miles north of my office that informed me that Mr. Hart was found frozen to death in a field. They got my number from my card he carried in his pocket.
That has been 6 years ago and I still miss him terribly.
Swimming Riddles - YES! Most of my clients are very kind human beings who in need of some type of acknowledgement that they are real. Many stop by my office just for a hug or a pat on the back and to know that they aren’t invisible.
I feel sorry for the people who don’t get the opportunity to know these guys. I’m lucky.
goboy - Your compassion just floors me! :rolleyes:
Bullshit.
Fine Upstanding Hard Luck Cases: Well, now theres a category for them and we can get back to the real nutjobs.
Diane,
So you’re saying that every one of the bums I see in downtown DC is a good, decent person who only needs some compassion and a chance to succeed?
Bullshit!(to use your phrase)
Mr. Hart was lucky to have you as his case worker, but one anecdote does not make an argument.
I have a question: as a social services worker, how much discretion do you have to help someone as mentally incapacitated as Mr. Hart? Could you have had him involuntarily committed, or are there laws forbidding that?
The homeless may not deserve their situation, but generally it is their fault.
Why are you lucky to have known a guy that managed to get to the age of 21 without having developed a single skill that could feed him? Why are you lucky to have known a guy who then managed to spend the next 50 years not doing a single thing to change that? If he was mentally ill, then yes, he can be excused from responsibility. If he was not, then regardless of how tough his childhood was, he is responsible for where you found him. This does not mean he shouldn’t be helped, but he is not a victim, and his status was not a virtue.
Since I don’t seem to be getting this across, let me repeat it: I am saying that most homeless people should be held responsible for their position. I am NOT saying that homeless people are un-nice or bad people. I have known many homeless people and most of them were nice. Being a nice person, however, does not absolve you of responsibility for your choices.
Since we are using anecdotes to make points let me tell you about someone I am proud to have known (unlike Mr. Hart who I would have enjoyed knowing): a woman, 16 years old, is thrown out of the house by her mother for becoming pregnant. This woman did not say “woe is I” and go sit on a street corner begging for change. This woman, instead, begged and pleaded for any accommodations she could find with family, friends, or friends of friends. This woman continued going to school and got her high school diploma with her class. This woman took on a full time job working in textile sweat shops. She didn’t have the skills for it, but she bluffed until she had picked it up. This woman took every opportunity to learn a new skill, no matter what it was, until she was given, every two weeks, a day away from the sewing machines so that she could to the company’s payroll.
This woman and her children (yes, she continued to make poor decisions in this regard and ended up with three of them) knew what it was to receive food stamps and government surplus cheese. Unlike many people, however, this woman viewed it as only a temporary necessity and continued to strive to lift herself and her family from poverty. This woman continued to take every opportunity to learn a new skill until she was spending more and more time away from the sewing machines, eventually getting out of the sweat shops altogether. This is not a Horatio Alger “rags to riches” story. This is a “rags-to-lower-middle-class” story. I do not believe that if everybody would just work hard enough we would all be rich. I do, however, believe that if you are willing to work hard enough you will be able to take care of yourself.
Its probably obvious, but “this woman” was my mother. She is someone that I am damn lucky for knowing.
Just in case you’re starting to get pissed off at me Inky, I refer you to this thread on hijacks. You’ve managed to humorously identify an obviously important issue for members here.
Thanks for the brave admission Catrandom, a lot of the homeless people I’ve known were generous too, so there may be a pattern of survival there.
The statements you make matt_mcl are exactly why I’ve fought homophobia all of my life. Orientation discrimination is right up there with gender and racial discrimination as the fundamental causes of strife in our society.
Glad you clarified here obfusciatrist. All joking aside, I felt that you made one of the most cogent statements about the circumstances that lead to homelessness (mental illness excluded). Since I do not believe in predestiny, I steadfastly maintain that, “You make your luck.”
Eggo, let me know if you need help with writing a resume. In this current economy, you have the best chance in years of landing steady employment. I have helped many people rewrite their resumes so that they landed jobs immediately.
Actually Skribbler, you have made one of the more important points. To this day few people realize just how badly the average American’s quality of life was degraded by the Reagan administration’s “cost cutting” measures. Flushing the mentally impaired out of the mental hospitals and onto the streets saved millions of dollars, no doubt. It’s just that rich people like Reagan were not forced to deal with the situation on anything close to a regular basis. (This is one more reason that I have no sympathy for Reagan’s current state of health.)
Allow me to share a really touching scene with you SwimmingRiddles. I was driving through the “little Vietnam” enclave in San Jose and saw (what I hope was) a homeless vet begging on a traffic island. A Vietnamese family pulled up and handed the guy some paper money. It made me really glad to see a little gratitude shown to our country’s men that suffered so much over there. My own Vietnamese friends love this country for how hard it tried to keep Vietnam free from the stone age politics of communism.
Diane, plain and simple, your story brought tears to my eyes. You obviously appreciate the important role you played in this man’s life. He showed it to you by bringing his small offerings each time he visited. I dread to think how badly that depleted his meager funds. You were a ray of light in the darkness for him.
No, I never said that.
What I am saying, is that unless you know the person and their life history, you have absolutely no right in saying:
What is your experience with the homeless other than your obvious disgust and discomfort you feel when you are subjected to their presence?
I have worked as a homeless veteran’s rep for almost 13 years. My experience with these people goes beyond stepping over them on the sidewalk. A large percentage of these people have mental disorders that prevent them from living a normal life. Most have been put out by families who no longer know how to care for them or they don’t have family to care for them in the first place. Schizophrenia and other conditions are easily treated as long as the person has outside support. Without this support, the person may sink into a mental state to the point they no longer can function in a normal lifestyle. Most end up on the street. I hope like hell this situation doesn’t fall upon your or someone you love, however, the possibilities are greater than you know.
Others, such as Mr. Hart have been doomed from the beginning. Don’t be so quick to judge Mr. Hart as being an exception to the norm. Over the years, I have probably had more than 1000 cases. You would be surprised at how many were similar to Mr. Hart.
Sure. Let’s toss in the alcoholics, those addicted to nicotine, and even the upstanding citizen who is a closet addict to prescription meds. These people don’t deserve death, they deserve treatment. They are someone’s mom or dad, brother or sister, daughter or son. They haven’t always been addicted. Again, I am moved by your compassion and understanding towards those that have fallen into a situation that has consumed their life with something they can’t get out of alone.
You know, there are certain fanatics who don’t like your lifestyle and feel that you would be better off dead. Thank God we all don’t possess your compassion, eh?
Not all disabilities are obvious or maybe they aren’t even disabled, who knows. Either way, they are human beings.
No one has implied that you give them money, in fact, I suggest that you don’t. My reply to you was only in reference to your claim that most homeless people are homeless because they want to be. This is not true. If you still insist that it is, I will have to ask you to back up your claim with cites.
My second comment was made in disgust to your “deserve to die” and your “parasite” statements. They were disgusting.
Diane, do you live with a drug addict? I do. Have you had your life disrupted and lost money covering rent to help a
roommate in serious drug addiction? I have and I do, so you can stuff your self-righteousness where it belongs. I am seriously trying to help one of my roommates, but I can’t reach him. I have not thrown him out because he needs help, but I am angry at his passivity in the face of addiction.
I also grew up physically and mentally abused by alcoholics,so I know exactly what kind of damage it does.
HOW DARE YOU tell me I have no compassion? If this were the Pit, I would really let you have it. Addicts have scarred my life, and I feel no pity, none at all for most of them. They are parasites who damage lives with no concern for anyone but themselves.
How much help is enough? How much do I have to give, huh? I’m sick of helping, I’m sick of caring, and I’m sick of people like you who refuse to treat the problem, but give just enough help to keep addicts going.
I’ll tell you what, Diane. You grow up and miss meals because your stepdad drank up his paycheck. Get slammed into the wall for making noise. Get hit in the face with a belt by a drunk stepdad for “talking too much”, and tell me about addiction.
Boy, I sure tossed a grenade into the movie theater with this thread…
my own story
Let me start by apologizing for the lenght of this. Some of what I’ve read I found mean spirited, some funny, some like my own story. For each homeless person, there is a story, everone different to varying degrees.
When I was 14 my family became homeless. My mom had been paying her rent, but the landlord was not paying his mortgage. We found out we’d be evicted from our place 2 weeks before we had to leave. We had nowhere to go. We had moved here from MI, to get away from my abusive step father. We had a relative in the area, my grandomther, but she had a 1 bedroom seniors apartment.
We spent the next month, bouncing from our churches dining room, to my mom’s co-workers spare rooms, to shelters.
We ate at food kitchens. After a month or so, a member of our church took us in until my Mom could find a new place.
After experiencing it myself, I wanted to help. Ive volunteered in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and runaway lines. Sure some of those people were addicts (booze and drugs) but way too many were people just like us, who didn’t have anyone who helped, until they’d lost hope. Too many of those addicts also acquired there habits, right there on the streets. One of the bad things about a bad situation, is a tendency to take any relief, no matter how temporary. Booze and drugs were all to accomodating in this regard.
What am I trying to say, I’m not sure, maybe I just wanted to put a face on it.
From my previous post.
I am not claiming that there aren’t homeless people who are homeless due to their own actions. There are those who have made wrong decisions their lives and others who are just plain out lazy. Most suffer from mental illness or addictions. A very SMALL percentage are homeless because they enjoy the lack of responsibility and love the sense of freedom.
Having first hand experience with these people, I know that it is almost impossible to tell any of these types apart. I would sure love to know the secret that some of you seem to possess that clarifies those we should help, those we should pity, and those parasites who deserve to die.
goboy - Look, I’m not going to get into a pissing war regarding addictions. You stated that these parasites deserve to die because they are addicted to crack. My response to you is that these people need treatment not death. I do think you are lacking in compassion. My opinion, your opinion. Nothing is going to change either one.
I’ll take that into consideration the next time an addicted client walks into my office looking for help. Maybe I’ll just pull out a shotgun and blast them between the eyes.
That’ll cure 'em!
Diane, I’m not in a pissing war, but I think you are a fuzzy-headed liberal who just enables addicts to keep their drug habit going. No, I don’t seriously think crackheads should die. If you had read my posts, you would know that I am having serious problems with a drug-addicted roommmate that I can’t help and I can’t kick out. I’m paying his rent for him, which I can’t afford. I have compassion; what I don’t have is a refusal to face reality. Addicts aren’t objects of pity, they are selfish jerks who ruin the lives of those who care for them.
BTW, with all your compassion, Mr. Hart froze to death, didn’t he? If you’re so compassionate, why didn’t you take him in?
Whoops, sorry Diane, I missed you saying he was schizophrenic. If that was the case then of course Mr. Hart was not responsible for his situation.
I would argure with including drug addiction as an excuse on par with mental illness however. Mental illness is a disease, drug addiction is a behavior.
And, once again, let me stress that even if the homeless are responsible for their situation, there should still be services to help them. I just can’t stand when the homeless are presented as victims of society when few of them are.