So she was supposed to sell the only thing she had to carry what few possessions she had in for enough money to eat for maybe a week?
Well, I doubt that any of the homeless you’ve worked with would fit that meme because that meme is about people that aren’t homeless. I also have worked with a lot of homeless and homeless agencies, and none of them serve these people either, for the same reason. However, I have seen an actual shift change at a key panhandling location. One moment, the spot is occupied by a bedraggled individual with a HomelessPleaseHelp sign and cup, the next moment a car pulls up with another bedraggled individual and they switch positions. One of the most frustrating moments of my career at that point. (To make matters worse, it was about 20 feet away from the city’s “Donate here, not to the panhandlers” boxes that have been spread out across downtown in an effort to curtail panhandling and their enablers.)
:rolleyes: You really think a homeless person would sell the only means they have to keep their few personal possessions? You should be proud to be such a big-hearted genius.
Places collecting items for donation to the homeless ask for new or like-new things. That Burberry backpack was probably donated by someone whose teen wanted a different style. I always think about stuff like that when I hear someone scoff about how nice the shoes are on a homeless person - probably some teenager outgrew them in 2 weeks or got them as a present and didn’t like the style.
Every now and then I see a woman with a big roller-bag (one of those now-standard bags you bring for a flight), another bag or two, and a little pet carrier with a tiny dog. She’s dressed pretty much like anyone else. You might think she’s waiting on the corner for her ride to the airport, except she’s sitting down and camps out at a spot for a long time. Just think about what might happen to you if you ran out of options.
Only a small amount of people who are mentally ill are obviously mentally ill. A person can be in a terrible place mentally and still look fine. You know all those suicides where people say “I didn’t even know he was depressed, he seemed fine to me”? Most people who are mentally ill put a lot of effort into not seeming crazy.
Psychosis - what most people think of as “mental illness” - is only one aspect of mental illness, and plenty of people are profoundly mentally ill but never psychotic. Even people who do have psychotic episodes are not psychotic all the time; that’s why they’re called “episodes”.
You can’t tell whether someone is mentally ill by looking at them. It takes a lot of training and/or a lot of experience to be able to diagnose mental illness, and no one can do it just by looking at a person.
Panhandling is a huge racket, at least in certain high-profile areas. In L.A. I’ve seen, firsthand, a pandhandler getting dropped off by a Lexus and then walking up the street 2 blocks to start the grind. I’ve also seen panhandlers swapping the same cardboard sign with each other as they change shifts on a particular freeway offramp. Some of them are pulling 6 figures a year.
I know this isn’t GQ or anything, but I would love to see some studies or anything, really, to back this up. You’re telling me that there are lots of people out there that are willing to stand outside in the elements, begging people for change, humiliating themselves and opening themselves up to being verbally and physically assaulted, and they’re making over $100,000 a year at it? I am extremely skeptical. I think people like to think this is happening so that they don’t have to feel guilty that there’s homeless people begging for change and they’ve got it good.
I’ve read interviews of people that lost jobs and their homes. Despite living in cars they made an effort to clean up and dress nicely. That way they could still seek employment.
Remember the homeless lady blogger living at Walmart parking lot a couple years ago?
http://www.lambslain.com/2011/05/homeless-and-living-at-walmart-in-rv.html
They’re homeless, not French.
It’s difficult to get hard data on this since most panhandlers aren’t reporting their incomes to the IRS (by the way, L.A. is pretty damn seasonable most of the year so “standing outside in the elements” is kinda like a vacation. And I’ve never seen anyone verbally or physically assaulting a panhandler). But lots of people give - when I’ve seen them at a freeway offramp, almost every time there is at least one car who gives something. If even 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 give just a dollar, and those cars rotate every minute or so… that’s $60/hour. Plus of course there are some who give more than a dollar. You do the math.
Becoming homeless isn’t like Cinderella’s coach at midnight; the moment you lose your house to foreclosure, your clothes don’t immediately turn into rags, your hair doesn’t instantly grow six inches and become encrusted with dirt and your possessions don’t turn into junk you found in a dumpster.
Yeah, this would never happen.
Well, except for, say, Janet Cooke.
This is just one of the instances I can recall of major awards being issued for stories that turned out to be complete fabrications.
I don’t care to keep digging more cites for you, I don’t care that much. But get your head out of the sand.
I know a person off different message board who is technically homeless. They about went nuts trying to keep jobs that paid enough to keep an apartment. He decided that it wasn’t worth the agitation - he bought a used cargo van - on e of those large generic white vans. He spent a few thousand refurbishing it, and fitted the inside out to live in. It has a nice microkitchen, a 12v lighting system, a cube fridge, a bunch of RV batteries and a comfy bed. He takes jobs that pay his health club membership, food and necessaries, and he does his bathing at the health club, laundry at the laundromat, and once a week he goes to his parents house to charge up the batteries. He parks it in a light industrial area, so it sort of blends in with the other company owned work vehicles.
He has a much more relaxed, saner life now he isn’t forced to work for an insane boss just to live in a building. He also doesn’t consider himself homeless, just sort of mobile homed. Probably when the economy is saner [heh] he will get an actual address when he can get a job that lets him make a sane living.
I might note that probably more people than you realize are actually homeless - I would bet that any given fast food or mall worker you see has a fair chance of being technically homeless. I can think of offhand at least 3 people I know that live on friends couches and sort of rotate between apartments. As long as they kick in money towards the utilities and food, the people that have the apartments are ok with it. [and I might point out that I have on more than one occasion let people stay on my couch for prolonged periods of time.]
This will be kind of long since I had things to do today that meant I didn’t get to the SDMB until recently
If you are speaking to me, I have not said anything about hating to see the homeless. I merely do not understand why it is that the homeless in one place looked homeless, and the ones in another look better off than I do. I am beginning to think that the latter are not truly in need.
Well, then, many of these guys are paying $100 or more for their shoes while begging for food.
I was being sarcastic - I am well aware of the temps at night in S AZ - I slept in my truck last Saturday nite near Buckeye.
If the prices in Tucson are anything like they are around Buckeye (hence the sleeping in the truck) they must be making more than a little money.
Huh, yeah, I had forgotten about that. Why is it that they only take new or like-new things? Seems like it would cut way down on what would be available for donation.
Why would they think that? You really think that people are more likely to want to cover up “guilt” at being able to make ends meet, than the possibility that there are folks out there that prey on the soft hearted? Especially here, where the temps rarely dip below 55 during the day and on the few days when it rains, I see zero begging going on. As for assaulted, since I only see them on street corners during the day, I’m not sure why you would think they are in danger.
However, as I said upthread, I am talking about the same “homeless” beggars that I have seen for the last 15 or so years, still clean and well cared for.
Since I am talking about a story that won no awards and wasn’t even in the first section of the paper, I don’t think your example or dismissive attitude applies. If you will note, I am one of three people just in this one thread who have seen things on our “homeless” here that makes us believe that there is at least some deception going on.
Certainly there’s likely to be some deception going on by some people. I’ll still give money to people who ask me if I’m in the mood. I don’t third degree them about their circumstances; I either give or I don’t. Maybe that’s just me.
I do draw the line at giving to a woman holding a sign reading, “Single Mom – Please Help” while her boyfriend is standing three feet away counting money. Maybe that’s just me, too.
Not all donations are for the homeless, but also for the poor. Also, I think they have to ask that to cut down on the amount of heavily stained, worn clothing that they just send to places that make rags. Lots of donation centers like Goodwill get practically unusable donations from people who assume the poor have no right to be “picky” and who treat the centers as a free dump.
Here is some info on violence towards the homeless. As for you thinking deception is going on, okay… so don’t give them any money. They’re not breaking the law by asking people for money, unless they’re in an area where it’s illegal to panhandle.
Back when I was 16, I was homeless. I did have a fast food job and a car. I also had a cat, so my priorities were to be clean and presentable, be sure my cat had food and litter and go to school. I scheduled my classes so I had gym first, that way I had a shower first thing in the morning. Weekends sucked, I hated doing whore’s baths in public restrooms. This really is why I started keeping my hair boy short. Barbers are cheaper than hairdressers and short hair is easier to keep clean than long hair.
I knew working homeless people. They couldn’t afford to save up the money for a deposit on an apartment so would often pool money to rent a motel room. Being clean and having a safe bed for the night trumps sleeping in a car or park bench while saving money for apartment deposit.
I never looked homeless. You can buy name brand clothes at thrift stores for a few bucks. You can get shoes that have almost unwalked on soles. If I was looking at a jacket that cost too much, like 10 bucks, I’d wait because I knew that if they didn’t sell it, the price would go down.
OK, enough defending well groomed homeless people. I will also say that because I was on the streets, I saw a lot of mentally ill people. They didn’t seem to care so much about keeping clean. Many of them would rather self medicate than eat. And…there were scammers all over the place.
One well groomed person I saw often would beg for gas money because he had had his wallet stolen and he needed to get home. He would ask for his mark’s address so he could send the mark a check the next day. He was very successful.
So…I guess the point to this post is that there is really any way for someone to know if the begger you see is honestly in need or just wants to buy drugs. There is a homeless shelter that sells bags of stuff that homeless people usually need. The bag includes such things as socks, water, poptop cans of stew, soap, some fast food coupons (the contents change depending on what was donated), and handouts as to where they can get help.
I give them out instead of money. Some people take them, some people sneer and walk away, some people dig into the bag and take the fast food coupons and drop the rest of the stuff (I do watch and if they do that, I go back and pick up the discarded stuff to recycle)
I lived for eight years in the local men’s homeless shelter here in central WA, so …
It varies from shelter to shelter, of course, but they could at ours. I was a special case as my stepfather was the Executive Director of the place, but there was a very specific program in place for residency. A man moving in initially got a “free” week staying in the downstairs dormitory. The downstairs people had to be checked in by a certain time each night. Showers were available after dinner, and then they could spend the night (and were guaranteed their bed as long as they checked in on time). After the first week, they could stay in the downstairs dorm for up to 30 days, but this required being willing to perform a small, assigned chore each day, usually something simple and brief, like wiping the tables after a meal and collecting the salt & pepper shakers. Downstairs dorm people had to leave the property after breakfast but could return for lunch and then leave again, then return in the evening for check-in and dinner.
After 30 days, they were given the option of either moving on or joining our program for helping guys get back on their feet and into a paying job, with the ultimate goal of helping them become no longer homeless. Those who elected to join the program were moved to the upstairs dormitory, and could remain on the property all day. We also had private rooms upstairs that held 1 or 2 people, and as vacancies opened up, they were moved from the dorm into a room, based on seniority — first into a 2-man room, and eventually into a single room if they stayed long enough and if one opened up. While they stayed in the program, they could work a regular job around the house. This was considered payment for their “rent”, and they also received a small stipend each week (basically, enough to buy tobacco if they smoked, or snacks/personal items). Alternatively, if they could find a regular, outside job, they were allowed to stay but were required to pay actual rent (though it was called “self-support”, not “rent”, for legal reasons with regard to the shelter’s non-profit status). This self-support was a percentage of what they earned each month, but was capped at $250/month. Self-support residents were not required to perform chores around the house (but some volunteered anyway).
Every man who lived in the house was absolutely required to shower daily, the obvious reason being that, with 50-60 men sleeping in the same dorm, lack of hygiene would make the living conditions unbearable. We got a demonstration of this one winter when our ancient, industrial-sized water heater broke down. It was so old that there was only one company that still manufactured the needed replacement part; they were in Chicago and it took about two weeks to get the part (it took that long because they didn’t even manufacture the part until they had an order for it). At our earliest opportunity we replaced that one, gigantic, old water heater with a series of several smaller, new units, so that if one broke down we wouldn’t be completely out of hot water.
We received large numbers of used clothing donations, some of it quite nice and in good condition. The residents (and non-residents as well) could help themselves freely to these clothes.
OTOH, we often get temperatures well below freezing, down into the single digits, here in central WA, and I’ve never heard of a homeless person dying of exposure here. Not saying it’s never happened, I just haven’t heard of it. I suspect those victims in Seattle were caught unaware by, and unprepared for, unexpectedly cold weather. Here, everybody knows how cold it’s gonna get and even the homeless take precautions. They either get themselves into a shelter for the winter (we relaxed our length-of-stay rules a bit in the winter), elect to spend their disability check (if they get one - a lot do) on renting a cheap apartment or sleeping room for the winter instead of booze, or simply equip themselves with suitably warm clothing/sleeping bag/tent.
My guess would be that SoCal has better services in place to help the homeless.
Do you think they just vanish in a puff of smoke when the sun goes down, only to reappear at sunrise the next day? Even if we go with your assumption that some of the people you see you are scamming you, that means that some of them are not, and are truly homeless. Where do you think they go when you don’t see them? They go to dangerous places. And homeless shelters are sometimes (not always) dangerous places. As are underpasses, bridges, abandoned industrial areas, and other places that the homeless congregate.
Keep in mind, too, that the people that “fly a sign” on the street corners are not the bulk of the homeless. People who work with the homeless population estimate that those are the minority of the homeless.