I buy various items (both food products and toiletry items) to donate to the poor/homeless, and in the past, I have looked at items sold at dollar stores.
What I’ve found is, it’s VERY rarely cheaper to buy these items from dollar stores. Now, your experience may be different from mine, but I’d advise you to check the prices of the items you buy against what you’d pay at a regular supermarket.
That small can of Chef Boy-ar-dee spaghetti and meatballs or Libby’s fruit cocktail you got for 98 cents at the dollar store may actually be a little cheaper at a supermarket (or even a Target). Do NOT automatically assume everything at the dollar store is less expensive than what you can get elsewhere.
Oh, dollar stores often have VERY cheap generic crap, but when they sell actual name brand products, they often DON’T sell them for any less money than you’d pay at ordinary supermarkets.
Obviously YMMV, and perhaps the homeless people you all encounter are a different variety than the ones I do, but it’s my experience that what they really want is booze and drugs. They would happily trade a home for either of those.
Some want homes, some want booze & drugs, some want better health, most want simple, human respect. I dare say druggies & crazies are overrepresented, but like the non-homeless, everyone’s different.
Absolutely. There’s a local conservative talk radio guy who on Twitter was trying to drum up support for his latest anti-panhandling article, and said “99% of the ‘so-called’ homeless are just con artists”. He was referring to panhandlers. Now, a large percentage (certainly not 99%) of the panhandlers out there are not homeless - but that statement completely misrepresents the actual homeless population, the *vast *majority of which are not out on the streets begging for [del]food[/del] spare change.
And everyone in prison says that they’re innocent. Year after year, our local homeless count confirms that the panhandlers just aren’t showing up at shelters, and they’re not accessing services. That’s because they’re not homeless. I’ve seen shift changes at multiple panhandling locations. A car pulls up, a guy or girl gets out, the panhandler hands over his or her sign to the new guy, panhandler gets in the car, new guy or girl starts panhandling.
Now, that doesn’t mean they’re not in need, and it doesn’t mean they’re not destitute. But I know multiple organizations I can support where the people absolutely are, and where they’re not lying to get those organizations’ assistance. They get my time and money.
There’s a big intersection near my work where I see different people on different days with the same sign. Never seen a “shift change,” but that’s kind of funny.
bump, McDonald’s provides a place for those “stank-ass bums” to wash up. And you do not have the legal, or any other, right to tell them to stay out.
I once got some $1 boxes of drink mix on my food stamps. A total bitch in line behind me noticed my card and stated 'She shouldn’t be buying that on food stamps. She can drink plain water."
I looked at her groceries and remarked “What’s with you and the four six packs of Coke?”
Legal right, no. But I can’t say I blame him for not wanting to smell the person next to him. I don’t have the legal right to tell the “homo sex is sin” people to stop preaching on the sidewalks, but I would prefer they were not there all the same.
I think the difference here is that she is paying for her cokes and what she does with her money is her business. Food stamps are provided on the taxpayer dime and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that the taxpayer would like food stamps spent on necessities (You occasionally here those stories about about someone using food stamps to buy lobster). Not that I think food stamps are a bad program or that you shouldn’t be able to buy drink mix with them, but the attitude that “you shouldn’t use food stamps for drink mix” and “I can use my own money to buy coke” is both rational and consistent, even if somewhat heartless.
I didn’t say to eject them, I just was saying not to encourage them to actively go to McDonald’s or somewhere else like public libraries where they don’t do anything useful and primarily pollute the place and disgust and/or terrify the legitimate patrons.
I don’t give a shit if it’s a public place or not; smelling like some sort of combination of a dumpster and a public toilet at a football game isn’t acceptable anywhere other than your own home, and I see no reason that we should be tolerant of that or any other sort of misbehavior on the part of the homeless, just because they’re homeless. If they want to be treated like civilized people, they need to act and smell like civilized people- it’s part of the bargain.
