Nice story. Care to compare it to things that actually happened to people that were and are homeless here? Didn’t have a fancy car, a dog and a home to go to at the end of the day…but I did have extreme malnutrition, overexposure to rain, sun and snow, long lines for long hours for a small chance to leave any belonging I may have behind and sleep on a floor with a room full of other strangers only to be forced to get up before the sun rises and hit the streets, very sporadic food pantries with iffy and often outdated food that more often than not needed to be cooked (thank for the small bag of generic flour and cans of creamed corn, btw), and extreme danger from others even more desperate than you. Sickness and injuries go untreated for the most part, and the deep depression is overwhelming.
How little it takes to find an excuse to look the other way. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a rare event that happens to you personally. Sometimes all it takes is a second hand story without names, location or even timeframe.
Still strikes me as someone who’s living a terrible existence. I will never judge a woman who feels so desperate that she feels she has to prostitute herself to get by.
I will, however, judge the men who take advantage of her desperation, rather than just giving her $10.*
*Not you, BTW
I’m reluctant to give money to someone who seems like they’re just raising money to pay for their addiction. I’ve lost two relatives to such addictions. Giving money to an addict just seems like I’m facilitating that final outcome. But I’ve bought food for people. I know that means that they can have more money for their addiction because they didn’t have to spend money on food, but that’s a compromise I can live with.
I can certainly understand the hardship of having to panhandle, but that hardship can be the motivation to encourage someone to better themselves and be more self supportive. I think if people felt that the panhandler was using the money for things like job training, clothing for job interviews, etc., they would be more likely to give. But instead it feels like contributing money to support their current lifestyle. Rather than trying to lift themselves up out of their situation, they’ll just maintain their status quo. If they didn’t get money panhandling, they’d have to look for other solutions, such as charities, social services, friends, menial labor jobs, etc.
If panhandling easily generated a living wage, then probably lots of people would choose to support themselves that way. That’s understandable. Many jobs suck. If someone can panhandle enough to make to pay for a place to live, transportation, and food, then that sounds like a preferable way to live. They’d be able to set their own schedule and be their boss. Sounds a lot better than doing many low-paying jobs. But if that were the case, there’d be panhandlers all over the place. In general, people don’t like being asked for money. If there were lots of panhandlers, people would stop giving because they’d get annoyed being asked for money all the time.
There’s probably a lot of truth to this, but I also think that blaming the individuals who don’t give money is misplaced, and is letting the social and institutional failures off the hook.
I don’t give money to homeless people. It’s not because I’m not sympathetic, but because I’m aware the most of the people I see are addicted to substances (I’m thinking of a very small and specific set I encounter frequently, not just “homeless people in my town”). Addiction is a very difficult thing to treat, and it’s also a very difficult thing to mitigate. Yes, $5 from me might allow them some junk food when they’re hungry, but why are they asking me for cash when there are places to go for food and shelter? Because those places are full and / or have behavioural regulations that someone with addictions can’t manage.
What we need is someplace for people with addictions to go, where they can have the combination of being looked after as needed with some freedom rather than the institutionalization-or-nothing we seem to go for. But I can’t solve that as an individual, and I also really dislike seeing people in need beg. We’re a wealthy society: we don’t need to make it individual and transactional, where people with clever signs or dogs are rewarded and people without are punished.
My cousin died on the streets. We don’t know that she was doing sex work towards the end (she was in her 40s), but it seems far more likely than not, as she had no other way to support herself. I don’t know what would have helped her, but it for damn sure wasn’t some individual giving her a few dollars. She also didn’t have the inner resources or wherewithal to get institutional help. None of the people who walked by her did her any harm; she and the people who she was around are the ones who killed her.
Sometimes not, for Groote Schuur. It’s also where people end up if they happen to be found unconscious anywhere in the greater catchment area (meaning anywhere from Newlands to the City Bowl). Which for some homeless people is not unusual. So it might not be planned.
I still don’t give those guys money, though.
Hey, I think I know that guy’s work too! I did not buy his terrible art.
There’s such crushing poverty here in Cape Town, and public services are so thin on the ground, that homelessness is an epidemic. I give people money - but generally a couple of regulars in my neighbourhood, never random beggars at intersections or on the street. I have a budget for charitable giving, and about R500/month goes to those regulars.
Once I was sitting in my car eating lunch when a woman walked up and asked me for money. I didn’t have money but I had a package of pita bread. I offered it, saying “If you’re hungry, have this bread,” like I’d seen in the movies, like in olden times “the poor are crying for bread,” but now nobody cares about baked wheat any more. Even the word “bread” has come to mean money. The woman got angry at me for not giving money. She felt insulted to be offered baked wheat. No, only cash would do.
I’m Sicilian, from the island of the grain goddess Ceres. Wheat bread is practically sacred in our culture.
A sticky situation.
You offered her bread you didn’t want. How kind of you. Look up the nutritional value of most bread and you might find out why she may have wanted to buy something with more nutritional value to it.
She was just trying to help.
Since you have this experience, can you give us an idea of what types of foodstuff would be good to give to homeless people who don’t have access to kitchens where they can cook raw ingredients?
Yes, there is always junk food but that is expensive pound for pound and not very healthy. What is healthy, cost effective, practical and at least slightly enjoyable?
Package of bread is one step closer to making a sandwich. No one is saying you have to just eat five pitas.
First off, remember that carrying and the subsequent storing of food just can’t be done. Most food boxes from pantries have cans of food that just can’t be prepared, or are ingredients that just can’t be put together. What you carry is your life and you just don’t have space for condiments or spices, which means that what you might put on bread to make it more nutritional just isn’t possible.
Who said I didn’t want it? I had brought it along for myself to eat. Whole wheat pita bread. Know why? Because I. Like. It.
You got some nerve twisting my words into something I didn’t say and didn’t mean. Out of ignorance you made up something ugly and untrue about me for no apparent reason. I cannot count this as a positive interaction with you. It leaves me with a feeling of distaste. And don’t fucking disrespect bread! Sheesh some people
And as a linguist you probably know that the Arabic word for bread (at least in vernacular Egyptian Arabic, the only kind I learned a bit of), aish, also means “life.” I thought that was very fitting when I learned that.
“Staff of life” and all that.
Many of our personal ancestors lived and died on the availability of bread.
That Wonder makes a garbage non-nutritious product under the same name is on them. Not on bread.
While people are here to defend the noble history of bread, I hope that some listen to the needs, and plight, of the homeless.
I’m not here because of bread. I posted to offer moral support to Johanna, as the assumption that she offered a homeless person something she didn’t want was uncalled for and upsetting. She deserves better.
As to my “listening to the needs of the homeless,” I probably have a reasonably good record on that. To mention a couple of things (there are others):
I used to cook for homeless AIDS patients, then stay and eat (break bread, you might say - hah) with them.
A little while ago, I arranged to create a platform for a discussion of the justice system that included a focus on how many formerly incarcerated individuals end up homeless. A panelist and many in the audience were former homeless people; after the conference was over they took all the leftover food (we had lots) out into the neighborhood (where we have a lot of homeless) and didn’t just distribute it; as they gave it out, they actually talked with the people as fellow human beings. (No, I didn’t personally go give out food; I had responsibilities inside, plus I couldn’t have those conversations nearly as well. But I worked damn hard to make the event possible.)
Perhaps she does, but I may have been a little more concerned for the homeless person being offered bread.
I told you I didn’t have any money on that occasion. I hadn’t gotten my first paycheck yet. Bread was all I had to offer. What would you have done in that situation?
Now whether she was homeless, I don’t know, as she didn’t volunteer any information on that. Her only communication was “Give me money.”
I would have moved on after explaining that what was there was all I had. Homeless people get turned away themajority of the time, and sometimes what some interpret adjust bad manners could be a combination of malnutrition, long hours and resignation.
Sorry, typing on crappy cell phone.