I don’t know for certain if giving any particular individual cash will help or hurt. I do know lots of people who died thanks to people enabling their addictions. I also know lots of people in jail for the same reason. Most of them were homeless at some point. Hell, I was homeless at one point and any cash I came across went to booze, not food.
Do tell us, do you know how many people you have given cash to have used it to destroy their own lives? Do you know how many people you might have helped down the road to their self destruction just so you can feel a bit better about yourself?
It is an odds game and the odds are that if you give a homeless person cash they will use it to get drugs or booze. Not all, but most.
I won’t help people kill themselves to make myself feel a little better.
True. And aid agencies have the expertise to actually help people where as if you or I do it, it is a pure ass guess as to whether we are helping or hurting. And the odds are on hurting.
If people want to give money. Fine. But they need to understand the possible consequences.
I missed this. If you actually know the person and they are actually trying to do better that can work. That is different than giving to some random guy on the street.
Helping is good. The problem is that many times what one thinks of as help actually isn’t. Being rather results oriented, that matter to me a lot.
You can’t possibly know that, just admit it. It’s what you believe.
And being dismissive of others giving because you’ve decided everyone is doing it to ‘to make themselves feel better’, reflects on you only.
We get it, you’re about judgement and worthiness. Can you not understand not everyone sees it your way? Or values judging others or worthiness as much you do?
The shelter where my church serves dinner once a month (and has for over 40 years) uses disposable tableware. People who are buying large amounts of this are probably serving a large group somewhere, and don’t want to haul and wash all those plates, glasses, and silverware.
This is a nasty myth. Most people are two paychecks away from being homeless, and once you go down that rabbit hole it is very difficult to ever recover. Drug users have a mental illness and need medical help and compassion, not moral judgments. Most chronically homeless people have mental illnesses. I’ve let borderline sane homeless people sleep in my house when the weather was bad. There are several illegal tent towns of homeless people near where I live, and I drop off excess produce in the summer and canned goods in the winter.
I am ridiculously uninterested in arguing with you or whether or not you believe me.
Just for clarity, when a person is holding up a homeless sign and they are well-groomed, clean and wearing decent clothes, i have a hard time believing they are homeless.
I give to panhandlers, when i feel comfortable doing so. Im not anti-charity, i just dont see all panhandlers in the same light.
Why has no one been impressed with the OP having grown up with a mother like that and still wants to help others? I am impressed way more with that than with all the petty bickering of the posters about your personal giving or not giving decisions. :smack: :rolleyes:
As you say elsewhere - you and I can’t know for certain whether cash will help or hurt the specific person asking us.
Therefore - it’s not our place to make assumptions or judgements about what the guy asking me for a dollar really needs.
Maybe he really needs a sandwich. Maybe he really needs a place to stay tonight. Maybe he really needs his lithium refilled. But he’s not asking for any of that - which is good, but I can’t help with any of that while I’m out walking down the street.
What he’s asking for is a buck, which I probably have and will never miss.
It’s not my place to assume that I know what he needs better than he does. It’s certainly not my place to tell him what he really needs while refusing the simple request he actually makes.
It has nothing to do with “judging others”. IF you know a person is going to spend money on drugs or alcohol, it’s probably not a good idea to give them money. Not because addiction makes someone a bad person. But because addiction can and does kill, duh. In that case, I’d rather give a person food.
(And I also make it a habit to never open my wallet on the streets, except when I’m showing my bus pass.)
Assuming your family objects because they believe the money will be spent on booze they are not necessarily wrong in their assumptions. On the flip side there’s no magic detector for ferreting out the “deserving” poor you chance by on the street. A very sizeable majority of what you handout to panhandlers will probably go toward alcohol but some smaller portion will go toward necessities.
So yes, you are (probability-wise) quite likely enabling someone’s chronic alcohol abuse with most of your handouts and if you believe otherwise you are being very naïve, but on the other hand your money is yours and some small bit you give may help them in some way.
This is anectdotal but having lived on both coasts and have met many homeless drug users and I’ve never met one who panhandles for drug money directly. It’s too simple to find someone looking for drugs who will give you money and a cut of the dope when you score. Usually it’s someone who knows that the neighborhood is a drug neighborhood but doesn’t know the dealers directly.
The homeless love it since they can get high, the dealers love it as it keeps them off the street and the users love it because they can get in and out of dodge thus minimizing their exposure to the neighborhood dangers.
The panhandling is for the slow times and is generally used for food and incidentals. I don’t mind giving them this money as this feeds them and takes them out of rotation for a little bit.
Again, this is just anectdotal and I have no desire to see if things have changed over the years but I’m sceptical about kindly people keeping homeless people addicted to drugs.
Actually, yes making assumptions and judgements is a key to charity. Assuming of course that your goal in giving charity is to actually help the recipient of the charity. I take responsibility for my actions and consider whether or not they will end up harming someone.
Have you ever heard of ‘First do no harm’? Some gifts of charity, no matter how well intentioned, are actually harmful. A large percentage of the homeless, greater than 50%, have alcohol or drug problems (please note, I provided a cite which you seem to want to ignore) Giving an alkie or an addict money is the same as buying them the drug of their choice. I know, I have been there.
I think there is some confusion about the judgement aspect. The judgement isn’t ‘The homless guy is a filthy addict and doesn’t deserve help’. The judgement is ‘The majority of the homless are some sort of addict. Giving addicts money just enables the addict to continue buying whatever it is they are addicted to (and might actually kill them) and that is bad. Therefore the best way to help the homeless is to give to charities which work on the actual problem.’
I know this because a) I read the studies b) I am a recovering alkie and been there c) I lived in a halfway house with a bunch of alkies and addicts d) I have assisted quite a few alkies and addicts on the road to recovery as best as I could manage (a few on this board, believe it or not) and
last, because I have been to the funerals of alkies who didn’t make it.
I have. It’s a very catchy statement. What I’ve never heard of or seen is any objective study letting me know that this catchy statement is an undeniable truth.
I’ve really only heard First do no harm when someone wants to criticize something they disagree with and in healthcare and in healthcare the rule doesn’t apply to a random person. It reminds the health care provider that they must consider the possible harm that any intervention might do ( wikipedia Primum non nocere - Wikipedia ).This doesn’t apply to good samaritans.
While it very well may be an ideal that should apply to random people I’m not convinced that such a grave obligation should be so casually saddled upon people. No harm in general is a huge obligation to try and live up to. It may well be nigh impossible.
The only way you could possibly ensure that you followed this would be to do absolutely nothing at all.
I get where you’re coming from though and your ideas for giving are far better choices. I just don’t like the absolute.
Yes, first do no harm is mainly used in health care. However, if more people lived by that ethic the world would be a hell of a lot better place. Doing something just to do something or to make yourself feel better doesn’t really work.
Second, if a good samaritan gives away money and that charity actually harms the person it is suppose to help, is that person really acting as a good samaratin? If you view the intent as the important factor, then by all means give away a the money you want. If, on the other hand, the result is important to you, give the money to charities that focus on helping the homeless and addicts.
Last, the ‘obligation’ of what I am suggesting isn’t terribly hard. It is simply asking yourself ‘Will this actually help the object of my charity’. If the answer is no or you are unsure, find a known to be helpful way to contribute. Give the money to a good charity, carry homeless shelter cards and phone cards and distribute those, call the shelters and report areas where the homeless are staying.
I never give to the homeless when they are engaging in illegal activity. I never pay people to be homeless.
It follows that when I am giving to the homeless, it’s because they’ve got a good story, and I’m paying them for the story, not the homelessness. I’m not defensive about paying panhandlres who rub me up the right way, any more than I’m defensive about paying supermarkets or authors.
Last night, one of my fellow parishioners posted a story on Facebook about a church that had a 24/7 food pantry. It looked like someone constructed a “Little Free Library” and used it for that instead. I have a feeling that this may be something we will seriously pursue. We are in a middle-class neighborhood but that doesn’t mean we don’t see people who fall on hard times and may be too embarrassed to ask for help.
My goal, as I’ve stated, is to be the kind of person who happily shares what I have with others.
I’m not solving world peace here. The guy asked if I had some loose change. As it happens, I might and if I do, he’s welcome to it. Clutching on to those pennies because of some statistic which might not even apply to this individual is the antithesis of helpful.
No - the judgement is, “I’m not going to give a dollar to this guy because there’s a statistic that says a lot of homeless guys are alcoholics, therefore, I’m just going to assume that this guy is an alkie and therefore I’m fully justified in ignoring him”.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate. There’s no actual judgement involved in that at all, in terms of weighing facts. You’ve got a statistic and you’re just assuming that it’s relevant to the individual in front of you. Conveniently, this assumption absolves you of any need to part with your coins. How about that.
Your own statistic (which I’m taking at face value), says that only 50% of the homeless have addiction problems. That means that 50% of the homeless do not.
If you actually cared about the best outcome for the beggar, you’d be carefully conducting charity interviews, to determine your appropriate response. Instead, you’re just using the statistic that the beggar has a 50% chance of being an addict as an excuse to refuse to help 100% of the beggars
If 50% of the beggars are addicts, but you refuse to help 100% of the beggars because they might be addicts, then you’re not actually providing positive outcomes to anyone but yourself.
One person who was buying disposables for the holidays told me she doesn’t return the unused items to the store (I don’t want to go to all that bother), but drops it off at the local battered women’s shelter.
Would that all people would do that once in a while.