A friend of mine is going through homelessness right now. It truly sucks and it’s going to suck even more in the next few months. He’s been robbed and hassled by cops. I’ve told him he can crash on my floor once a month, and he’s got a few other resources he can use, but sometimes he’s gonna be sleeping on the street.
The reason I suggested the dishwashing job one hour a day wasn’t because I expect the homeless guy living in the dumpster bar to suddenly move into a nice apartment.
My point was to ask if this guy actually wants to return to a normal life in society.
The OP describes him as a normal guy, just down on his luck. I’m wondering how normal he really is.
Offering to work one hour a day washing dishes would be a start, and show genuine motivation. If he works responsibly, the bar owner could then hire him as a full-time dishwasher at minimum wage.And after a few months of solid work experience, he would have some credibility to return to the job market doing whatever he had been doing when he was married and not homeless.
But if the guy prefers to stay in his trash dumpster,then he obviously has problems so severe that he is incapable of living in normal society.
This specific guy(with his personal contacts and friendships at this bar) has a huge advantage over all those anonymous guys living in a homeless camp littered with drug needles.
He has a chance to improve himself.
But like too many of the homeless, he doesn’t seem to want to.
And that makes me sad.
I’m often surprised when I encounter sentiments such as in the OP, as to the novelty of meeting a homeless person. I guess if you don’t have a job that regularly brings you into contact with them, or don’t volunteer in some related manner, it is easy to overlook how many people are homeless for so many reasons.
Mental Illness, lack of employment record, fear of employment based on previous experience… There’s a whole host of reasons why a homeless person choses to remain homeless.
I have a family member who, amazingly, still has his own home after 10 years of joblessness but he’s stuck. He’s not a real social fellow, but friendly enough. But he got laid off a job that he thought he had for life and it just plain overwhelmed him. He literally can’t move forward because he’s got a block in his own mind.
I’ve been there so I understand. I still try to encourage him to ask for help, and so do his neighbors, but he can’t/won’t do it. This time, I’m offering to be with him when he makes the call.
This is an important point. My family was homeless for a short spell when I was a child, so I’ve seen how it can happen. I’ve known a few friends who transitioned to homeless due to addiction. I have always felt that the hurdles to go from homeless to not homeless are immense. And many of us who are able of body and mind would find the process to be a big challenge. So, choosing to remain homeless is often a rational choice within the seemingly available options.
It varies a lot depending on where you live and work. When i lived in NYC i saw homeless people every day. If I went to my subway station early, every bench had someone sleeping on it. (Right before rush hour a cop came by and turned the lights back on and they all got up and left. And every evening they returned, and I’ve of them would give the florescent bulbs a half twist to turn them off. Honestly, I bet that was a safer and more pleasant place than a lot of the homeless shelters, which tended to have problems with TB.)
Now I live in a suburb with no public transit where everything closes at night. It gets cold here. We have some poor people who own homes but have little income. We don’t really have homeless people. I commute into a city, and it does have homeless people. There are warm grates to sleep on, and public services. But if I worked in my home town, I might never see a homeless person.
There’s an old saying: Most people are one pay check away from being on welfare. Yes, most of the homeless are struggling to find a job/place to live, but some do have the attitude of “The rules don’t apply to me.” One such lovely demanded to leave the shelter at midnight (against the rules) and made a fuss when they wouldn’t let her back in.
I figure about 20% are in the shelter because they don’t think their bosses/landlord’s rules apply to them.
In our suburbs, a local group sponsors shelters, so it is very common to encounter homeless. We DO have a train and busses, tho. And, of course, they are at the library.
But whether you SEE a homeless person or not, far fewer people actually TALK with them to any length. Then, among the small percentage of people who TALK to them, even fewer CARE about them as individuals.
Not seeing a person obviously sleeping on the streets doesn’t necessarily mean you’re never seeing a homeless person. That reasonable-looking person reading in the nice warm library may be camping a few nights on one friend or family member’s sofa, a few nights on another’s, and so on.
Actually, now that you mention it, last time I was in the city library there was a guy near me who I guessed was homeless. He WASN’T reading, nor did he have any library materials with him. And his shoes had holes. He was sitting quietly at a table, and I remember thinking that it was really cold out, and this was probably a pleasant place to escape the weather.
Pleasant until your teenage daughter who works as a shelver is being followed around the shelves. Or drug paraphernalia in the washrooms. …
But likely appropriate for a different thread.
I’ve had my perceptions expanded by discussions I’ve had with people who live in Chicago’s forest preserves. I imagine many people may have no idea how common it is. Or what it takes to do it. (Hint, the coyotes aren’t nearly as much trouble as the raccoons! :eek:)
Well, he wasn’t following anyone around, and if he had any drug paraphernalia it was well hidden. He was just sitting at a table minding his own business. He was under-dressed and under-groomed compared to other patrons, but his behavior seemed perfectly fine.
Nevertheless, I still have a crazy preference that libraries be reserved for people who are using the resources. And by that, I do not mean using a chair to sleep in.
Yes, I would support public funding of more accessible safe shelters and warming stations. Or, if homeless are allowed to sleep in libraries, maybe they should be allowed/encouraged to do the same in city halls, police and fire stations, park district facilities…
Are you afraid your library’s going to run out of chair space? What skin is it off your nose if somebody’s using a chair that’s there anyway, in a room that’s heated anyway, in a space that’s supervised anyway, for a purpose you think shouldn’t be part of the library’s purpose? Why does it make such a huge amount of difference whether the person is, or is not, reading or using a computer or audio system? Of course they ought to be behaving themselves. So should people with homes and full wallets.
Libraries in my area are generally full during applicable hours of preteens and teens using the library as a place to hang out between the close of school and when their parents get home; and at any open hour there are older people who probably just wanted to get out of the house for a while, who may be reading, or doing jigsaw puzzles which the library provides, or for all I know sometimes falling asleep in their chairs; people with homes and full wallets sometimes do that too. The libraries clearly consider themselves a community resource for such purposes; just as they’re a resource for net access, job hunting, computer classes, storytelling, and so on.
A homeless man was asked to leave the library in my home town because another patron complained that he was looking at her. He filed a lawsuit, and it was ruled that libraries are PUBLIC places. They are open to the PUBLIC. Anyone has a right to be there as long as they follow the library’s rules.
As a family friend has said more than once, “Any one of us could be sleeping under a bridge this time next year.”
I once had a weird non-verbal relationship with a homeless guy, ten or fifteen years ago.
He’d sell the homeless newspaper and sometimes some flowers in front of the minimart on my block every few days, and I’d often see him whenever I passed by on my way to the tobacconist. On my way back, if he saw me smoking he’d put two fingers to his lips in the universal language of “bum a smoke, guv ?” and I’d hand him a half dozen, sometimes whatever change I had on me as well. I have no idea what language he spoke, and he was missing quite a few teeth which made him mumble a lot - from the looks of him and the way he talked I’d say he was Romanian or Czech or from some other godforsaken post-Soviet place, but if I’m honest I just couldn’t understand a blessed word besides “thanks”. Never knew his name, either.
But because we saw each other often, and because he brightened up like a little kid whenever he saw me, I also brightened up whenever he was there. Soon enough we’d smile and wave at each other from all the way down the street, then after a while we’d shake each other’s hands like we were old neighbours. One particularly dreadful winter I saw him looking like a beaten dog and as I got back home and tried to burn away the cold, hands glued to the radiator, I got the notion to bring him a mug of hot tea, for no real reason. The old bastard almost broke into tears, which made me almost break into tears. I left him the mug and beat a hasty retreat cause I didn’t know what to do with myself at that point ; when I came back 10 minutes later to get the mug back he insisted I take his entire bouquet of flowers. I felt so bad because, shit, that was all he *had *. But he wouldn’t hear otherwise. I kept bringing him tea throughout that winter. It became our little ritual, even if one of the cashiers at the minimart gave me the evil eye.
And then someday he disappeared into thin air. I have no idea if he died, or found a job, or got run out of town by the police, or simply found another, warmer place to sell the homeless newspaper at. I miss him sometimes, very selfishly. For the low price of a handful of cigarettes every once in a while he made me feel I was someone else, someone good.
The homeless shelter I stayed in was next to a strip mall with a Dunkin’ Donuts in it. The peojple that ran the place always treated us like all their regular customers and as a result got lots of business from the shelter. When I found a place to go, I made a point of going into the Dunkies for one last cup of coffee and telling the owner how nice the cashiers treated us “like regular people.”
I know it’s been a while, but I just swung back to add that the guy my Dad knew, who lived on a loading dock in the CBD, wasn’t a drug addict or an alcoholic. He had a regular job when my Dad knew him, selling papers and magazines from a kiosk. He’d worked his way up from being a homeless newspaper boy to being a homeless newspaper man, and soon after I met him, at retirement age, he got into government-owned housing.
There is a homeless man I see on my walks along a creek trail in town behind the hospital. I figure he is somehow getting something from the hospital, maybe a place to crash overnight, so by the time I see him occasionally in the mornings, he is just sitting on a bench with his several bags of stuff. I usually wave or say hello to him as a fellow human being, but I like the idea mentioned above of providing a ziplock with some essentials inside. I will look to do that going forward.
Not long ago on a bike trip up north, we ended the trip and started to drive the several hours home, but made a quick stop at a fast-food restaurant. There was a couple of young people sitting on the curb out front, when out of the blue my friend asked them as we passed by what they wanted to eat. He went inside and bought them some food along with his order, and took it out to them before he sat down to eat with us. All he said to us was “I have been hungry, too.” I took note of this and try to do this sort of thing when I can.