http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74179
I promised to dig this up for y’all. It’s an educational read.
Very interesting read indeed magdalene, for clarification purposes my hostile comments are directed at the chronically homeless who I see every day (specific people.) And for the record, less anyone thinks I’m a monster, I took a homeless man out for breakfast a few months back. He was a construction worker who got fired just as he was stretching himself beyond his means. He was the one homeless person that ever accepted my offer to buy him actual food. I’ve offered a number of times to purchase food for the homeless.
So, in retrospect,
Fuck the chronically homeless people on the blocks which I walk every day.
You guys should see San Antonio on the weekends…
Everyone and their mother, church groups, men, women and children are out at the intersections on the service roads selling stuff or asking for money…
Some of them need it for themselves or need it for their cause… Whatever, I give my money to the United Way or homeless/battered women shelters so I know that I’m helping… not to individual people.
And for those of you who say but that guy doesn’t need my money, he has nice clothes or a nice watch… People do loose jobs and or do suddenly have problems and can’t work. Just because they haven’t already descended down into rags and insanity doesn’t mean they don’t need help.
But then again I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for people who live that the very upper limits of their means then suddenly have problems paying for their 50,000 luxury car when they lose their job.
I usually give them a buck or two. There are, however, exceptions.
One is the chick who has been hanging around downtown for as long as I’ve lived in Vegas. She has a couple of fvorite spots, the main one being in front of St. Joan of Arc church. She always has the same line “Can you help me out so I can get something to eat for my little boy?” As long as she’s been using that one, the little boy would be about college age by now.
Everybody who works in the downtown casinos knows her, and what she does with the money. She takes it to whatever casino her boyfriend is at and gives it to him to gamble with.
The best line I ever got was the black lady who was sitting in front of a now defunct public building with all her worldly possessions neatly packed in suitcases and assorted nice travel bags. She looked as though she had recently moved into town and found out that the myth that the streets of Las Vegas are paved with good-paying jobs is just that- a myth.
What she said to me was, “I’m temporarily on the streets. If you help me out with a couple of dollars, then when I get back on my feet, I’ll pass it along to the someone else who needs help.?”
How could I refuse?
OK, upfront: I am a pushover.
They see me coming from a block away, and they’re right. They’ll get something, and they know it. Do you wonder how they do it? Watch one, and generally you’ll see they don’t act randomly, they search faces, scan “vibes”. What’s that old quote about a man having the face he deserves by the time he hits 40?
A thought experiment: a course through any ordinary urban setting, with six randomly selected “bums” (screened for street level experience, no dot.com newbies).
Now select a couple of faces: say, Ayn Rand (a profile like a warship on a mission of stern resolve) and Kurt Vonnegut (like an old suit that has been recently slept on by a restless elephant).
Have them walk the spare change course, and count the number of “hits”, you know the drill. Get something like 1.2 for AR, 4.6 for KV.
Now, what kind of face do you want to wear? For me, its no contest.
But then again, I’m a pushover.
Liquid guess I have to spell it out for you a bit more.
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It’s admirable that you were able to deal with horrifically adverse circumstances. This, of course, does not mean that since you were able to do so, that it was either easy or ‘anyone can do so w/sufficient gumption’. This means you were able to do it.
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It’s also impossible for you to know the particular circumstances of any other individual based on a 10 second encounter. I understand that certain particular people or approaches irritate you, and you may be aware of some particulars of some one’s situtation based on repeated sightings or whatever. But, I’m also suggesting that you most likely do not have all of the information available to you.
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Re: apples and oranges, hell, You’re the one who keeps on insisting that their ‘demanding’ something. I see a huge difference between some one holding a sign/cup, or even coming up and asking ‘got any spare change’ and the word ‘demand’. The holding of a cup/sign etc, isn’t intrusive at all. Asking directly, isn’t forcing me to do anything either. You don’t want to give 'em anything? walk away. What the hell is your damage?
I think mags had it exactly correct. Give or don’t give, whatever suits your preference. But, unless you do a specific study, including research and interviews and background checks etc, I’d suggest that assuming stuff about what you see is not particularly efficient. (as in Antracites’ contribution to this thread).
To Wring,
with regards to questions#
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Noted and understood.
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Also noted, but as I stated in my last thread I changed the parameters of my vent to only address those homeless I do encounter and do “know” for longer than 10 second intervals. A close friend of mine was homeless. Deliberately so. He died from a massive OD.
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I never used the word demanding. I said they use pressure, which could include yelling and screaming or just as little as following me around repeatedly asking for money (as in literally following me.) Pressure is pressure, and I feel if you want to give it should be as a result of your own charity not because someone looks at you with puppydog eyes and raises a cup.
My problem with the homeless is selective and therefore is subjective; it revolves around only those homeless who I have known and come in contact with.
Do not patronize me. I’ve seen the horrors of the streets as well as the horrors of a disfunctional household. I’m not special. If you are able bodied and of able mind you can overcome anything.
don’t ‘patronize’ you? geez. first some one thinks I’m riled when I’m not (corrected that one, eh?? 
)
now patronized. from the guy who accuses me of attempting to manipulate other folks’ feelings by pointing out that there’s a bunch of situations where folks may be asking for help.
anyhow.
#1. Glad we got that cleared up.
#2/3 Yes, I noted that you may have been specifically commenting on certain folks you’d had some knowledge of. But, of course, again, you most likely have limitations to that knowledge. You feel you’re in a position to judge certain individuals, fine. I’m not real quick on that, personally. But you did, however, extrapolate that to the greater group, and still seem to want to, to a degree.
My focus in this thread is from a pragmatic standpoint. If you can afford to give whatever, and wish to, fine. If you can afford it but don’t, fine. If you prefer to give to groups instead, fine. If you wish to have your charitable spending go elsewhere, fine w/me, too.
All I’m saying is that do so from the stand point of ‘I don’t want to’ rather than "I’m sure from whatever piece of info I am looking at, they don’t deserve it, they’d only spend it on frivolous things, whatever. Give, or don’t give. It’s totally up to you. I do get bent with comments like the footware thing (wasn’t you), since in that 10 seconds the person had to notice what kind of footware they were wearing isn’t sufficient time and data to make a realistic decision. And gobears assumption that able bodied men are less deserving than females who may have kids etc. - hell, he can make that choice, but AFAIAC, it’s insufficient data - I’ve known a hellava lot of guys whose brains were fried from Nam or whatever, seemed on the surface to be able bodied, but totally incapable of dealing w/reality, vs. some women I’ve known who checked into a homeless shelter so they could get some one else to pick up the tab for their security deposit at their next appartment.
You apparently have a difficult time w/the person asking for $$ directly. Why? You say no and they move on. All sorts of charities use this approach as well (from mailings, telemarketing door to door etc.). -tho’ I"m with ya on the telemarketing. But some one coming up to me on the street and asking ? so what? I just don’t see your damage potential here. the following etc. can be annoying but does that really happen after you’ve done you “Fuck no” routine?
And, frankly if it does, then the rant belongs only to those individuals, not some category of group you can ascribe them to. Jerks are jerks, homeless jerks are homeless jerks. I’m unclear why you’re focusing your venom on the ‘homeless’ aspect of it vs. the ‘jerk’ aspect.
In summation.
Jerky behavior is deplorable, by anyone who does it. It’s the behavior that’s deplorable, not other categories which may be attributable to the jerk in question.
and, furthermore, I wasn’t patronizing.
thhhhhhhhhhhbttttttttttttttttttt
Wring come to DC sometime and we’ll have dinner in Dupont Circle or Adams Morgan, and then you can explain to me how the healthy, 20-year-old black guy sparechanging next to the restaurant served in Vietnam. Please tell me how the Goth-y white kids next to the curb got their brains scrambled in Khe Sanh, which was 15 years before they were born by the looks of them.
Puh-leeze.
Frankly, if every crackhead who claimed to be in Nam actually was there, we would have won the war in a week.
You may wish to create excuses to allow others to sponge off you, but I do not. I know you have a good heart, and so do the conmen of the world. As long as they can get your heart to bleed for them, they’ll spin tales of their misfortunes and get you to buy their smokes and their beer.
gobear pu-hhhleeeeze back at yourself.
Your chosen categories were “old, crippled and women” . those were the words you used, and the ‘other’ category was ‘able bodied men’.
I merely pointed out that in your chosen categories of ‘old, crippled and women’ vs. ‘able bodied men’ there were folks who deserved help and others who didn’t within those same categories.
So, play all you want to, you’re making assumptions based on your own small observations. You may be correct about individual a or individual b. But, please don’t pretend that you ‘know’ everything about ‘everybody’ based on what you can see.
Give or don’t give as you see fit. Pretending you’re only ‘giving’ to those who you deem worthwhile, hell if it makes you feel better to walk past the guy who just got tossed out of the mental institution and isn’t sure who he is ('cause he’s obviously not old, crippled or female), and give to the woman who’s got her Beemer down the street, fine by me. I really don’t give a shit.
However, when you choose to categorize others who don’t make those same assumptions or give willingly as ‘chumps’ or ‘suckers’ (as you do in this thread), bite me.
What angers me is when there is “false advertising”. I see a person with a sign that says “Homeless and hungry. Please help” or “Will work for food.” To me, these imply that they are going to use the money for food. When they don’t, they have flat out lied to me. That is why I think the OP was angered.
Never on a first date.
I don’t want to argue with you, so I’ll just say that you have a sunnier view of humanity than I.
So, Fin_man, if they use someone else’s $1 for cigarettes or a newspaper or a new toothbrush, but YOUR $1 for food, that’s okay? Perhaps they should have separate, clearly marked envelopes that you could place the money in so that you contribute ONLY towards the food budget.
Or it would be okay if they wrote “Hungry, unhygienic, and jonesing for a smoke. Also need to buy prepaid cellphone minutes in case potential employers call. If I scounge enough cash my kid and I can sleep in a motel tonight instead of in our van. Please give.” because that would be “truth in advertising”?
GIVE OR DON’T GIVE. NO ONE HERE WILL JUDGE YOU. It’s completely, 100% up to you. In downtown Chicago, this former Adams Morgan, D.C. resident walks by 10-20 beggars a day. When they ask me for money I say “No.” “I don’t have any cash.” “Sorry, can’t help you out today.” They are used to hearing the word “no.” You won’t hurt their iddle widdle feelings by walking on by.
What is disturbing me about this thread is the anger and hostility toward homeless people, and the dependence on anecdotes to make generalizations about all homeless people.
If you can’t give someone $0.35 without demanding an affadavit of mentally-ill physically disabled struggling mother recovering drug addict recently laid off Vietnam Vet status, and without judging how they are going to use the money, and without anger at them if they DARE to purchase something other than a nutritious meal in front of your very eyes, and without complaining at every turn that homeless people are all a bunch of goddamn scammers who don’t deserve the time of day, THEN DON’T GIVE AWAY YOUR MOTHERFUCKING MONEY. Say “No,” and keep walking.
Ahhh, but you were patronizing me. By making statements like, “guess I have to spell it out for you a bit more” you are patronizing me. So there.
But yes, I do have a problem with a homeless person coming up to someone asking for money. From my perspective when someone comes up to me (or those around me) soliciting for something in all cases it is annoying. That is in every situation where solicitation takes place (from telemarketers to begging) I’m consistently disgruntled.
you ask: can be annoying but does that really happen after you’ve done you “Fuck no” routine?
As a matter of fact it does. Often. About eight years ago I was working part time in a bike shop in DC. I’d come in on the weekends. I routinely gave to a man who hung out near the McDonald’s I stopped at. During one evening as I was rushing to get home I apparently missed him at his corner and did not make my donation. The next week he physically grabbed me and proceeded to berate me.
As another case in point there is a homeless man who sits on the corner two blocks up from my office building. Whenever someone passes him by and does not give he screams at them using the most colorful words I’ve ever heard. The man is gigantic and very physically imposing. He’s verbally assaulted everyone I work with.
My point is that most of the homeless in my immediate area are easily riled up. I could list out more examples, such as the man who wears a duck bill over his mouth and has physically assaulted a number of people (which eventually led to his arrest as I’ve heard.) The colorful language and blatantly hostile remarks I’ve made in this thread are more a result of the thread being in the Pit than anything else. But you never know if you’re act of giving is going to have consequences. Or if you are subsidizing a crack habit. You honestly don’t know where the money is going, so how would you feel if you bought someone an overdose?
In a nutshell, I no longer give directly to the homeless. I have given to homeless charities. If someone comes up to me asking for anything I treat them all without differential treatment; I ignore them. Whether it’s a telemarketer or a homeless person or a TV evangelist.
Oh, and for the record, less you think otherwise, I do understand your viewpoint and from reading many of your responses in the link magdalene provided (as well as the sublinks inside of it) I respect your stance. I don’t necessarily agree with your methods, but I guess our big disagreement is how the money should be given.
you apparently didn’t notice what I’m pissed about.
You are welcome to assume whatever you wish about whatever homeless, disadvantaged or whatever person that you find in your travels.
You are welcome to decide based on whatever criteria you choose, to give or not to give (of course, I’d hope you understand that the criteria that you’ve given here isn’t particularly predictive of ‘worthiness’ whatever that might mean)
What I am suggesting to you that you refrain from doing:
for those of us who chose to do other than you, please stop referring to us as chumps etc. (as you did). You’re free to think whatever, but as far as I can see, your ‘categories’ of worthiness aren’t particularly accurate, themselves. And, frankly, if I or anyone else chooses to give to some one, it’s really not your job to judge the ‘worthiness’ of the recipients we’re chosing.
This isn’t about having a ‘sunnier’ view of people. fer cryin’ out loud - I work with convicts! I know scammers, professional ones. junkies. crack addicts. prostitutes. etc. etc. I’m pretty blunt with them (told one the other day it wasn’t his record that was keeping him from getting work, it was the permeating odor of mj that pervaded his aura). Sunnier view? sheesh.
Two things magdalene,
1.) Your comment:
Completely cracked me up. I think what Fin_man is driving at is that he doesn’t want to subsidize a drug addict.
2.) Your comment:
It’s the Pit so there’s bound to be hostility. I certainly don’t hate homeless people. Most of my hostility is for levity and because we’re in the Pit.
Liquid - the ‘let me spell it out for ya’ can seem to be patronizing, by the end of it, for me at least, it was more of a ‘gee, maybe English isn’t my native language’ .
Usually, if I’m going for a patronizing tone, there’s frankly not a lot of subtlety. Can’t really say there wasn’t any ‘annoyance’ factor going on, but ‘patronizing’ wasn’t really the tone I was aiming for. annoyed more like.
I understand your description of certain folk. and yes, the person grabbing you etc, yelling obscentities and the large size, I understand. working in the field that I do, I guess I’ve gotten to the point where I look more at individual behavior, and characterize it as ‘that guy there is a jerk’.
So, the bottom line difference would be I’d say those couple of folks there were jerks. And I suspect we’d agree on that. But I wouldn’t go so far as to blame it on their homelessness, or even that it would be related to it. I suspect that if they were rich, they’d still be jerks. And while they wouldn’t necessarily be in your face looking for money, they wouldn’t hesitate to get in your face to tell you to get out of the way, or something else jerky.
[sotto voce]I just came in earlier to say that it is not uncommon, at least from my anecdotal second-hand unreferenced experience, to see people using cell phones and pagers that are not real. Cell phones and pagers have a “status amplification” effect in today’s society, and IMO some people do get them only because they have low self-esteem and want to feel more important. I think it’s safe to say that an unfortunate person who finds themselves homeless, out of work, or on the streets may also suffer from some low self-esteem issues, which might drive them to pick up a dead/broken cell phone and/or pager (which are quite commonly found in the trash) and pretend to “use” them. The reason the SO found out nearly all of them didn’t work is that she would ask for their number so her office could contact them regarding test results, prescriptions, etc., and in every single case she was told sheepishly that the phone/pager did not work. All the same, she did also see some of her patients talking very loudly and in an animated manner in the waiting room. Anyhow, that having been explained, I’m moonwalking right on out of this thread. Pass me the white sequin’d glove, Michael…[/sotto voce]
A few weeks ago I was hanging out downtown with a friend while waiting for the box office for the Buddy Guy concert to open up. A homeless guy stopped by and talked to us. We had a good conversation (he talked about karma and the such), so I gave him a few bucks. Twenty minutes later we were about to get in line to buy tickets, and these two guys we’d never seen before saw us, thought it was cool that we younguns were going to see an old blues musician and gave us their two extra tickets for free.
Karma? Luck? Creative engineering? I don’t know, but I’ve saved the money I would have spent in order to give to the homeless.
Hey ** Jello**- I had a very similar experience many moons ago. I was down to my last 10 dollars when a panhandler hit me up. I gave him a buck and lo and behold, as he walked away. I noticed that he had been standing on a hundred dollar bill. I yelled at him to turn around as I figured that we should ,by rights, be splitting it but he just kept walking.