Years ago in Sydney, I passed a homeless guy begging outside McDonalds. I too was always of the opinion that it's better not to give money to homeless people (who might just spend it on alcohol or drugs [1]), but instead get them the thing they need. As he was outside McDonalds, I asked if he wanted me to get him something. He gladly accepted, as he'd apparently been banned from going inside after they picked up on his routine of buying one coffee in the morning and staying there all day having the free refills. (To be fair, I get both sides of that argument). I came back out and handed over his meal expecting that to be it, but as he was thanking me, he said I was the first person who'd stopped to speak to him for months (presumably apart from people telling him he had to leave) and to me it seemed such a shame that while people were willing to throw a few dollars in his hat, not a single person had stopped to ask how he was. It certainly made me realise how lonely and isolating that life could be, which I'd never previously considered.
[1] FWIW, I now think that's a gross over-simplification - getting drunk might be the best way to keep warm / not feel cold etc., and they might actually need money for things other than food, but the younger me hadn't thought about any of those things either.
The sad reality of city life is that there are so many people constantly in your vicinity that it's impossible to have true human connections with people.
However, even more sad is the reality that people learn to turtle up and keep their heads down out of necessity. Frankly, it's dangerous to engage with strange people who are desperate. More commonly, you'll just get taken advantage of.
I've been in a situation many times where I'll help a person out who says they need money for gas or food or a bus ticket, only to watch them take my money and stay in the same spot for over an hour asking even more people the same thing.
Or worse, you'll offer them the food directly, as you did, and they'll give you a nasty insult and refuse the food. They'll say anything to get that money, it's often a matter of survival. But kind people become hardened and the cycle continues.
I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems like income inequality is to blame and no amount of kindness will actually solve what is going on more broadly in society. But we should all try to stay kind and human.
Yeah, I've definitely had my share of bad people. Generally, the people who approach you to ask for money are usually the ones who are probably scamming / career beggars. One example, I got the same story about needing to make around five quid to get a train home to the next town. I only had about two or 3 quid in loose change, so I took out everything in my pocket to give him. He fished out the big denomination coins and left me holding all the 1p, 2p and 5p coins. Just in 5ps, there was probably 60p there, so clearly he wasn't as desperate for every penny as he claimed, but I was just too shocked by that to even say anything.
A week later, I saw him in a similar spot, this time raising money the get "home" to a different nearby town, and tried approaching me. He obviously didn't recognise me, but also didn't seem at all phased by my somewhat loud "you've got to be expletive kidding me if you think I'm giving you anything else", so he was obviously used to people wising up to him.
There's one guy who's often outside the supermarket I use, I know he must be pretty desperate as he's still there when it's raining really hard, although he obviously doesn't live/sleep in the area. I started just offering him a pack of biscuits or something when I left (I'd buy more because I saw him as I went in), and then started just grabbing a meal deal for him anyway if I saw him there when I went in. After a while, I started asking him as I went in if he was hungry and what he'd like rather than just getting him something random.
I also find that spending money on something of your choice makes you feel a bit more like a decent human than being charitably gifted something of your choice, even if you were gifted the money.
I think in some cases, people are making the wrong presumption here.
"Scruffy looking" person can be a homeless person, or a drug addict. And people in these businesses are employees typically, not owners.
While many (most?) homeless people may be very tidy, and cause no issues, there is also a subset of homeless people which are mentally unstable.
So how do you tell "good homeless" from "worrisome homeless" and lastly from "drug addict"?
And if you are forced to make this choice many times per day, and get it wrong, you have customers coming to you and saying "My kid was in your bathroom and it had human shit on the wall and vomit all over the toilet!", how do you deal with that review on Yelp?
Trying to claim that without any reason, just randomly, businesses started to become wary is not fair.
From personal experience decades ago, I was on welfare. As I appeared somewhat respectable, I was given a discount on the largest room, as long as I kept the landlord notified of issues, vacuumed once a week, and mopped the shared bathrooms daily.
The bathrooms were simple, clean, and each tenant used their own toilet paper.
One day I entered a bathroom to find shit speared all over the walls. Literally, at least 60 or 70 smears of shit. Apparently one of the tenants had a friend over, he ran out of tp, and so his friend used the wall.
I basically had to mop the walls, took hours to get it all off.
I assure you that any such incident will make most people extremely wary of allowing anyone that appears questionable, in to use a bathroom.
It's not "keep the homeless out" but "keep the scruffy looking person out" along with fear of having to clean that up again, dear god no please!, and oh no I'm going to get a bad yelp review.
(US here) I've been making and giving out care packages to the homeless in my area for years. I've learned a ton of things along the lines of what the article talks about.
When I'm looking for a person to give a package to, I try to spot the ones that look like they're in the roughest shape. If they want to, I'll spend time just shooting the breeze with them.
While they're certainly appreciative of the gift, I have very frequently heard two things from them: the main thing is that they really appreciate someone treating them like a human being rather than ignoring them or treating them like garbage. And they also really appreciate someone just having a chat with them.
I think lots of people tend to objectify the homeless, to think of them as somehow less than, or fundamentally different from, "decent society". The truth is that they're not. Any of us is just a disaster or two away from joining their ranks.
EDIT: I just wanted to add one anecdote (of several) to highlight my point. One day when I was making my rounds, I spotted a man who didn't look particularly homeless in appearance. He had clean clothes in good repair, reasonably well-groomed, etc. But over the years I seem to have developed a kind of "sixth sense" and asked him if he was homeless.
He told me that he'd been on the street for about a week. A few months earlier, he had an excellent professional job, plenty of money in the bank, owned a house, and generally had everything that people strive for. Then he suffered through a bitter divorce that ended up with him stripped of everything, leaving him broke and homeless. There was nothing obviously wrong with him -- he didn't seem to have a serious drug problem or crippling mental/emotional issues. He could have been any of us.
(I gave him a care package and some advice: to make it his priority to get off the street as quickly as possible. If he stays homeless for more than a couple of weeks, he's likely to remain there for years, maybe forever. My care packages include a list of where to get help and resources of various sorts, so I pointed out one that is particularly suited to his situation and strongly encouraged him to go to them. I hope that he did. I never saw him again, so I think he may have.)
'I think lots of people tend to objectify the homeless, to think of them as somehow less than, or fundamentally different from, "decent society".'
In some cases people avoid the homeless for safety reasons. I've seen a few get violent over small or nonexistent issues. Obviously that's not everyone. But it can be enough for people to avoid interacting and potentially upsetting someone who might be unstable.
How did the divorce make him homeless? I'm not doubting it, but just wondering the mechanism. I know one person that ended up homeless eventually semi related to divorce. They had large child support payments, had an accident and went into a coma, lost their job and the support payments drained their account while in the coma (nobody petitioned the court for an adjustment due to his coma), and the court issued a warrant over the unpaid support. Then they couldn't find a good job due to the unpaid support and warrant.
> In some cases people avoid the homeless for safety reasons
I know, and I understand this. The homeless population does have a substantial number of people who are mentally or emotionally broken. The fear is understandable, but a bit of a shame because in the years I've been interacting with these people, I've seen several people who were very agitated but I've never personally been seriously threatened or endangered. But I do carry pepper spray with me, just in case.
> How did the divorce make him homeless? I'm not doubting it, but just wondering the mechanism.
As I understand it, through a combination of legal fees and that he became unable to function during the process, leading him to losing his job.
You're right to doubt it. Everyone tells their stories with a spin that puts them in the most favorable light possible, and his story doesn't add up in several ways (but that could be because he was giving an emotional retelling of highlights, not testimony).
In my opinion, when someone tells me their story, it doesn't actually matter if it's true or not, and I don't even try to make such an assessment. I'm not their judge and jury, and I'm not trying to assess how great of a person they are. I'm just there to listen, and that's all I do.
I can't tell his story, but I can tell mine. I had experienced a divorce that left me destitute as well. The difference with me is that I had friends who carried me until I could get back on my feet.
In my case, unknown to me, my (now ex) wife had incurred an eye-watering amount of debt. When we divorced, I discovered that she had drained all of our savings on top of the debt. By the time I'd figured everything out, it was all gone. I was left with less to my name than I had when I moved out of my parent's house as a youth.
I could have prevented that, though. I had personal savings that she didn't have access to. But as she kept putting our shared account into the negative, I just kept making it good again, and paying the fees, out of my personal savings. I did that for a long time. When we finally split and all the accounts were put on the table, I had enough money to pay off the accumulated debt, but no more than that.
Denial is a real thing, and it's what did me in on this count.
How much is that based on feedback from the recipients, and how much is it based on expert opinions? (Social workers, homeless agencies, whatever.)
Is your local homeless population small enough, or stable and well-connected enough, that you've acquired a minor local reputation as "Care Package guy"?
When I started, I selected items for my packages based on professional advice. Over the years, I've listened to feedback from the people getting them and have refined them a lot. Because I don't hand out thousands of them, I can make them a bit more generous than most. Each package currently costs me about $7.
I have two flavors, one for winter and one for summer. I don't have a complete inventory list with me right now, but from memory: socks (1 pair in summer, 2 in winter: socks are perhaps the most difficult clothing item for homeless people to find), a small first aid kit, sun screen, ibuprofen, hand warmers, mylar blanket, toothpaste & toothbrush, a menstrual pad (amazingly useful even if you don't menstruate), a snack that can be eaten with bad or no teeth, a P-51 can opener, a personal letter from me and a sheet listing local resources (including places to get free meals: if someone uses them all, they can eat a solid meal six days out of the week), that sort of thing.
My goal is that the package provides, basically, emergency urban survival items that will last for 2-3 days.
I think the best things to include vary from place to place, so if you are thinking of doing this yourself, my advice is to talk to homeless service providers in your area to get an initial list, then refine over time.
There is a very large homeless population in my area, and about 2/3rds of them are "regulars". I have a pretty fixed territory and the people in my area know who I am enough that I'm no longer really considered an "outsider" anymore. In fact, I often have regulars point me toward people who are in particular need or who are newly homeless.
The care packages are only part of it, though. Another big part is just letting people know that someone out there sees and values them as people, and another big part is just general wellness checks. If someone is having a crisis, others will tell me when they won't tell those they consider outsiders, then I can call in a local agency that will come out to give them a level of assistance I'm not able to. This has happened a dozen or so times now.
Replying to my comment to add a complete list of what's in the summer packs I'm handing out now. I also wanted to mention that I buy the items for these in bulk to keep costs down, and that the letter I include has ideas and instructions for how to get the most use out of the kit, such as using the mylar blanket+ziplock bag as a makeshift solar water heater.
Also, I select items with an eye toward covering things that aren't readily available from other services.
- A few strips of duck tape, with peel-off backing. Those might be used for repairing shoes / clothing / makeshift shelters, improvising pressure braces for weak joints, and securing the mylar blanket or other possessions in windy conditions.
- Several sheets of "quality" tear-off paper towel. Cheap, and they're fairly good as ersatz washcloths and sponges
I love the tape idea! And including some paper towels seems like a no-brainer. One of the uses I suggest for the sanitary pads is as sponges. That is, after all, what they are. Just super-absorbant sterile ones.
I used to include a comb, but stopped because they're easy to get from other places, they sometimes damaged other things in the bag, and they were often discarded. I also used to include nail clippers, but couldn't find inexpensive ones that weren't really crappy, so I didn't think they carried their weight in terms of cost/benefit.
I've been trying to find a way to include decent gloves (meaning ones that would be better than wearing one of the pairs of socks on your hands) in the winter kits for years, but I can't find any that fit into the budget. However, last year I teamed up with a sewing hobbyist who makes very warm and cozy hats. I couldn't put one in the packages, but carried a few with me and would give them separately on a more selective basis. Maybe we can expand that to gloves as well.
I've learned both from professionals, and just talking to folks on the street, that the undergarments, unmentionables, and similar are always overlooked: socks, socks, socks, underwear, underwear, underwear, menstrual products x 10.
Yes. Undergarments are tough because they are omitted from free clothing bins and second-hand clothing outlets for hygiene reasons. It's easier to get a pair of shoes than a pair of socks.
I love the duck idea conceptually, but worry a bit about them ending up as litter[1]. I recently purchased a couple thousand compressed (just add water) washcloths that are about that price and the size of a large candy. I think I'll start including a couple of those.
Thanks!
[1] Speaking of litter, there are a couple of small streams in my part of town, and when I started giving these out, I also started finding mylar blankets in the streams. Fishing them out is no fun. Mylar blankets are particularly bad for the wildlife.
I mentioned this in my letter in further packages, and that if I keep finding mylar blankets improperly disposed of, I'll have to stop including them. Within a week, I stopped seeing them. I think word spread and the community became self-policing about it. That was pretty wonderful to see.
Thanks for the kind sentiment. I do this because I feel I owe a debt to my community. I have been blessed with success in my life, and that wouldn't have been possible without the direct and indirect support of my neighbors. This is one of the ways that I'm sharing the fruits of that.
It started when outside of my workplace one winter, a man was leaning against a street sign. After him literally not moving for a couple of hours, we checked and he had died of hypothermia sometime in the night. I started giving out winter packages with just the blanket, hot hands, and a first aid kit and it ballooned from there.
I can't do much about the huge issues we face as a society, but I can do this much.
"Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it because you can't know. You can't ever really know the meaning of your life. And you don't need to." -- Ghandi
I suggest another consideration: where the homeless live? In all countries we have poor and rich areas, but curiously homeless are mostly concentrated in large cities, while many are anyway poor outside they tent to have at least something resembling a home, maybe an ancient barrack or a camping van but still something. They still being able to find some occasional or regular low wage jobs still better then nothing.
The barista doesn’t want homeless people in the toilet because inevitably crack paraphernalia goes in there too.
Better to have shit on the street than crack paraphernalia in your business toilet.
As a data point, yesterday I was walking watching two guys smoking crack outside Costa in Covent Garden, London.
Alas it works to the lowest common denominator. A better solution would be government investment in mental health and housing but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”
Have a friend who's a barista. Had a dispute at work where they wanted her to clean the blood all over the bathroom after someone had bled all over the place (she didn't think that should fall under her job description)
Of course, but even with help there are folks who are just way too confrontational and difficult to deal with. So they get kicked out of shelters and even healthcare professionals hesitate to deal with them.
'but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”'
I think this is an oversimplification and misrepresentation. I certainly see it in some additudes (my wife's opinion of aome of our neighbors, unfortunately), but there are some others. I more often see the additudes that come from responsibility. Like you mentioned about not giving money but food instead. Most government housing comes with some sort of requirements currently. I think many people just want assurances that the money is helping people and that they aren't being taken advantage of.
I've lived in cities with decent homeless populations (Austin, New York) for almost my entire life. I read about this phenomenon of homeless people defecating on the streets all the time. I've literally never seen this in real life. Neither the act itself, nor human waste on the ground. Am I just very lucky? What gives?
New school homeless on fentanyl sometimes leave drug paraphernalia. Hence, businesses won't let randos in their toilets. And, therefore, more shitting on the sidewalk.
[1] FWIW, I now think that's a gross over-simplification - getting drunk might be the best way to keep warm / not feel cold etc., and they might actually need money for things other than food, but the younger me hadn't thought about any of those things either.