What would you do if a scraggly homeless person knocked on your door, and all he asked was for a sandwich, a bottle of water, a bath, and perhaps a beard trim?
What would you do if a scraggly homeless person knocked on your door, and all he asked was for a sandwich, a bottle of water, a bath, and perhaps a beard trim?
I've actually skipped work just to help a homeless guy get his beard trimmed. Bought him pizza too. Kinda hard to get anywhere in life when you look like shit.
Be kind to the homeless, they just need a helping hand here and there.
What would you do?
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My experience with homeless people on my porch has usually been them stealing from it or shitting on it. So I'd be rather shocked if they just asked for something normal.
I wouldn't oblige the bath, but I could help them with some food and water.
There is a difference between a homeless person and a thief. It's a bad stereotype to consider all homeless people as thieves.
In my experiences in life, thieves almost always have a home. I mean, where is a homeless person gonna store your television?
They're not the same.
They steal our patio furniture, and then I see it in the camps down the road. We've had to start locking it up with chains. In this case they are both homeless and thieves.
Sadly, sometimes they can be thieves, but that doesn't seem to be the usual case when I've met homeless people.
Then again, maybe it's because my instincts tell me who to avoid from a quarter mile away. You know, like that dude behind the Burger King dumpster with a face full of tattoos.. Yeah, probably best to avoid...
It's true that not everyone fits stereotypes, but be realistic. The vast majority of homeless people are drug addicts, alcoholics, or both. Addicts with no legal source of income are going to steal.
I don't hate homeless people at all, and I legitimately have sympathy for someone who fell on hard times and is trying to get their life together; I do hate addicts who are willing to take advantage of hard-working people. The venn diagram between homeless and addicts is very close to being a circle.
Yeah, it bothers me when young, naive people on the internet don't get this. Homelessness is often a lot more than just not having enough money. Often (but not always), it involves deep psychological issues. One of the reasons why the homeless issue is difficult to solve is because you can't just throw money at them or even just give them a house and expect for everything to be fixed. They need psychological help, and often help with addiction, in addition to the money. I feel for these people, but it is absolutely not the simple issue people like to make it out to be.
Personally, I don't even answer the door for strangers unless I'm expecting someone.
Want a little plot twist? Everyone is addicted to something or another. Why is caffeine legal, but cocaine illegal? People piss money away at Starbucks while dissing the homeless.
There are very good reasons why some addictive substances are legal and others are not.
First of all, those under the influence of nicotine or caffeine can function perfectly normal. Those under the influence of many other drugs can not.
Second, the health impact are generally less severe. We've generally changed our opinion of the health impact of nicotine being negligible, but caffeine and alcohol can still be enjoyed in moderate amounts without too much of an impact on your health.
Third, cafeine and alcohol are socially acceptable in most cases. Many otger drugs are less socially acceptable. Nicotine is a nice example how the social status of a drug can change over time
Elon Musk does ketamine, so please do tell me more about the association between homelessness and drug usage...
Elon Musk can afford a ketamine addiction. Most people can not.
Elon Musk can also afford to feed an army of homeless people, but he doesn't.
Yes and the US government's annual army budget could feed every homeless person on the planet. And the combined gold reserve of all Swiss banks could shelter the homeless for life.
I could probably come up with a dozen more valid but pointless comparisons, but there's literally no point.
There's a slight but significant difference between being addicted to Starbucks and crack.
There's also the fact that instead of buying a $20 cup of coffee, you can get a $2 or so cup of coffee at most any old random gas station, and still have money left to buy 2 or 3 burgers to feed a couple homeless people instead.
I don't want to buy 2 or 3 burgers to feed homeless people. I mentioned this in another comment, but the group of people who are homeless and the group of people who are addicted to meth, heroin, whatever are largely the same group, maybe with a few outliers. Why the hell would I want to buy lunch for someone who's going to go out and rob or harass someone for $20 so they can go buy a bag of their drug of choice?
People like myself (and others in this comment section) don't hate the homeless. We hate drug addicts who shit all over society (sometimes literally) in order to get their next fix.
Here's an experiment you can try: The next time you see a homeless person begging for money so they can buy some food, refuse to give them money and offer to buy them food instead. They're probably going to call you a piece of shit and if you're lucky, they might leave you alone after that, but probably not.
People need to have sympathy for the homeless, but not for addicts. We should have social programs to house the homeless, as long as they can pass a drug test. Food banks, work-placement programs, they should all exist and be taxpayer funded, as long as those using them can pass a drug test.
I've already done exactly this with an ex girlfriend. Wonder why she's an ex..