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PurpleButterfly posted:Here's a question for the professionals in this thread: What, if anything, should I give out to homeless folks at intersections through my car window? I am a conscientious person who would really like to be a part of the solution. Nothing. Donate directly to a shelter or a soup kitchen. People flying signs honestly make hundreds of dollars in a few hours, they don't need your money.
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Oct 30, 2017 06:54
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Grandmother of Five posted:Don't suppose you have a source on that? I see claims every so often about beggars, homeless, street musicians, various panhandlers and people collecting cans or bottles just making bank, and I'm inclined to believe that those claims are pretty much all completely false and hurtful, since I rarely see donations actually happen. I'm a case-manager at a homeless shelter. I have at least 2 people with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank, yet they go fly a sign everyday. They refuse help in terms of medical, psychological, housing, etc... they are comfortable where they are. They are getting disability or Social Security checks every month, and ever penny goes into the bank, along with their beggar money. They are probably the exception, but everyone that flies a sign tells me they make a ton of money in a few hours. If you give money to the shelter or local churches we can feed and clothe them, if you give them cash you are just supporting their addictions. I know it isn't the same in every area around the country, but this is what a normal day looks like for the people I work with: They wake up and get coffee, do a small chore, then move to the day shelter. At the day shelter they get breakfast and more coffee. They get to shower and check their mail, charge their phone, etc. They can hang out in the day shelter if they want, or they can go out into the streets. The day shelter servers lunch at noon. At 6 pm the gates to the night shelter open up, and dinner is served from 6-8. There are also 5 churches in town that serve dinner on a rotating basis, and the dinners rock, like Thanksgiving everyday. It is pretty amazing. My shelter hands out feminine hygiene products, health and beauty care, provides showers, clothing, towels... etc. We go through a ton of socks, because even though we offer a laundry service, people just wear them and throw them away when they get dirty. I'm trying to start a clothing exchange program right now, because the absolute waste is horrific. When they get tired of carrying something around they just ditch it and then ask us for new clothes later in the day. We've made some major changes however. I'm a case-manager for employment, and I work with a few teams of people that we have negotiated hiring with the city. We worked with our local parks and rec dept all summer, and this winter we are moving to the city proper and doing miscellaneous chores until it snows, when we will be doing snow removal. We have two teams of people working for the city, and we provide them an on site case manager to facilitate communication and advocacy. It works great, everyone is extremely happy. We've already had 3 people move into their own housing, and we allow them to continue with the program. On March 1st, we will go back to the parks and rec division for 8 months. At one point, almost 9% of our shelter population was involved with this work program, that number has fallen, but we aren't giving up. The dividends are huge. Once people are in the program, they tend to accept outside help more, also. I've gotten people into rehab, counseling, coerced them into seeing the Dr., gotten people glasses, etc... things we could never get them to do before. Most of them are saving their money and cleaning up their credit history as we move to looking at housing them... its been amazing. All I can cite is my personal experience as far as how much people flying a sign bring in. What I do know is your money is far more valuable to a shelter or a church, and the outcomes will be much better if you decide to donate.
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Oct 31, 2017 06:04
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Caufman posted:This is all very fascinating. I admit that I give loose change (I have a lot of pennies and dimes) out to pretty much anyone who asks for money and chat for as long as the light allows. I'll try instead to have a conversation first and ask them if they're doing all right. I suppose a person holding a sign is asking for an undocumentable donation, but someone who tells me to my face that they need the money is literally begging me directly. The main causes of homelessness are mental health issues and addiction. These often go hand in hand, so giving someone soliciting money only feeds their addiction and compounds the problem. There are certainly people that end up homeless due to lack of resources and hard luck, but the majority are there through choice, because they won't accept help or they refuse to contact family members. I can't believe the number of people I work with where their family has no idea where they are or how they are living. A rough estimate from what I have seen is 90% of people won't fly a sign, because they have too much pride. Not every homeless person stands on the corner and begs money, it is actually a very narrow sub-group of people hanging out on corners begging for money. I would love to see a Universal Basic Income for everyone, though I'm not sure that would fix the problem. I love the Utah model, where they essentially housed all homeless people, that is what I think cities should be working towards at this point. The real ideal is universal health insurance with guaranteed free housing... I know that sounds socialistic, but the reality is, we aren't going to solve this problem until we stabilize these people or families in safe environments and work on their underlying issues. This isn't about people being lazy, this is about people not fitting into society.
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Nov 3, 2017 08:46
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Pohl posted:This isn't about people being lazy, this is about people not fitting into society. I have a Sociology degree, so I understand how lovely this sounds. There are in fact, a large number of people that don't want to live in our society. That should be ok, but we can't let them starve or lose their teeth, etc. We really need to find a solution to this beyond everyone works poo poo minimum wage jobs. If anything, these people refuse to do minimum wage work. They know their worth and refuse to be wage slaves.
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Nov 3, 2017 09:02
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Caufman posted:Thank you. This sounds accurate to me, and you draw an important distinction between the non-working and the poor, working wage slaves. I have a million more questions I want to ask, if you please. There is way too much to unpack in your question. I appreciate your interest, but you are asking more thank I can answer. To the best of my ability: -People gently caress up so much their family won't help them anymore, or; they hate their family so much they won't ask them for help. This is the big dilemma, when family isn't available to bail someone out of the trouble they have found themselves in. No one else is going to help them, certainly, so what do we do with them? Do we just feed, clothes and house them until they die? -Schizophrenia and Bipolar are the big ones, though I see a lot of personality disorders. Frankly, mental illness is the primary driver, I'm incredibly surprised that the majority of the people I work with that aren't addicts. I have a few alcoholics, with no real mental health issues outside of their alcoholism, but helping them is difficult. I can get them into treatment but I can't make them stay. Plus, living the shelter life is really difficult, staying sober is almost impossible. I don't care how much someone wants to stay sober, once they have a few weeks of sobriety under their belt, they are left with the fact that they live in a homeless shelter and a beer sure sounds good... The majority of people I work with don't drink or do drugs and they just want somewhere warm to sleep. Fighting addiction... good doctors and the proper medication, I guess. I can attest that AA is a loving useless long term travesty. Homeless people don't get good doctors and the proper medication, however. Edit: to answer all or your questions, we should have a universal health care system. We should also have have a Universal Basic Income. Our social system is hosed, and it is only going to get worse. We should be doing our best to help alcoholics and drug addicts, because they are going to die young useless deaths. It annoys me to death that all of our resources are directed toward children, but I guess the Republicans don't care about kids since they hosed up CHIP. Basically, our government doesn't care about poor people. Seriously, our Gov. does not care about poor people, but homelessness grows more and more everyday. The reasons are varied and complicated, but the reality is, more people are homeless everyday because our society sucks. Pohl fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 07:24
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