I believe the response indicates a belief that if you can’t or won’t do any of these things, then don’t just hand them money to get rid of them or out of a sense of guilt. The majority actually do have substance abuse problems and are cadging money to buy the next round. You’d be harming them, rather than helping them.
I happen to agree with that sentiment, having had an office for over a decade on the bleeding edge of gentrification, near a downtown area. Stick around, you’ll see the same people again and again and again, no worse for wear, manning the same spots, telling the same sad tale, until it gets known, then another fantastical yarn is created. Ohhhh, help me help me my baby done got towed off in my car, I gotta have two hunnert dollars to get my baby back out of impound, she need her formula. Bizarre nonsense such as that, and they’re so blitzed they don’t remember you, so you get to hear it over and over.
The new faces, you get so you can tell. A genuinely down on his or her luck person is sort of, well, reluctant. Sad. Not in your face, not all that eager to recount all the travail that put them there.
Those people, I tried to help. Buy them something to eat, put gas in their car if they had one, give them a lift to someplace dry and warm if they needed it, but money never changed hands.
Well at least you tried to help. That's more than some posters on this thread, who boast about never helping the poor.
I have worked for many years downtown, where I passed some of the same people year after year. I have been to numerous rescue missions (not as a resident, thank the Lord). It does take discernment to determine who could actually use a bit of cash, and those who you could "call their bluff" by offering food. I have seen heart-wrenching cases where I gave everything I could spare and wish I had more.
“A genuinely down on his or her luck person is sort of, well, reluctant.”
My son when he was younger went out with the church for a night of feeding homeless people. They all made sandwiches at the church, put them in a bag with an apple or banana and water and went downtown.
He went up to one old homeless lady to offer her the simple meal. She refused. He sort of pressed on, and she explained “I can’t eat a whole sandwich at once, and nowhere safe to keep the other half, and someone would just steal the other half. So no thank you.”
He did finally get her to take it. Quite the realization for a 14-year old kid to see.