Posted on 12/23/2017 2:19:33 PM PST by nickcarraway
Who are you to judge what they do with that cash?
Don’t just buy them a sandwich from Pret. They’re not four. They have the right to spend their money as they choose – and it is their money, once given. Don’t just give to people performing, singing, or accompanied by a cute dog. Buskers deserve a wage too, of course. But homeless people are not your dancing monkey and they shouldn’t have to perform to earn your pity.
Don’t second-guess whether people are “really” homeless. Those who think begging is a shortcut to easy money should try humiliating themselves daily in front of thousands of total strangers who won’t even look at them or acknowledge their existence. It is gruelling, soul-destroying work. If people are desperate enough to beg, they need it.
Don’t just give to people who ask you directly, but to the guy with his head in his hands and a Styrofoam cup on the ground in front of him. Give to the woman who’s blind drunk. Give to the guy with meth-rotted teeth. Give to the spice addict who can’t look you in the eye.
Many street beggars are addicts, yes. Do addicts not deserve food? Wouldn’t you want to drink if you were in their position? Don’t you get drunk every weekend to cope with work stress anyway? Who are you to tell them what to do with their bodies?
As the founder of User Voice, a charity led and staffed by former homeless addicts, says: “If your money funds the final hit, accept that the person would rather be dead. If your act of kindness makes him wake up the next morning and decide to change his life, that’s nice but not your business either.”
Of course, it is true that your drinking habit and theirs are fundamentally different. Addiction is rooted in material circumstance – alcohol is the obvious example, but think how many skiing accidents end in courses of opiates far stronger than anything you’d find on the street without any long-term compulsion developing. It can only be tackled by raising people out of poverty, and a brute-force severing of cash flow is not going to starve people into seeking help from authorities they know will not, or cannot, help them.
Yet this abject morality, which says we must push people to rock bottom before we are able to help them, is seized on by austerity governments always greedy to do less. In fact, studies show begging emerges in the “middle-late stages” of homelessness, once people have already exhausted other options. The rock bottom has already been reached.
Eighty per cent of homeless people in the UK experienced no support or advice the last time they were moved on by police or council workers. When the government claims that most people begging on the street are refusing better help, what they mean is the help on offer is not adequate.
Homeless people need free, state-provided housing and fully-funded psychological care. What they get is £538m annual cuts to mental health services and austerity measures driving them into arrears with private landlords and on to the street.
The average life expectancy of a homeless man in London is 47. For women, it is 43. This is lower than the general life expectancy of any nation on the planet. These lives will be improved by systemic, not loose, change.
In the absence of an adequate government response, charitable giving and hostels remain lifesavers to many thousands of people. But big homelessness charities are already receiving millions yearly, while those deemed impossible to help die outside. When I speak to rough sleepers, it is local communities, squatters and grassroots organisations like the London-wide Streets Kitchen which they credit with keeping them alive.
“There is no need to beg on the streets in 2017,” leading London homelessness charity Thames Reach claims. “Hostel rent is covered through Housing Benefit [and] it is an urban myth that if you have no address, you cannot claim benefits.”
The charity, which is primarily funded by the government, makes no mention of the many gatekeeping barriers vulnerable people must cross to secure benefits and a stable hostel place.
Most damningly, they do not mention the fact that the foreign nationals who make up over half of London’s rough-sleeping population cannot claim benefits to access the hostel network at all. Rather, Thames Reach and other top charities shop homeless foreigners to the Home Office to be deported.
It is those same government-funded charities that push the narrative that “kindness kills” as they tout for your donations. Do not believe them. Apathy and austerity kill. Your kindness saves lives.
That may have applied in dickins’ time, but the US today is not that place. Too many scams. My simple rule is to never donate to an individual who’s story I don’t know. My wife and I have both had experiences trying to REALLY help beggars in Seattle that ended up exposing them as total scams.
The bible has two simple rules if you are able bodied.
1. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.
2. True and good religion is to help widows and orphans.
Most of the beggars I’ve seen are neither.
No. I don’t.
FReepers ARE the best.
God bless all of you and yours and Merry Christmas!
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>> “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” <<
And I do not suspect that they come as the Red Cross, nor the Salvation Army!
Yeshua told us to feed his sheep, not his shepherd!
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>> “Try living in my neighborhood.” <<
No!, thanks.
The boozers and druggies I can discern, without difficulty.
There are lots of “christian” orgs that operate to puff themselves up.
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That’s why I give them money
I can’t fix them and I’m no saint
My charity
Their decision what to do with it
One New Year’s Eve I stopped and bought a case of cheap whiskey and just passed it out
In New Orleans
They loved me...king for 60 seconds
Can’t fix the world but you can ease the pain
“One New Year’s Eve I stopped and bought a case of cheap whiskey and just passed it out. In New Orleans. They loved me...king for 60 seconds”
Hilarious.
Wardaddy that was one of the best things I’ve ever read on here,
especially the last part. Imho, that’s how these liberals get so far off track. They think they can fix the world if they just apply enough socialism, communism, etc. No, there’s no fixing this broken world but you can help ease the pain. That statement is so simple, yet truthful & powerful. I hope to apply that in my own life.
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