Tried to Hire a Homeless Man Today

Originally posted by austingoeshard
reply to post by onehuman

 

...I know a girl that gave a homeless man some McDonald's coffee and hashbrowns and he threw the coffee on the girl and said, "I WANT MONEY B*TCH" ...

This happened to me in California, except he looked at the food and said, "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

My stepmother is in mental health, and she told me once that most (I can't remember her exact percentage, but I believe it was over 80%) homeless people are either addicts or mentally ill.

She also said, "if you want to help them, DO NOT HAND THEM MONEY. It keeps them on drugs and/or on the streets, not getting help, for one more day."

So when you hand money to those guys... you're either funding a scam or enabling someone to avoid help they desperately need.

IDK what to say other than has anyone else seen "Hobo With a Shotgun?" jk There lots of people in my town that are like that it is very unfortunate and is a big problem everywhere. It should be a problem addressed locally but it keeps getting pushed aside.

Seems like most of you people think only the ones asking for money with signs and stuff are homeless people.. Maybe this thread needs a different perspective...

reply to post by vasaga


I can understand being lazy, everyone is once in a while, but that is just disgusting

America FTW

Theres people who wants a handout and there are people who want a hand up. That guy the OP was talking about is just a lazy LAZY person and wants the handout. Ive offered the same before. We had a young lad, looked in decent shape always looking for handouts of spare change outside a coffee shop down from where i work. I offered him good money, 15 dollars an hour to come and work part time helping us in the yard and keeping the yard tidy. If he did a good job it could have easily turned into a full time job (It did for someone else a few months later and hes still here now making $19 an hour)..he wasnt even remotely interested and then proceeded to ask me for spare change...

Can't say in public what i told him, but he got the message.

Originally posted by kimar
As somebody who used to live in a homeless shelter in a downtown of a major city I can say first hand that the experiences that most of these people go through are absolutely horrendous. It is so easy to judge and make quick conclusions, but without actually knowing the circumstances and experiences of the individual these quick judgements are extremely harmful and makes the societal problems worse. If somebody was forced to inject drugs at the age of 7 by their parents or was repeatedly raped and beaten day in and out as a young child, ya I totally understand that they are unable to function "normally" without serious love and support, which most of the time is elusive because we are more concerned with giving the wealthiest of the wealthy and the biggest of the big mega-corporations massive tax breaks.

Poverty is the biggest threat to humanity. It harms more people than any terrorist or imperial power could dream of. It exists in every country, in every community and is quite often invisible and silent.

We need to start lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down.

EDIT: The circumstances described above are extreme, yes, but sadly exist much much much more often than you could possibly imagine. Abuse, neglect, and even just the lack of real love, especially in childhood all lead to major mental health issues. And we can't start to address poverty until we actually and seriously address mental health issues.

edit on 9-4-2011 by kimar because: added more

This is absolutely QFT!

The thing is that mental health problems are so pervasive, and by the time some people realise they have a problem it really is too late to help them. In my experience it's always good to help the homeless, say for example if you've got a regular homeless person in your area try and befriend them and give them enough booze/money/drugs and they will look out for you maybe even help you in a fight or sell you some cool stuff/ information.

I bet if you didn't only offer him one measly hour of work it might have been different, internally he probably felt, what I have pride too, do you think I'm a ten year old and will get all excited over twenty bucks?

There was an article several years ago about a bum in San Francisco and needless to say he lives in a nicer home than you do. One kid a couple years back stood on a corner for a weekend for a paper and made 2300 and donated it to charity.

Unfortunately I've had bad experiences with homeless people too.
In high school, I was in a "leadership group" that tried to enact a little social change in our community.
One day we spent the whole day preparing bagged lunches, about 200 of them, and piled into a van and drove around downtown Toronto, areas with major concentrations of homeless.

Most were gracious about it and took the food politely and thankfully. Others pestered us for multiple bags of food, but we had to decline, saying we had to distribute them to many other people, one man in particular got extremely belligerent when we denied him a second bag.

Some, though, yelled at us for money instead - in one case, one man even pulled out a knife and approached a friend of mine, who quickly dropped the food and ran back to the van. We decided to call it a night after that incident, even though we had about 40 lunches yet to deliver.

Really, it's about differentiating those who want to be helped from those who don't - and this usually means figuring out who is poor and starving and who is simply a wandering junkie who's more interested in money for drugs than food to feed himself.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by onehuman

 

Not to say that the systems perfect... but it puts the deadbeats and the creeps under suppervision where they belong.

Really? Most of the deadbeats and creeps I know work for your precious "system". It gives degenerates who can't survive otherwise a means to make money by pushing paper and imposing themselves into others lives.

Originally posted by austingoeshard
reply to post by onehuman

 

yea man homeless people are generally insane assholes.

I know a girl that gave a homeless man some McDonald's coffee and hashbrowns and he threw the coffee on the girl and said, "I WANT MONEY B*TCH"

she was like seven too

No offense, and my apologies to both ATS and the OP of this thread (you'll rarely see me act off-topic like this ) but my intuition tells me that your story is not 100% accurate...I think its the 7 year old part.

Originally posted by lcbjr1979
I guess it gives new meaning to the phrase beggers cant be choosers. On a side note, where you ever concerned that had this person accepted and helpped you at your house, that possibly he would come back and rob you since he would know where you live. I am not trying to or intending to sterotype homeless people as criminals, its just that usually homeless people have lost hope and will do whatever they can to get money. This does not apply to your homeless man of course because he makes more than me.

This is just yet another problem we're facing in today's society.

My college educated friends who are desperately searching for work after graduating, cannot even get starbucks to call them back. What ever happened to the idea of hardwork paying off, even eventually??!

Its truly disheartening when people are regretting their education (and student loans), see no hope in this economy, and we have jerks who stand on the corner and rake in dough tax free, then walk around the corner, buy a bottle and a pack of smokes and DRIVE home.

My best friend's parents used to hire people down on their luck to do work around their home. They would even go as far as to invite them in for a home cooked meal, and send them off with plenty of $$ to get by. Then one day one of the men who had worked at their home several times, came late at night, broke in, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the wife to death and robbed the home while the husband was out of town.

This is why now I feel no sympathy when I see the cops politely showing any vagrants to the city limits

reply to post by vasaga


This is absolutely criminal
blogs.suntimes.com...

Shut down skid row. Shutdown big corporate lobbying on K street

Originally posted by LilDudeissocool
reply to post by vasaga

 

This is absolutely criminal
blogs.suntimes.com...

Shut down skid row. Shutdown big corporate lobbying on K street

That could be a thread in itself. We sort of knew it worked like this, but when you see the numbers it makes the blood boil.

In the old Batman movies it was some evil-incarnate devil worshiper that we had to look out for. In real life that guy isn't hiding in some cave, he is at the helm of all of the major corps and no-one is fighting him/her.

We've been suckered into thinking it is just a comic book scenario when in fact it is the reality around us. If they were dealt with effectively, there would be a lot fewer homeless and unemployed.

I work with homeless people and what the general public seem to forget is that there are an aweful lot of homeless out there suffering from mental illness. Their problems are sometimes so deep rooted, even the authorities have trouble monitoring the situation.
Don't be so harsh. Some people may not have had a nice upbringing. It's easy to say 'get over it!' talk is cheap and it can be easy to offend people, when they have nothing to fight back with.

Be nice and to the fella who wants his leaves swept up, buy a garden vacum! Just maybe the homeless fella didn't have the stamina to actually do anything physical or meaningful.

The word for this thread is Apathy. I am willing to bet raking leaves isn't the first time they have turned down legitimate work. There is a long chain of turning down work and general apathy on the path to being homeless and begging for money on the street. They like not having a job, not answering to anyone, and being able to drink as much booze as they want (ex. turning down food).

We had a guy last year who for weeks was hanging out at different gas stations and WaWa's in our neighborhood telling people a story that his car ran out of gas and he needed some money. He tried it on my husband more than once and I kept seeing the guy walking up and down the main street for weeks wearing the same suit.

Besides trying the same trick on the same people more than once there were a few other things that made him stand out and get caught: He wore a suit and looked clean cut but spoke the most horrible "jive talk/ebonics" ever. He was also the only black man in a neighborhood of middle/upper middle class white people, lol.

Anyway, back to your story. I'm curious as to how long it actually took you to rake and bag all the leaves. If it took you more than an hour than I think $20.00 is crap, lol.

Here's a good one for you all. Some years ago when I was in the military, I went for a dinner one night with a lady friend. On the way home we past a few older looking teens near a bus shelter. I did a double take when I noticed one particular girl and walked up to her. She seemed a little pitiful and asked if I had some change so she could it that night. I replied "Mary, what are you doing here?" Dumbfounded she hadn't recognized me out of my military uniform. She was my Petty Officer's daughter, who I'd spoken to not 4 hours earlier in her kitchen where she was having dinner. I strongly suggested that she accompany me back to her house where I asked her to tell her father where I found her and what she was doing.

Needless to say he was not a happy PO.....and he truely was po'ed.

PS: My date did not suffer because of this incident. She chuckled at the stupidity of the young girl and we carried on with our nights activities.

I wouldn't stress it too much on giving a couple bucks, or a burger to a homeless man.
Even if he does buy it on booze what have you lost, a couple dollars? Big deal, at least you had enough compassion and love in your heart to care about the poor fella, weather his intentions were good or bad.

I've been homeless on more then one occasion...

Yes, there are those people out there that will be ungrateful no matter what you do to them to help, because the sad reality of it is some of those people are so used to that life-style and developed a sort of comfort zone with the situation. However, there are many homeless people out there that are truly down on their luck, and do need some help getting back on their feet. I was one of those people, and have been fortunate enough to meet alot of caring people that went completely out of their way to get me on my feet and help me get the rest of my education and a job. Though it wasn't my fault I had a Alcoholic father who kicked me out the first chance he could get when I was 18, that's the main reason why I was homeless.

But I say to you, don't feel sorry or upset at yourself for trying to lend a helping hand to your fellow man, even if he rejects you. God knows what was in your heart when you gave that man your lunch because he looked like he needed it more than you. So what's worth more to you? A couple dollars or that warm fuzzy feeling you get way down deep inside that assures yourself that you do care. What's worth more to you?

Originally posted by Cocasinpry

Perhaps if you had a better healthcare system these people could get the physical/mental health that they need, perhaps if you country was a little more generous they could actually get some kind of free education or job training but the fact is that most people don't care at all.

When I quoted my stepmother earlier, I was quoting someone who has worked with the indigent mentally ill in Texas for YEARS. Every single county has mental health assistance that is FREE if you can't afford it, and sliding-scale if you can (pay what you can afford). As an aside, she was getting paid a pittance for it, and didn't even have health insurance herself.

Also, education in America IS free. I know this because that's how I obtained a college degree.

There are NO EXCUSES in America, Chuck.