+- MacResource (https://forums.macresource.com)
+-- Forum: My Category (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Tips and Deals (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Thread: Homeless folks don't always want help (/showthread.php?tid=113945)
Pages:
1
2
Homeless folks don't always want help - kap - 03-18-2011
About 10 years ago, Wife and I were passing through a neighborhood in Beverly Hill, CA. We stopped by to give a homeless drunken lady a $5 bill. She gave us a disgusting look then waved us off. We just drove on thinking, "This is Beverly Hill. That amount is an insult." Another time in another place, West Hollywood, a homeless guy asked for spare change. I wasn't feeling too great, "Sorry, man. I just got laid off." He started laughing and said, "Go get a job!". I had to laugh.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - mikebw - 03-18-2011
Pretty sure I have more debt than a truly homeless person, I should be asking them for money!
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - OWC Jamie - 03-18-2011
$5 probably isn't enough for a half way decent happy ending.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - Blankity Blank - 03-18-2011
I don't get it. Why even post this on this side? Just as well post a thread called 'Some women want to get raped' or 'Child pornographers have First Amendment rights too" if you want volatile.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - kap - 03-18-2011
Blankity Blank wrote:
I don't get it. Why even post this on this side? Just as well post a thread called 'Some women want to get raped' or 'Child pornographers have First Amendment rights too" if you want volatile.
Volatile?!! I neither want nor need nor expect. It's solely a simple statement. Not conclusive by any means. Why read so much into it? 8-)
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - Jimmypoo - 03-18-2011
I like to throw chicken bones at homeless dudes with signs for food.
Of course, that often means I have to first turn around and go find a Popeyes...
but it is usually worth it. Leg bones fly well when turning a corner.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - hal - 03-18-2011
kap wrote:
About 10 years ago, Wife and I were passing through a neighborhood in Beverly Hill, CA. We stopped by to give a homeless drunken lady a $5 bill. She gave us a disgusting look then waved us off. We just drove on thinking, "This is Beverly Hill. That amount is an insult." Another time in another place, West Hollywood, a homeless guy asked for spare change. I wasn't feeling too great, "Sorry, man. I just got laid off." He started laughing and said, "Go get a job!". I had to laugh.
She probably wasn't homeless - just drunk and a mess and had no idea why you were offering money.... homeless drunks do not refuse $5 bills EVER.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - lazydays - 03-18-2011
I do not support the people on the side of the road with "please help" signs but I am an avid supporter of our local homeless mission. Homeless people and families do have a place to go if they are willing to live by the rules of the mission. Unfortunately many of them are not able to give up their vises or have mental illness that complicates things. Those people turn away from available assistance and I'm not sure how they can be helped.
A few years ago our local paper ran a story on our local homeless and featured a woman living under a railroad bridge, painting a very sorry picture of her life. Her family wrote in to the paper explaining that assistance had been offered to her many times but she had always refused it due to mental illness that she suffers from.
The topic of how to help the homeless doesn't need to be on the political side as it can be discussed with compassion, even if that means tough love, right here.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - rjmacs - 03-18-2011
If you're interested in a fantastic account of how some homeless people live, take a look at the book Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg. Don't be put off by the title - the ethnographic account is not dismissive or judgmental toward the homeless people they lived with, off and on, for several years.
The book showed me how these people are subject to all the cultural and social realities as the rest of us (people who are doing OK), but are really marginalized by even well-meaning structures. They're people just like me - trying to make sense of the world and live by manageable codes of ethics. But their world is so constrained by immediate needs and imminent threats that those ethics look really warped from my perspective, in ways that makes it easy for me to characterize them as deficient or immoral or unworthy.
The sad part of the book is that it also shows how pat answers ("give them opportunities and people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps," etc.) also don't work - because they don't speak to people where they are and how they're living. It's a challenging book because it shows me how my expectations and standards play a part in creating the world they inhabit, and that for me to make a difference the best thing i can do is question my assumptions and ask some tough questions of myself.
Re: Homeless folks don't always want help - Jimmypoo - 03-18-2011
I think Eddie Murphy & Dan Ackroyd proved all we need to know in the documentary "Trading Places."