Ask HN: What do you do when an homeless ask you money?
Simple question. I meet a lot of homeless people here in Paris. My rule is to never give money but food and friendlyness. But I feel like there have to be a better way to deal with it.
I would see him when I was out running errands in my neighborhood. He never had shoes on. I stopped one day and asked him if he needed shoes and what size. I bought them for him. I gave him some food. He refused it. I thought that was odd.
I saw him about a week later and offered him food and he said no again. I asked him why and he said it is because I didn't offer it to him in a bag to carry it. Then it made sense. If he couldn't carry it, he couldn't keep it long term. It was to much to carry around all day everyday.
Over the years I gave him clothes, food, books, an old laptop (which, yes, he was using months later, so he did not sell it), inviting him to holiday dinners and my friendship. We would chat for hours sometimes about whatever was going on. He was very in tune with current affairs.
Then I stopped seeing him. I drove around looking for him. I asked some others where he might be and nobody knew. I never saw him again.
A past job I held, we were a very large call center (I was in IT) we had hundreds of call center employees - every christmas, we would get in touch with local shelters and hospitals and do a "needy family fund" where employees would donate canned food, toys for kids, blankets, etc... anything you could imagine. We gathered so much we filled 2 21 foot vans and supported 30+ families.
It always infuriated me that we did this. Not that I hated giving - I gave as much as I could, but that we ran a call center. Onsite training for the call center was just 1 week and every week we'd have 10-20 new hires (badge access was a nightmare) - we'd train anyone that could pass a drug test and pass a basic math quiz and pay started at $16 / hour with monthly bonus.
I often said - "Why don't we give these people jobs? We hire almost anyone off the street. The toys and food are great, but if you want to see someone smile, give them a job and let them provide a real life for their family"
I never got a strait answer.
I live in South Africa where we have homeless people on almost every street corner. Because of this it is quite easy to be desensitized about the divide in wealth. It is also difficult knowing who to give money to as a lot of homeless people don't want help and will buy cheap alcohol and drugs so giving money can often enable something you really do not want. I also find it difficult to build any sort of relationship with someone homeless because they move around a lot, I've also spent a lot of time and money cleaning some people up, buying new clothes and organising job interviews for car guarding at shopping centres only to find out that I've been taken advantage of. Instead now days I give 5% of my salary to charities and NGO's who specialize in helping the needy.
As to what they use it for, they are adults and can make their own choices, whether it be using it to pay for a EduX course ( unlikely ) or buying heroin ( unlikely ).
If you or I became homeless ( admittedly unlikely ) and begged for money ( hopefully unlikely ), surely you would want to be given money rather than fake friendliness or food.
Instead, I donate time and money to worthy causes which the homeless can take advantage of.
I think this is an effect of living in Canada, where we have a very good social system for homeless people. If someone is on the streets here, it's likely because they have a mental illness which causes them to be unable to or simply refuse help.
I am not sure what to do for people like that since "you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink." How can you force someone to go get help? I don't know the correct answer, but I know enabling them by giving them money is not the correct answer.
The one guy who is always there on my usual daily lunch walking route, and is kind of creepy too, I now only give him $1 once a week instead of every day, because it was starting to annoy me and be noticeable in my wallet. The other older guy who is always there on my usual daily lunch walking route, and who is clearly mentally ill but very friendly and I like him a lot -- he doesn't ask me every day (but does say "hey, how's it going?" every day), so I still give him $1 every time he asks.
One of the results is that most homeless people who actually resort to begging on the street are some combination of mentally ill and addicted to something. The addiction is often self-medication for the illness.
What can you do for those people? They need psychiatric care that's tailored to each of them.
I think the most you can do as a non-wealthy individual is to support politicians who understand that most homeless people are sick, that they're not trash to be swept into a landfill, and that they can be lifted out of homelessness with the right help.
You need to be a bit careful with this. You use the word "most", and you imply there's a causal reaction: people have mental illness and addiction problems, which cause homelessness.
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pd...
> According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness. In comparison, only 6% of Americans are severely mentally ill (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). In a 2008 survey performed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 25 cities were asked for the three largest causes of homelessness in their communities. Mental illness was the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults (mentioned by 48% of cities). For homeless families, mental illness was mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top 3 causes of homelessness.
My worry is that people think better drug and alcohol treatment, and metter mental health treatment, would cure almost all homelessness. It would get rid of a lot of it, but not most of it.
It also doesn't recognise that being homeless probably causes some mental health and addiction problems.
I meant to say that most of the people begging for money are mentally ill, addicted, or both. I got that info from a psych professor in college who was researching homelessness with the CDC (they do that apparently).
It was only one city, but my assumption was that her research was a model for many American cities. I could certainly be wrong about that.
I did imply that it was a causal relationship, and I certainly meant it. Part of the definition of mental illness is that someone doesn't function in the society in a prescribed way. That's also how people become homeless.
The point that people may also become mentally ill after becoming homeless is well-taken, though, and I'd add that to my own comment if I could.
Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes not. It's a lot to them but to me the coins are annoying, I have to waste time sorting them and carrying them around. They are difficult to spend for me.
Only exception is if someone asks comes into restaurant and goes to each table asking for money. That just drives me nuts.
Years ago, I used to buy street newspapers regularly. The sellers are drug free and actively trying to get their life back on track. But I never got around to reading them, and it seemed like a waste of paper. I'd like to give money, but the organization behind the paper warns against that, because the entire point is that they earn their money, rather than begging for it. That puts me in a complicated bind.
I only give cash if they are contributing to the public space (playing music, etc). For security reasons I avoid giving change or cash to someone who is engaging me directly.
If someone seems interesting I'll def buy them a meal (and eat with them) to help them out and continue the conversation.
In German cities there is a trend to leave returnable bottles after picknicking or just place them next to trash cans, a lot of poor people collect them and are able to feed themselves on the bottles return value. This seems to be the primary tactic here to keep those folks from starving, beside from governmental support.
As a rule I never give anything to homeless, they are homeless because they like to live like that. There are plenty places where they can seek help, many of them founded from my tax money. Only requirement is to be sober. Giving them money, food, clothes etc it only makes worse since they can spend all day to get hammered.
I think the point you make is different to "choosing".... and is the main reason I prefer to give something that a truly needy person will definitely appreciate (e.g. food, shelter) rather than something that could be spent on alcohol, drugs or be taken by someone who isn't really needy.
In sum though, I think as long as someone is trying to help, each can choose his or her own preferred way to do that :)