Don't Feed The Homeless

so have you all decided whether or not hollywood will be feeding the homeless this year i need to know

We are but only the ones we like.

We're replacing the soup kitchen with an open bar.

i would seriously party with a bunch of hobos just because i have never done so

go check under some bridges, there's probably a party going tonight.

MID OR FEED

HUEHUEHUEHUE

If the women are sexy, I'm there!

Are you implying that you have to be or have been homeless in the past to know how to manage money?

Because I am fairly sure I wouldn't head right out to K-Mart and purchase camping gear and portable stoves if I was homeless. Article was garbage.

Amazing of you. Everyone should volunteer at least once at a shelter on Thanksgiving or Xmas. Makes you really appreciate what you have.

I had to volunteer for community service hours for Key Club in middle school on Thanksgiving at the Salvation Army. I had to deliver the food to each table. So this notion that homeless are all druggies and vigilantes is horse ***.

Furthermore, just because someone has a mental illness or a substance abuse problem should not exempt them from humanitarianism. People deserve do eat regardless if they shoot up drugs.

I agree completely. Check with your job if you are employed and see if they are having a food or toy drive. I just donated a bunch of canned goods at my job personally. Also volunteering is super easy to do even if only for a few hours.

Not sure but if this church here in the hood of LA is giving it out no reason West/Hollywood can't give it out.

The TLDR:
If you want to make the most use of your funds or donations for the homeless, look at the local census information for your county and donate to the organization that will help the needs of your local homeless community (mental health, food banks, health care etc.). When/if you are approached, you can give them a card to say that they will be able to help them on your behalf.

Example:
Local agencies around the nation have newspaper programs. The homeless person can buy the paper for .60c and sell it for $2 while keeping any tips. Supporting the organization with your donation of $1 or the $2 for the paper directly from the homeless will go further to help the community.

Program in SLC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNEWoIqVnJ8

Love it

We want to remove ourselves from the UK, however we still want the Handouts the UK provide to us, without handing anything back, we still want the Bank of England to regulate our economy and banking system, we still want the Queen.... and to be a part of the UK Army..

Um... Dumb isn't the right word, but this is off topic.

So in the event that you were suddenly homeless, worked a 9-5 job, and all homeless shelters in your town closed at 4:30 p.m., leaving you unable to use their kitchens, how would you prepare your food?

Burning oil drums. What else is there?

In my area there is always several awareness meetings held by different organizations about the homeless people in our area and the ones that are just passing thru. I think that is great since in this place you will hardly ever see any homeless unless you go to one of the centers and volunteer. The local organizations have a hard time getting funds from here due to this.

One of the most interesting programs they have in the local Salvation Army has a workshop to try and help the ones that can still work get some kind of job and maybe get out of their situation. However this year this has been really hard due to the lack of work in general.

Personally I am all for the rich giving back whether they like it or not, programs like this will not grow without some help beyond what they are currently getting.

You keep focusing on the camp stove issue. The article has a lot more than that to it and I have acknowledged that this guy made some, let's say, "rookie mistakes" in dealing with his being homeless. But the overwhelming majority of what he wrote is on point. And, of course, situations differ based on where in the country you are as the shelters where I live are apparently a lot better managed than those in some other places.

You seem to have some compassion but you're being highly critical of someone who pointed out that he wanted to be able to control what he eats by purchasing something that would last. If you actually read more than "I spent $150 on a camp stove," you might've noticed that he qualified by saying that he was spending that much so the thing didn't break after a week. Most crappy camp stoves are made to be used maybe a dozen times over the course of three years, not daily for months. And if we really want to make a big deal about money management, being able to buy unprocessed food that needs to be cooked is both healthier and cheaper than purchasing pre-packaged stuff. What you might get in a free kitchen depends on a lot of factors, so I can't say if it would be good, bad, or neutral to do that.

For those religious people on the forums. My churches growing up always served food on Sundays after church for the community to eat. The food was free and some homeless people came. It wasn't a food drive is just something you did to get to know your neighbors etc...more so because Jesus ate with all types of people. Anyone else had similar experience?

So I don't get how this tradition of eating in public with your community is such a foreign concept.

So in this little theoretical situation I'm supposed to come home from work to find myself without a home or food? Considering if I just came home from work I would have eaten lunch and could probably hang out until 4:30 the next day. Even if you wanted to pretend I've been homeless all my life, what exactly do you want to hear? I'll be hungry and cold all night and bide time patiently like a nomad until I could visit a shelter when it opens?


If the article telling you to straight away go buy camping equipment and a stove to spend over 150$ wasn't enough for you to discredit the article here are more mistakes or misinformation it gives with elaboration.


This is a really stupid statement. If you have Priorities in any sense of the word this is false.


It's called dry goods. Canned food doesn't even require a can opener most of the time these days. Cans of beans and a billion other things like it out there exist. You don't spend all that money on a stove and expect to be able to constantly buy gas for it. This article automatically failed for this very reason. Bad financial advice at a very crucial time. And where are you supposed to store it in a backpack you carry around all the time? It might get stolen or damaged. Then what? This information and advice is best reserved for someone who has a small apartment upon recovering that has no stove.


Two words. Gym Membership. $15.00 for the month and yes it includes the use of a locker room and shower. It's also 24 hours so you could take your time there.


No completed degree is worthless. Period. It could be a degree in fecal matter and as long as you can make it sound good on paper it will show higher educational background. This discourages people from finishing a degree due to the fact he blames it for being useless.


The story is slightly bogus because information is withheld. This is where it becomes as credible as anyone else's "story" here about their family member or close friend. Why were you suddenly homeless? Did you room mates bail? Did they kick you out? Were bills not met? The fact the story skips crucial information and the guy openly admits to being addicted to LSD (even despite the long term outcome) tells me that he makes bad choices.

Everyone makes mistakes. I'm not calling the guy a bad person or knocking on him. I feel bad for his past situation, even though we lack the full legit story.

But my point still stands that this guide of information should be taken with no more than a grain of salt let alone linked around like it's some sort of good advice. It's a bad article in the sense that it seems to have been created with the title "7 Things No One Tells You". But it was more like "7 Things I did and experienced."

This was a live and learn situation, not a solid advice article.

You work 9-5, 5 days a week. Full time job. You can't wait for the shelter to open, you have work the following day. Sure, you might be able to get into a shelter on the weekends if you're lucky, but how will you prepare food for yourself if you're without a home? You're taking issue with him finding a solution to an issue, and then relegating his entire post as void because of it. It may not have been the most optimal solution, but then again, it may have been. $150 is expensive, but as pointed out, it needed to be a piece of equipment that worked and took a beating, something a cheapy one wouldn't be capable of handling.

I think I know where you are trying to go with this and you can't for a few reasons.

This is situational in every sense. In this particular situation you are describing I would go huddle up in my car until the next day and explore other housing options during the weekend. I have money in savings and there should damn sure be some answers as to why I no longer have an apartment. I have a contractual agreement that goes both ways.

This is also why you should save a little excess money in savings for things such as a flat tire or life emergencies.

I'm not saying I'm perfect and know everything to do in a homeless situation. But I know terrible advice when I see it. I feel bad for the guy's situation but after reading it FULLY and hearing about all the choices made including getting addicted to LSD, it all boils down to bad choices.

I would have to have no credit, no savings, no job, and to maintain barely eating and surviving for a few months in the situation you are trying to lay out in the long term. The truth of the matter is that unless one of us (myself included) becomes homeless and goes through the things some of these people go through. We will never fully know or understand. Even then it varies from person to person.

I damn sure would never go buy a bunch of equipment or tools for 150$ plus if I actually had that much money to begin with. I also wouldn't let myself go like a woodland bandit with a beard. The gym would probably be the first place I would go. Followed by exploring the cheapest food solution possible as temporary means to get by. Food and a place to use the bathroom/shower would be key for me first. Finding a place to sleep would be the hardest thing and would vary by area.

There are 2 types of homeless people: those who refuse to work and those who wish to work but unable to get work.

The 1st type follows the long tradition of "if you're a bum for 3 years then you'll refuse to be a king". The longer you spend without working and still somehow survive then the more likely that will become your livelihood. It's like when you have been working for a couple years then you'll find it difficult to go back to college for a 2nd degree by studying full time.

The 2nd type is problematic because society tend to not pick them for work. I'll not talk about clothing or personal hygiene but I'm thinking of something more social. The 1st problem these guys get is that they don't have an address, a bank account and a phone number. The bank account can be missing but it's hard to do anything without an address and a phone. The 2nd problem is the lack of personal privacy and security making it difficult to keep and maintain savings and personal documents. You can see a lot of hobos carry everything with them. It's hard to keep anything decent without getting robbed, mugged or have them stolen. The last problem is that the cost of living increases as you move from hobos into something 'better'. You will have rent, taxes and bills to pay. You will also need to pay for food and other personal maintenance fee. If you make only a bit of money and have to pay a lot of bills then you might be better off playing as hobos.

Giving food to people demonstrate compassion. It's an important social trait that everyone should have at least a little. However, people should also realize that having a lot of homeless people asking for food is a symptom, not a disease. You can try to tread a symptom but your patient won't be cured or even get better.

And that's why you missed the point. It was anecdotal examples of how and what the difficulties can be. It wasn't advice, but an example of someone who's been there. Someone who is more of an authority than most.

You also took a hypothetical and meshed it with reality way too literally, hindering the general concept of hypotheticals.

The article was titled "7 Things nobody told you about being homeless". It was advice and information based on someones single experience. I wouldn't have any issue with the article if it was titled "My Homeless Experience" or "What being homeless was like for me". I would have found it way more inspirational and interesting if it didn't try to give you a hitchhikers guide to homelessness.

The article tries to tell you to spend 150$ on a stove, gas, and camping gear basically. The article says you should rent a cheap hotel for the night ($50) to shower and shave once in a distant while. He tries say a college degree is useless. It's actually healthy mix of personal experience with a lot of advice. But the title of the article is what the problem is. And the advice is really really bad.

It feels like the rough draft of a college paper your teacher goes ham on you for.

I'm glad he pulled out of it, but he should have taken a lot more time and given a lot more information for the article. Seriously compare it to something like this and you will see an immediate difference.

You can have all my +s. They can get food someplace else, there's tons of support for them to turn themselves round but they don't want it. Most of them just want to stay lit.

This particular article was written by a 20-something with a college degree. I hate to indulge in post-modern criticism since that is on the outs right now in academia, but let's pay attention to who the author is and the circumstances he is describing.

He is educated and comes from a middle class sort of background. This already puts him several feet in the ignorance hole when it comes to roughing it. That he even knows how to buy a camp stove implies he got out in the woods, but living in the gutter is a different beast (as your constant stream of objections indicates). If anyone in his family/circle of acquaintance has ever either confronted homelessness or extreme poverty, he probably had limited or no contact with them. To use a cliché, he was probably rather underserved in terms of "street smarts."

So of course his advice is far from perfect. He isn't writing a wikihow! For that matter, he wasn't writing for a particularly professional venue at all, so that he threw in some random bad advice that a more professional publication's editor would have removed is just par for the course.

But as regards the money management priorities you keep harping on... you do remember we're talking about homelessness, right? Ignoring that most well-paid middle Americans are terrible with money, those people who end up homeless are practically guaranteed to be. Since this isn't a bloody wikihow, take it as further characterization of the author: namely, he made some mistakes. He made a lot of the same mistakes that anyone in that situation would make.

Meanwhile, though, as logically ridiculous as saying "It is expensive to be homeless" sounds, it is factually valid. He made a big mistake by not seeking out a shelter and its associated services, which would have done what you complain about: removed a lot of his miscellaneous expenses so he could focus on getting financially stable. But if the shelters in your area suck or you're 24 and middle class and have never been told they exist (naïveté is pretty common if you're 24, middle class, and college-educated, at least when it comes to being homeless), the options you have to try to remain stable and appear respectable are a lot more limited.

But it is a stone-cold fact that poverty costs more than wealth. There are lots of reasons for this, such as lack of access to certain stores -- some neighborhoods have a corner store with huge mark-ups and limited selection -- or lack of transportation -- it is not always possible to have a car and relying on mass transit can eat hours of your day if you live outside of a mega-metropolis like NYC or San Francisco. I live in a rather nice-sized city right near a major university, so I have access to almost everything I need, but if I want something carried by Wal-Mart (like, say, a small vacuum cleaner), I have to either bike for an hour or spend 90 minutes on the bus, and that's just going one way. Imagine having to spend most of an hour on the bus just to buy groceries.

Or don't believe me and go read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickle-and-Dimed." Or some of the books written in response to the criticism leveled against her work (she started her research with money in pocket, just like the writer of the article you're complaining about).

Not that I disagree, because there (usually) is a fairly extensive network of support agencies in any decent-sized town in the US, but it should be noted that some of the newly-homeless are actually unaware of the system available to them.

My city takes pretty good care of our homeless these days and you basically have to know what to look for in order to spot them (except the buskers and panhandlers around the university... whom I want to hit because I doubt them). When a couple friends of mine who grew up here visited Seattle recently, though, they saw dramatically more homeless people, and my friends don't know how to spot them. So it is possible to be homeless and hungry genuinely if you're unaware of what is available. The majority of people begging for cash are probably either liars or chronically homeless, though, so they probably know exactly what is there and that's why they refuse anything short of cash (or intoxicants).