there's no shortage of homeless people here, i sure as hell can't give them my money.
if i'm downtown and they're sitting down with a can or hat or somethign I will outright ignore them, otherwise i will probably say "no sry" and keep walking.

good old vancouver town(unless im thinking of the wrong person). I never give any change, the homeless here have more than enough help and i see giving change to them as being an enabler. this might seem kind of cold hearted but ive seen guys with better clothes then me asking for my money.

there's a fair amount of homeless people around where i live, enough that you could drop a couple bucks handing out change all day, but not enough that it becomes really frustrating. i used to talk to homeless people a bit during my college years, and actually knew a couple peers who were homeless at certain points and fortunately worked their way through it. there were several more who would have been homeless had a friend not intervened. it might simply be my personal experiences, but i think it's awfully short-sighted to automatically make the words homeless and drug-addict or ex-con synonymous. much more often than not these are people who got rather royally fucked by something in their life and had no viable plan, causing their life to spiral out of control. yeah this could be those key words LAZY or ADDICT, but there are a great number of ways you could end up homeless that wouldn't necessarily be the result of some shameful or contemptible behavior. i can imagine this must be somewhat difficult for someone very privileged to understand entirely, particularly if they have not seen or experienced the misfortune that would lead to homelessness, but it's really the truth in more cases than people would be comfortable admitting. nobody wants to be homeless, and assuming that all people have complete control over their destiny is naive and idiotic.

it might be that i've had more direct interaction with homeless people and seen how easily somebody could become homeless, but i've always been bothered by how cold and often hateful people are towards the homeless. i can understand not wanting to give a dollar to every homeless person you meet, or possessing healthy skepticism when approached by a random person on the street, but there's a pretty big gap between that and the disgust and contempt people often have for those without a home. it feels cliche even saying this but it's remarkable how people lose sight of the fact that it's a human being lying there on the side of the street, and that they somehow possess the powers necessary to evaluate that this person is not worthy of having a home.

anyway, i give change if i have it, although i know i'm not saving the world by doing this. it's something of an empty gesture really, but they'll put it to better use than i will.

Just to add something here, homelessness is almost never a product of laziness. The world is an incredibly fucked up place and and a lot of these people were brought into this wold under circumstances you can hardly imagine: abusive or lack of any sort of families/relationships ,crippling addictions, untreated mental illness, etc. Top all that off with being at a disadvantage in an almost nonexistent job market with no access to things a lot of us take for granted(clean clothes, shower, telephone) you can't realistically expect someone to suddenly "snap out of it" and get a job when they're sleeping on the street.

It depends on a bunch of stuff I guess. How much I have, what the weather's like, what my mood is, how guilty I feel. It is kind of uncomfortable territory because on a strict ethical level I'm not sure how you can justify walking on at all, in the same way that I'm not sure how you'd be able to justify buying a coffee instead of giving it to people who probably have more pressing problems than feeling sluggish or whatever. That stuff about enabling is probably correct in a lot of cases but I'm not sure I want to take it as a ground rule because it's a little too close to heh....just spend it on beer.

Basically I think the thing of GIVE TO EVERYBODY is an impossible one to live up to and probably oversimplified on a lot of levels buuuuut I think it's still worth hanging on to as an ideal and remaining aware that you're not living up to it. It's all the same to the guy on the street who gets no money anyway (wow, thanks for feeling guilty for a second after hurrying on, white liberal student!!!) but I guess the difference is that you're not ruling out the possibility of giving altogether and you remain aware that you are failing to live up to your own standards and maybe not get too complacent about stuff. This is a very weedy view but okay.

they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps

you only deserve empathy for your shortcomings if you have a diagnosed mental condition. otherwise anyone with an IQ of 71+ is Fair Game

yeah i'm just going to let a magical charity that generates money from nowhere help them instead of doing anything myself to help either the people or the charities.  and they can just go get themselves a job in their half-destroyed clothes and no address or phone number to put down on their application, i'm sure they'll win over any employer

Give a bum 250 bucks and fellow him for the next 24 hours and I bet you'll find out 100% ,why they end up on the street in the first place.

edit: call dibs on the idea of a hidden game show involving bum/homeless. ​.

Also it's funny that we hold "nicer clothes than me" against people. They may have had a home or wealth at some point, but even more importantly why are we holding them having suitable clothes against them? At least the are spending some of what they get on needs??? Having nice clothes is also important when being interviewed.

actually i've always chalked that up to the salvation army branches i've been to simply having an outstanding selection of clothes. i'm never particularly surprised when i see a homeless person dressing better than i typically do. you can drop a couple bucks at the salvation army and look pretty goddamn snazzy

I don't speak to or associate with people I don't have to because I have no desire to be stabbed to death.

I was waiting at Union Station in Chicago for my bus to come and this homeless dude came up to me trying to sell me The Onion.  I gave him a dollar for it even though you can go over the next block and get it for free.   This other time I was in Union Station when I got off my bus and was waiting for my train to take me back to my town and this dude comes up to me (while I'm on the phone) and asks me for some money.  I give him a couple of cents because I never use change anyway it just accumulates in my wallet and then he's like, "Yo, do you smoke pot?"  I just said no and walked away.

Sometimes.

Once a homeless guy came over to me and said:
"Excuse me mate."
I looked up.
"You dropped your gay card."

And with that he walked off.

That right there is an instant classic, Ghoul. It hits all the main points, should  consider putting it in a facebook note asap, "$$ is god"

Also why is their some stipulation that people are only worth giving money to if they eventually get a job? Giving money to someone on the street isn't about inspiring them or encouraging some ideal, it's about recognizing your own secure humanity, and the remote chance that buck makes a difference. You give it knowing full well it may be spent unwisely or simply to reinforce a bad habit. If you are going to gripe over that kind of thing then go out of your way to find a donation you trust or better yet ask if you can get them a sandwich or something to eat. Smart people will guilt you into buying them a sandwich rather than even ask for cash.

The not getting a job thing and PRIDE and DIGNITY are all bs you are attaching to them. here we have a lot of people who have been on the street since one of the mental health institutions shut down. Also also they stay in the same spot because they have shit they can't leave unattended, people without homes have a very difficult time protecting their stuff and lacking a permanent address also hurts your chances at getting a job.

yeah, apparently you either misread my post or just skimmed through it found the stuff you didn't like in it an picked it out.

I didn't say shit about what a homeless person does with the money I give them. I honestly do not care at all, as a matter of fact if a homeless person walked straight up to me and asked for money to feed his cocaine or crystal meth addiction I would probably do it out of respect for that persons honesty and straight forwardness.

I do not need to give money to someone I don't know to make me feel better about myself or pretend in the back of my mind that I might actually be helping them out. I do not like con artists and I know that single hobo in my hometown is not mentally incapable of applying himself to make some sort of financial income. He does what he does because it gets him by and he doesn't want to do anything else. If I feel that someone genuinely needs my help then I am more than willing to give it. But I don't like getting hustled or fucked around by some dick that would rather stand on the street with his hand out then to try to do something to help himself. And I'm not saying that all homeless people are like that, I'm sure they're not. But unless I feel otherwise about the person I encounter then I wouldn't be inclined to give them shit just to soothe my own ego.

Sure I get where you're coming from and if I lived in the kind of environment where the mental institutions shut down and forced people in the streets or I saw homeless teenagers or men and women everywhere then I might be more inclined to give but I don't live in a place like that and you do not seem to understand that.

I do not like con artists and I know that single hobo in my hometown is not mentally incapable of applying himself to make some sort of financial income. He does what he does because it gets him by and he doesn't want to do anything else.

did he tell you this or do you JUST KNOW