Re: Taking care of the street people
We've covered this general topic in other threads from time to time but I'll throw my 2 penneth in again.
There's a huge naivety in most of the general public in regards to these "street people" as you call them. I've worked for a support centre in my large city for a year and my wife & I also help a Xmas charity which provides meals for about 100 people for 10 continuous days over Xmas when all the other support centres are closed.
When you work in these places you go through a cycle from naïve citizen to informed citizen to highly sceptical citizen.
Every Xmas people all over the city appease their guilt and hand in 1000s of coats, scarves, gloves and similar clothing to the charities. As if somehow these people only need them at that time of year. They are naïve, well meaning, but hopelessly ill-informed.
The "street people" mostly don't want that clothing. By which I mean for themselves. They WILL take it readily, in fact at my Xmas charity they come in and take black refuse sacks full of that clothing every day they can. They then go out and sell it to some market seller for a few quid.
These people want money, nothing more. They are desperate for money because they need it to feed their drink or drug habits. That's it. That's the truth people need to realise and take on board.
When your brother tried to offer a pizza, he did the right thing, offering them food and drink helps and if you buy something good and nourishing then you'll help their health. The point at which your street person said "can you give me the money instead" is the point he should have said firmly "No sorry, I won't give you money".
All he did there was buy them some drugs.
Giving money to these people DOES NOT help their problem, it simply fuels it. You wouldn't go and buy an alcoholic a bottle of whiskey, but if you give money, I'm afraid that is exactly what you are doing.
Originally Posted by
wild blueberry
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We don't know what their "story" is but I am sure most of them would rather no live on the streets
You would be wrong. The VAST majority of street people and seemingly homeless people ARE NOT homeless at all. Most do have accommodation of some kind or are sharing with their friends or they have been given accommodation in the past and behaved badly and been thrown out.
These people WANT to be on the streets because the streets is where they can beg for money to feed their habits. THAT is their day (and night) job. That is their purpose for being there. They can't earn money sitting in a flat provided for them by the council. So they live on the streets.
In my support centre we regularly work hard to get these people into accommodation working with councils and emergency shelters. We find very often that once this is achieved and even after we've helped furnish a flat (bought beds, sofas, kettles, toasters etc) the street person doesn't last long there, ends up trashing the place, makes it totally filthy and then takes to the streets again.
You can not really help these people, much as our heart strings are tugged when we see them on the streets. They have serious mental issues and serious drink/drug habits.
The support centres who provide shelter and hot meals etc are being charitable, but ARE NOT HELPING the person get out of their situation. In fact by making things cosy and comfortable for them they are actually exacerbating the problem because the street person has no incentive to change. They get free hot meals and drinks so why aim for a life where they would have to pay rent and pay for their own groceries and so on?
These people need proper treatment, proper Rehab to get them off the drink and drugs. That's it. But that solution does not really exist. The health services offer bugger all in the way of rehab. Here in the UK the NHS offers something like one week of rehab and that is frankly puerile. No-one is going to come off drink or drugs in one week.
Real rehab in a professional dedicated centre costs £1000s which of course street people don't have.
Our society then is broken in this respect. We have this huge and growing problem of drink/drug addicts and we have no real solutions to get those people back to a normal life. All we have are various support services who aren't helping them get to where they need to be and who are just making it harder by making them comfortable.
The whole, gloves, scarves, jumpers and jackets thing is a yearly fiasco which the public just doesn't understand.
I sympathise because I too was naïve when I first got into all this. My wife and I, having volunteered for the Christmas Charity went and sourced 150 canvas bags from a wholesale supplier and then sourced loads of things to put in them which we thought were useful. We bought shampoos, shower gels, wet wipes, plasters, sterile swabs, emergency foil blankets, tooth brushes, tooth paste, woolly hats, underwear and so on. We probably spent £500+ that Xmas on those treats for these people.
When we saw them take those and endless black sacks of donated clothes and learned that all they do is go and sell all that stuff for pennies to feed their habits, we realised how stupid we had been and of course have never done it again.
Rehab and treatment for Mental Health is the only real solution for this problem and for these people. Our society doesn't provide it. As a result society remains broken and WE ALL SUFFER the outfall of that in terms of crime, theft, vandalism and so on.
I'm not heartless, in fact I greatly feel for these people and have given huge amounts of time and money for their cause but you simply eventually realise that it is all in vain. It's an endless cycle that sees these people doing the same thing over and over and over. They have no desire to "get better" to stop drinking or stop using drugs. It's a life they have fallen into and it becomes the only life they know.
Never give money imho, it simply fuels their addictions.