Poverty and beggars on the streets: How you deal with it?

So i've been thinking about this a lot lately. On a daily basis, mainly when i'm on my way to uni, i see a lot of poor people begging on the streets for a few cents, food or whatever. What concerns me a lot, is that there is an increasing amount of those people.

Wherever i might turn i will find a beggar whether it is a mother with her baby, elderly people who some of them actually sell stuff, or the latest "trend", people who have diseases. There are beggars on the streets, trains, buses etc. As much as i would like to help, i'm nothing more than a university student who has no income. That said, i have to admit that i feel very bad when small children or people who sell tissues or whatever enter the train, the bus or any other mean of transport beg for a few money.

I've helped a few sure, but i was thinking that even so, do i really offer any kind of help? Sure i might helped them get something to eat for that day but then what? They will still stay on the streets begging, most likely until they die.

On the other side though, there are people that i've been seeing for a couple of years repeating the same old story begging for a few money, something that gets me rather suspicious. How someone's daughter can be sick for 3 years now and her father is still saying that he needs the money to send her daughter to London to do the operation else she will die?

I've seen people with cut legs/arms etc, people screaming for food, mothers begging for some money to feed their children, and just today (he is the main reason i make this topic) a guy who said that he just came out of jail and he has no money because no one hires him.

Sorry for my topic being written in a such random way but i have these thoughts for some time now in my head and they are quite messed up. So anyway, i was just wondering what is your opinion in this matter.

 

i sometimes gave money, but i stopped after i gave a homeless woman $5 by mistake when i meant to only give $1(plus i'm also kind of crunched for money these days). i did a paper on this before, and i found this story where Oprah gave some homeless guys a house, car, and $100,000 dollars to see what would happen.within a matter of months, they were pretty much out of money and back on the streets again. i remember reading that there are many homeless shelters (they were called something else i believe) that also helped the homeless secure housing and employment as well as shelter. i do think those need to be utilized more and better funded. i DO think that the homeless needs some help but they also need to be taught how to take care of themselves.

 

I give if I have money spare...But only if i know they sell the big issue (If you do you're not aloud to do drugs or drink alcohol and they test you) or if you know what they're gonna buy with it...I live in a small town only 12 people begging only one homeless...but some are just high or drunk constantly...Don't want to be supplying that sort of trade.

 

I've made a personal promise to NEVER give ANY homeless person i see on the street any money or food. I've just heard too many bad experiences.
My stepdad told me that when he worked at Ralphs, he needed someone to help him load some truck or something, so he offered to pay a homeless person outside the store minimum wage to help him out.
He answered with a laugh, and said

.

My aunt and uncle told me about a time when they say some homeless person outside of a 7/11, so they bought him a few hamburgers, but they offered it to him, they got

.
Yeah. Fuсk homeless people.

 

To be honest, as much as I feel bad for homeless people, I do not give them money or food. I see them, but then I end up ignoring them. And here where I live, I see a lot of homeless people. It's mostly all men, I rarely see a woman with a sign that says, "I have no money and I have no food. Please give me something."

The one time where I actually felt complete sympathy and actually felt like giving someone money was when I saw a couple with their three children looking through the garbage in my street. I was actually close to giving them the 20 bucks I had, but I didn't. I only swallowed up what I was feeling and moved away from my window.​

 

The thing is, some of these people are genuinely down and out of luck because **** does genuinely happen. But there are many out there that aren't. I clear my conscience every year by assigning the homeless people I see numbers, drawing one randomly and buying him or her a full meal with drink from a reasonable place of their choice. I'm a poor student, so that satisfies me enough to ignore any street corner charity or other homeless people for the rest of the year.

 

They decided to become failures. Yes, I understand poverty leads to living on the streets. But think of it this way, they could try their best to get out of it, and perhaps go to a home if they don't succeed.
You see, most people on the streets are people who did nothing with their lives but "waste time".
I prefer not to give them money or food, though I will spare a dollar or two every once in a while.

 

trixter theres more then just people who choose to stay homeless there are the ones that got screwed in life...once your so far in the hole you can't get out...you'd be 80 before you ever were able to work again...

heck my cousin got a dishonorable discharge for having relations with a higher ranked officer...now he's married to her...but not in the army problem is he can't get a job anymore now and so she's forced to remain in the military...if he wasn't married to her he'd be homeless...most of the family besides me doesn't like him cause their all a bunch of racist butt holes...the girl is black so they don't want anything to do with him...so they won't even help at all...

 

If it's a guy sitting on the sidewalk, playing a harmonica or guitar, e.t.c., and I think he's homeless, I'll usually give him/her a buck just for the effort. Sadly enough, in my town, you can find alot of that. If it's just someboy sitting around and waiting to score a buck or two, I just give them a portion of a sandwhich and cal it a day.

Truth is, I won't give much sympathy unles I've been there (which at this rate could be anytime soon). Untill then, they can settle for half a turkey sandwhich to keep them going.

 

whenever i see them i usually give them loose change i have. this could mean 1 penny or even 5 bucks.

but all the sick ****s out there imitating them just to make money makes me sick.

 

While I understand where you're coming from, I hope you're aware your personal experiences don't necessarily reflect the entirety of the poor/homeless.

Hardly "most". Many sure, but I don't feel comfortable affirming more than that.

I watched a report recently about trash collectors in the poorer parts of my country (fyi I live in Brazil). People who are so poor they only can get their basic necessities by picking apart the trash all day long and hoping to get lucky. They live off disposed clothes and a rotten chicken is considered a delicacy to them.

Usually what happens is a child will be born into such a family, and from an early age will have to help his/her parents with trash collecting in order to provide for the family. Because of this they usually don't receive much schooling, dropping out early on in order to make ends meet, and without the necessary education, they have no choice but to become trash collectors themselves. And so will their children. And grandchildren. And so and so forth. It's a sad and miserable cycle.

Considering the fact that they're willing to pick apart trash the whole day in order to live, I don't think they can be accused of being lazy or doing nothing with their lives, they're just unfortunate enough to have been born into a poor and decadent social background that discouraged them from seeking an education.

I didn't see the guy, so I wouldn't know, but that particular situation is realistic enough.

It's something I personally hear about a lot: a person (often, someone poor) commits a crime for whatever reason, gets sent to jail. Once he gets out, he isn't able to get any employment because of his criminal record. So left without any other choice, he goes back to crime.

I understand the hesitation in hiring someone with a criminal record, people just like to be careful, but the whole point of the prison system is to help people back into society. If we don't try and give them a second chance we're never going to save them and we won't be fixing the problem at all.

 

That's precisely why you see if they aren't stoned. : P Believe it or not, there is a difference between a homeless person and a beggar. Beggars are homeless (usually o.o), but homeless people aren't always beggars. If they aren't asking for anything at the moment, chances are they'll abuse it.


I give a buck or two when I have money on me. They can do whatever the hell they want with it; it's the hope that counts. The winter before last, I gave a pair of mittens to a homeless woman sitting on the curb, whose hands were bare and looked obviously painful and cracked from the cold. You wouldn't believe the gratitude in her eyes.
It's your choice what to do with your money. But my advice to everyone is to exercise a little empathy every once in a while.

 

There's this one homeless woman that wanders around/used to wander around near my middle school with a shopping cart filled with a bunch of crap. Kids used to say she would always scream obscenities at them and insult them.

There was one time I was leaving a store and saw at the end of a driveway, a perfectly healthy looking woman, who was wearing clean clothes and whatnot, and she had a kid with her along with one of those signs saying "need help, so on, so forth.." to get sympathy.

That's something I hate. Perfectly able-bodied people who stand around to get money. I'll see completely healthy and able-bodied people stand at the corner of a McDonalds driveway with begging signs. Usually guys who appear to be 19-25. Get a job for gods sake.

I even recently saw a guy who appeared to be about 18 or so standing at a center-divider thing with a sign saying he was a homeless Vietnam War veteran. Dumbass.

 

Hmm, well...I don't like seeing people on the streets. I just can't stand seeing them on a drug trip or just sleeping in the cold night.

I've helped some people, recently a girl who was all alone in a huge downpour of rain. It was quite sad, so I bought her food, and beat myself up for not giving more afterwards. I never saw her again.

It's really deplorable to see people fall into such depths. Here there are public residences, which are now used by drug dealers and stuff, and most poor people live there. Though, this has been taken high advantage of.

More or less, the best thing they could do is enroll for university and reap the benefits of the federal student aid. Since the income of the homeless is most of the time 0, they'd get the full thing. Sure, it doesn't solve the whole homeless thing but, if I'm not mistaken it's 5,000 per semester, the full aid, so it helps enormously. Plus, if they work in the university, then they'd get an extra money on the side to use for anything else.

It's a matter of wanting to strive for something better, though, it's not always easy.

 

I only really see "homeless people" and "beggars" when I go to downtown Cincinnati. And most of these people are just trying to make extra money and are just pretending to be homeless.

I won't give homeless people money. I know this doesn't apply to all homeless people, but some are schizophrenic. You could be offering some money to help them get by and they could just be seeing the big monster trying to attack them. I never wanna take my chances and deal with that.

Yes, I do feel bad for them since they're living on the streets and I could be like that someday, but I just never do. I never have extra money on me so I wouldn't have anything to give regardless.

 

What I keep in mind is that no matter how down on my luck I can manage to get, I'll never resort to begging. As long as I'm physically able to I will work.

 

I realize that there might be people who do this for the wrong reasons, such as to get drugs but you can't imply that they're all the same.

"Failure"? How about people who were born in poverty? What about immigrants who left their countries and went somewhere else for a better future and all they can do is beg for a few money because of racism?

Sure you do have a point that they could try to get out of it but sometimes things doesn't work out for various reasons. Racism, competitive markets, need for many skills and knowledge in many fields etc. How can someone who was born in poverty and it is from another country, and especially a third world country, can deal with all of this?

I partially agree that begging for money is a waste of time but some times there might not be any other choice.

^This

According to him he was in jail for taxes and he didn't want to steal because he said he is a Christian. So he decided to ask for help as Jesus says (that's pretty much what he said). But then again isn't avoiding taxes another kind of stealing money...?

Totally agree with this.

Well this is pretty much what i say to myself as well but you never know what might happen in the future.

As i said before i do think that begging for money is a waste of time, especially since you can spend this whole time searching for a job and even begging for one but when one is starving and is in a desperate need of food things are different. It is easy from our point of view to say that we wouldn't do it and we would try to get a job but unless you come in that place we can't tell for sure how things would work.

I mentioned earlier the fact that many people with diseases appear here lately. Assuming that they say the truth (because i'm not sure if i can trust those people), how can we expect from them to go get a job when most likely everyone will turn them down due to their problem? Isn't then begging for money/food the last choice? Sure someone could say that they should try harder and i could somehow agree with this but how hard you can try when you have something like leukemia?

Unless, as in the case of that father that i keep seeing almost daily in the train, you are responsible for someone else that is sick, whether that might be a daughter/son/cousin or whatever and you are physically able to get a job, or maybe two to help him/her instead of begging which in that case it is trully a total waste of time and money.

 

Begging is something that's been going on for so long. It's not gonna stop no matter how much a single person puts their wagers or effort into combating it.

ANd if you feel obligated to help a stranger, that is fine. But I don't see great relevance in what giving someone a single meal or a few words of encouragement will do on the grand scale. Sure, the odd person may actually attempt to get their act straight and work a way to get back to home ownership, but that figure will be small, and would grow even smaller with and increase in the number of homeless people.

I may do it out of guilt or the urge, but logically thinking about it, it's a waste of time money and effort. Unfortunately their will always be someone at the bottom of the class system. Karl Marx is right.

 

I never give money to people on the street. Ever. I bought a rose off of a Romanian woman once. When I got home my dad nearly beat me because that money goes to a crime lord and the woman gets the bare basics to stay alive.
When I see the Romanians playing instruments, I don't like the music they play so I don't give any money.

Basically, if someone is begging for money they more than likely are able to work but they can't be bothered to. Not only that, but I have earned my money and therefore deserve to keep everything penny (after tax of course). Why should I have to give it to someone who either didn't have the skills to work when they arrived and therefore shouldn't have arrived in the first place or is refusing to look for a job?

As for the Big Issue sellers, I realise that they actually get money from it but they annoy me and it doesn't interest me =/

 

Hnically begging is a noble act. These people on the street who are down on their luck with little income are simply but honestly conversing their wants unto a stranger in which they believe can help them. They know you have money, but instead of taking it from you they simply ask for it. Instead of action which many sucumb to if in the same position with almost nothing left to live for they use the civillised method of asking.
They may seem like vermin but in many ways their actions are nobler than their position gives them.