I worked for a homeless shelter and it's not that I don't pity the homeless, but a good percentage who are homeless in the US are drug addicts.. There are entitlements that could help a homeless person. There are shelters, rehabs, places to stay, places to get food stamps, help, etc. but most of our residents came to our shelter just to sleep and went out in the morning and when talking frankly said "you can't be high in a shelter so I would rather not go to one." Hard to feel sorry for that. They blew off appts. from people who help him from social workers, employers who were interested in hiring them, and people who could offer food stamps, housing, etc. They just never showed up.
Even worse are the fake homeless people of which there are many. In my town, which has literally no show of anyone homeless, I saw a man holding a sign that said, "Homeless. Anything helps!" I screeched my car brakes and turned around illegally to get to him. You have to understand that Americans are far more cynical than Europeans and much more conservative and not all are sympathetic at all to those who could probably be off the streets if they were willing to follow some rules. Many Americans thinks all homeless people are lazy, which I don't agree with, but I'm starting to think that their helplessness that they feel makes t hem stop trying to improve. And they usually do not find mental health professionals for motivation and/or treatment. Maybe there isn't much there. Maybe they don't know where to go to get free help. Maybe they just don't want to for their own reasons. Anyone, back to MY town which does have services.
I am a bleeding heart and have often though I agree more with at least Canadians than the current in my opinion frightful views of most Americans. I am a bleeding heart. So I walked up to the man (suspiciously he did own a car...hmmmmmmmmm) and it was a cold nigiht. I have long stopped giving out money because I know most homeless people are addicts, but I did offer a meal since we were standing in front of a restaurant. He declined. Hmmmmmm. Anyhow, I had an old but clean blanket in my car so I gave it to him telling him to stay warm.
A week later I heard that this man was scamming people by going to different areas in my town, holding up a homeless sign, and trying to panhandle money, which is illegal. In a huge city like NYC you can't really stop it. But in most suburbs and smaller towns, you barely see this homelessness because the cops will chase the people away. I guess the guy wasn't homeless, just greedy. He did get some money from people. He has a home now, or he did at least that week. It is called jail.
I have a very good book for you to read, LucyJ. I don't remember who wrote it, but you can find it on Amazon easily since it is the only non-fiction book called "The Mole People." I read it in one night and it horrified me. It was all about a news reporter who had heard that some people live under the railroad tracks in NYC. She didn't believe it at first, but she found out it was true and she took tremendous risks to get to know those folks. It is a gripping true read. Not one of the people she spoke with were homeless because society outcasted them. Them outcasted themselves and the common thread was drugs, but the things they did to survive and to hide from society was amazing and scary and sad and made me cry. But there is nothing anyone can do to help such seriously ill people who don't really want help. I highly recommend this tremendous book to anybody. It's rather old, but it will speak to anyone with a child who is homeless or a drug addict.
Here is a link to the book in case you want to purchase it:
http://www.amazon.com/Mole-People-Life-Tunnels-Beneath-ebook/dp/B004D4YE1U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399071789&sr=8-1&keywords=the mole people
Lucy, you are seeing the worst of our country. If you visited me right here, you'd see peace, tranquility, laughter, fun and prosperity (not tremendous wealth, but you wouldn't see those horrors). That is mostly in our big cities. And since working at the homeless shelter and trying hard to help the homeless and seeing that they refuse to do what you have to do to find a place for yourself, I understand better how somebody becomes homeless. And stays homeless. In spite of resources that more "normal" people use, who are down on their luck and want to rise above it.
That doesn't mean there are no problems. When six million or more people live together there are going to be problems. That is why I always chose to live in airy, uncrowded, crime-free areas.
When I worked in Chicago I used to see beggars on the street all the time. I was 21. I used to stuff $10 in their cups. I was very naive since most were druggies. Now I just offer a sandwich.
The drug problem in the inner city is astronomically awful. Sonic's birthmother was on her fifth kid when she had Sonic. She did not have custody of any of them. We think she prostituted for drugs. She did drugs while pregnant. Sonic was born with cocaine in his system, syphillis, and a serious heart problem, which had to be operated on immediatally. He is lucky that his doctor was so good...he has had no heart problems since. As for his birthmother, drugs probably killed her by now. She had been sent to eleven rehab centers....ELEVEN...and had walked out of all of them. I don't tell this to Sonic. I just tell her she was very sick with drug addiction, which is an illness, and unable to care for any children at the time, but I'm sure that underneath her illness she is a great person because he is so great.
It's a difficult problem to solve in such a big country. I do not feel we should not give our children the fruits of our labor just because others have nothing, sometimes do their own choices. I do not feel guilty that my kids have expensive toys. I don't see why that would be an issue...I would not give that money to the homeless anyway. They would use it for drugs.