You know, there are actually more homeless people who are genuinely down on their luck, or had bad things happen to them, than most people realize. Yes, there are some who just want freebies, but a lot of the homeless people I've met are homeless because:
1. They have a mental disorder, were released from the hospital with no chance of surviving on their own (I watched a man have an epileptic seizure after I fed him a burger once...he had just gotten done telling me that he has no money for meds and the only family he has is his mother who struggles to pay her own bills)
2. They have had a hard life (one man insisted that I take a radio he'd found when I offered to buy him food...after he said "no, but thank you" about 3 times...he then told me a bit about his story, which included divorce and losing his job...it happens)
3. They are born into poverty and just can't seem to get out of it (my dad taught at Thomas J. Pappas school for homeless kids over 2 summers, and I assisted him a bit...have you ever met a kid who was so excited to get a pair of used shoes that are worn out and too big for her because the ones she's had for a long time have holes in them? Or, a kid who never eats besides the two free meals they give her at school? These kids loooooove school. It's safe, and it's probably the only place where they and their families are not considered low-lifes because they're homeless...it's also the only constant thing in their lives, since if they're not lucky enough to get into a shelter, they have to move every few weeks after being kicked out of the park)
4. They're kids or adults who were abused or battered and would rather live on the street than keep living that life (I met a woman who made whatever little she could by writing poems for people on the street. She ran away from an abusive husband and is trying to get back on her feet, but it's hard to do when shelters only keep you for so long and companies won't hire people if they have no permanent address or decent clothes)
Try talking to some homeless people...talk to them as human beings and not as scum of the earth which needs to be scraped off our streets (because a street looking "nice" is so much more important than human compassion
). Some of them are junkies, and some are idiots who demand things from you, and some are genuinely down on their luck. I've met far more homeless people in the last category. It makes me ill when people look at other human beings as lower than them or irrelevant.
Sorry, got carried away. So, the homeless situation...there used to be a lot of runaway hippie teens in Tempe. They would jump the train and come to Tempe in the winter. Tempe decided that they're not fit to be on the street (even though their drum jams and general artsy stuff was a better climate, imho, than the now corporate Tempe). Downtown Phoenix has been working on getting rid of homeless people too, since they're turning downtown into yuppieville. Personally, as long as they're not stealing from me or trying to attack me, I don't see why they can't be there. Maybe the cities should build more shelters and create more rehabilitation programs, but then they'd probably say that would be inviting them to stay.
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11-11-2007, 07:32 AM
Here, Here!!!
Check The Ego At The Door
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