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You don't know what the homeless disabled vet might have went through. He could be trying to pull himself up. You are assuming since he asked you for some coin, that he is not doing anything to better himself.
Are you honestly going to analyze the guy in the wheelchair, at the moment he holds out his hand?
You don't even know if he is employable or has mental dissabilities from the war.
Will all unfortunate souls fall under this kind of scrutiny?
My mom had congestive heart failure. She could not walk very far, fluid filled her lungs. This disease killed her. Since you could not "see" my moms heart problem, does that make it lesser so a problem?
A lot of people forget that vets and many homeless people have mental illnesses, often trauma-related. As someone who has PTSD, I can understand their pain. When you have PTSD, it can be very hard to get a job and pull yourself up by the bootstraps. As someone who is blind with chronic pain, I find my PTSD 100x more disabling than both of those combined.
Last year there was an older guy panhandling every day with a cardboard sign at a busy corner in my neighborhood. I passed by him a couple of times a day. People stopped and gave him food all day long, more than he could possibly eat. Most of it was tossed over a fence onto the roadside embankment along with all the wrappers, napkins, paper cups and plates etc. As the weeks went by a huge garbage pile began to accumulate and I actually saw rats scampering around in it. His personal garbage dump was about 30 feet away from a trash can at a bus stop. I asked him several times to stop throwing his garbage there and he would agree and go right on doing it.
Moral of the story: these guys do NOT want food. They know where the food banks and soup kitchens are. What they want is a bottle of wine, some Top tobacco and maybe a little crack.
All you holier than thou "helpers" can cut out the middle man and hand these guys a cup of rat poison, it will have about the same effect on their internal organs as your generous contributions.
Please don't lump "all" the homeless into one category.
You have many different kinds of people out there:
1. The professional shyster who panhandles and then walks back to his car parked in the garage.
2. The mentally disabled. (for the trash thrower, maybe he did accumulate trash but if he's truly mentally imparied, he may not understand the seriousness of attracting vermin and bugs, by throwing his trash over the fence)
3. The "temporary homeless" He may be new in town, lost his dwelling/job and had no-one to turn to and no money for housing.
4. The physically disabled.
5. The drug addict who spent on his money on drugs.
6. The chronic unemployed who lost everything.
Nobody forces anyone to help. It comes from inside you. If you distrust mankind in general then "everyone is faking" and you have the attitude that they deserve nothing. Which is what you give them.
If you don't want to help, then don't help. But don't ever think that (some) of the above could not happen to you.
Please don't lump "all" the homeless into one category.
You have many different kinds of people out there:
1. The professional shyster who panhandles and then walks back to his car parked in the garage.
2. The mentally disabled. (for the trash thrower, maybe he did accumulate trash but if he's truly mentally imparied, he may not understand the seriousness of attracting vermin and bugs, by throwing his trash over the fence)
3. The "temporary homeless" He may be new in town, lost his dwelling/job and had no-one to turn to and no money for housing.
4. The physically disabled.
5. The drug addict who spent on his money on drugs.
6. The chronic unemployed who lost everything.
Nobody forces anyone to help. It comes from inside you. If you distrust mankind in general then "everyone is faking" and you have the attitude that they deserve nothing. Which is what you give them.
If you don't want to help, then don't help. But don't ever think that (some) of the above could not happen to you.
Wish I could rep all your posts on this thread but I have to spread it around.
Everyone is just one car accident away, or one medical diagnosis away from being poor, disabled, or homeless. We are not as invincible as many of us like to believe. Even with the safety nets in place, applying for disability/food stamps, etc. takes time and there is always a lag time between when you become poor/disabled and when those benefits come through, if ever. There are many people who are also disabled but do not get qualified, probably more people than who do get qualified and don't need the benefits. I know people who had brain cancer who applied for SSI and got denied time after time. I also know people with mild OCD who got accepted within a few months. Being accepted/denied doesn't necessarily correlate with needing the support or not. There are tons of people out there who are truly disabled and truly in need, who are not getting the benefits they need, or who are waiting for them to come through, but in the meantime have no way of getting income.
Applying for a job, particularly with a mental illness or visible physical disability is incredibly hard. To give an example, there is a 70% unemployment rate among the blind. However, there are only a handful of jobs that blind people cannot do (cab driver, graphic designer, pilot). There are so many more jobs that blind people can do, but employers couch their prejudice in excuses and refuse to hire blind people. Many of the blind people who are employed are working factory jobs for below minimum wage because it's still legal in this country to underpay disabled workers. I've applied for hundreds of jobs and been told my resume was great on the phone, only to walk into the interview and have them stuttering for an excuse about how they found their ideal candidate. I was also offered one of these "factory" jobs but didn't have the physical stamina to stand for 12 hours straight. I know it's hard for anyone to get a job now, but it's just that much harder if you have a visible disability.
Mental illness can also make keeping a job difficult. Life in general is harder to deal with. Small things become big things because they trigger memories or reactions that are chemically wired in the person. Often times mentally ill people don't know how to relate to others because they have such a different perspective of the world. Most people are quick to brand mentally disabled people and write them off as "crazies" without respecting them and getting to know them. Many people also have a black-and-white view of mental illness--meaning if you are mentally ill, you can't possibly have anything useful to offer the world. Obviously this isn't true but it definitely taints employment opportunities for people with mental and emotional disabilities.
It's easy to judge. But what if you become the one that is judged? Have compassion people. Wouldn't you rather risk being gamed a few bucks every now and then than live with the fact that you judged a person in need wrongly? I have fallen for a scam a few times, but I know that many more times I have helped someone. And even when I was scammed, I know that my intentions are good, and that matters to me much more than a few bucks. I've been the one in need of help and was so grateful for the people that trusted me enough to help me out of that hole, and so I would rather be that person to someone else, even if it means being scammed a few times.
If you saw a supposed disabled man, in a wheel chair, wearing military fatigues, displaying an american flag at a fast food restaurant drive-thru near the 4th of July, would you buy him something to eat?
That happened to me the other day and I told him sure, what do you want? He goes "oh, just a sandwich....well umm....maybe some hash browns, some pancakes, orange juice, you know....whatever you can spare." I told him I barely have enough for my coffee but I'll get you a breakfast sandwich if you want. He goes "ok, ok, great. I'll be over there.
So I notice him asking other people in line after me and I'm thinking "how many sandwiches can this guy eat?" I get the food and I drive over to where he is supposed to be. I noticed him wheeling himself to his CAR and dumping a big coffee can full of change into the backseat to make room for more money in his can. It was 10am and his can was already full.
I started to think, if he is that hungry, why doesn't he use the money he got from begging to buy himself a sandwich? Why am I feeding him? I decided to keep on driving and not stop.
Before any of you jump all over me, I am not rich and we struggle ourselves just to put gas in our cars. I had some extra change and decided to treat myself to a coffee. If someone is truly starving, I'll feed him but this just rubbed me the wrong way. Would you still buy him breakfast after seeing all that?
That's why I keep a sign in my car that I use that says I GAVE ALREADY AT THE OFFICE (I.E. TAXES, MANDATORY HEALTHCARE ETC...)
Sounds like the guy has created himself a job- You have to get to know the beggars in your hood- who are for real and who are careerists. I know a guy at the corner and he takes in about 75 bucks in a couple of hours- He tries to hit me up and I bark at him- shut up- you have more money than I do...at times I will hand out a smoke- but not to a guy that has one in his mouth for God's sake- talk about poor mans greed.
No I do not have to get to know them. That is where you are very wrong.
If you can't provide a source, then you are basically pulling these fake stats out of thin air.
MANY cities have campaigns to discourage people from giving money to bums. Why....because they know what is up.....that money both enables addicts to live in their addiction and buy their drug of choice.
Every city I have lived in has many feeding programs, places to get clothes and shelters. Many of these folks will not go to the shelter because they have policies against using drugs/alcohol.
Not all, but most of the folks living on the streets are living a life of addiction of one form or another.
People who is disabled, vet or not, deserves a hand, anyone that says otherwise is a cold SOB *******.
Hard to say, some are professonal panhandlers.
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I told him I barely have enough for my coffee but I'll get you a breakfast sandwich if you want. He goes "ok, ok, great. I'll be over there.
