“Would you care for something to eat?” – Facing Homelessness
I’m torn because the decision was somewhat arbitrary. If he had accepted my offer of food, I would have given him money as well. But since he refused the food, I couldn’t be sure.
Let me back up.
Late Thursday night I was on my way to buy a small hostess gift for a dear friend. The shop I headed for sits at the heart of the homeless congregation point at the local outdoor mall; which we Los Angelenos call the Third Street Promenade. Overall, I am pretty reluctant to hand out money to men on the street. I’ve felt this way since the early 90’s when I lived in New York City. You see I gave $50 to a kid holding a sign promising that he needed only $71 more to get back home. I bumped into him three days later on the other side of town, with the same sign of course. First I felt sad and disappointed, and then just stupid. Since then I’ll give food, anytime. But cold hard cash is another matter.
So as I approached the boutique, I spot an absolutely adorable little boy giggling and cuddling on a man’s lap. The man is apparently the boy’s father, at least that’s what the sign says. It reads: “Single father, clean record, available for handy work.” The child is immaculate; his white blond hair shiny and close cropped. His large, wide, bright blue eyes clear and present and his dimpled, rosy cheeks, well scrubbed. I hate that it crosses my mind that this child could be rented, or unsafe somehow. But it does. I decide to suspend my disbelief, as much as I can, and accept that they are who the sign says they are.
As I am coming out of the boutique I am still uneasy, but decide to give them money. Almost. As I head out, I stop and ask the saleswoman if she knows them to be legit. She doesn’t, but strongly encourages me to offer food not money.
And here’s the exchange that bothers me. I head out, walk up to the father smiling and ask, “Would you like something to eat?” He responds, “We’ve already eaten.” Full stop. I say, with a smile, “Okay, then,” and walk on.
I don’t know if I did the right thing. What can I know for sure? In my neck of the woods, in Los Angeles, more and more people are losing their incomes, their homes; their way. And just behind them are the folks who are upside down in their mortgages and barely hanging on – whatever that means. I don’t know what to make of it all. I just try to listen to my heart very closely right now. I know that’s where God speaks to me and I am trying to stay in His light.
**Please share YOUR thoughts about this. Is homelessness up where YOU are? Are YOU seeing more people living on the streets? How do YOU handle it?**
Carmen D,
A very interesting incident and it’s even more interesting that you want to follow your heart. I do not believe that my God always speaks to me through my heart. She sometimes speaks to me through my brain as well, through the hair on the back of my neck, through all of my senses, and so forth. It is not uncommon for someone to say something about themselves that’s purely untrue. I’ve not seen this firsthand, but I’ve read often that there are parents who use their children as bait to prey upon the unsuspecting, to steal, to carry out a lie. There is no way I would hire a stranger to do handiwork without first getting an FBI clearance.
It is tricky listening to that inner voice, but it never leads me wrong when I listen. It’s when I don’t listen that I end up wondering why I hadn’t.
There has always been homelessness in my area of metropolitan D.C. I rarely give money to the homeless no matter, but when I’m feeling particularly flush, I will offer food which is sometimes accepted and other times not. There are a couple of women that I’ve seen around for over six years that don’t beg, but simply sit with a cup in their corner of the street. One woman looks like she’s now in her thirties and the other looks to be in her sixties, always dressed in a suit. I sorta feel as though I know them. I occasionally give these women money. Not big money, because I don’t have big money like $50, but I have given as much as $10. That is my limit, because in this area, there are human services available to the very poor. I don’t question why they aren’t getting help from me this way instead of being on the street. As I said, they’ve been on the street for a minimum of six years and are not new to the game.
I do not believe you did the wrong thing. As you can probably tell, I think you did the right thing. This man and the young boy to me are questionable.
Another thought. Sitting on the street with a child and a sign to me are not true indicators of being desirous of work. Why isn’t that man walking from one business to another looking for work? It’s hard on the feet, but could prove fruitful if all he says is true. If he gets a job, who cares for the child that is with him? There is something wrong here.
I too would like to hear what others think. It is really a hard issue.
I’ve never understood why most people are so quick to assume that homeless people are swindlers. Yes, we’ve all heard the horror stories. Yes, there are definitely swindlers among them. But there are middle-class and upper-class swindlers too. Many homeless people are caught in a cycle of poverty. Maybe they’re not so good at going business to business to find a job because nobody ever taught them the skills they need to do so. Let’s face it…homeless people don’t WANT to be homeless. For most of them, poverty is the only life they’ve known and they have no idea how to lift themselves out of it. Sure, there are services available, but it’s still SO much harder for them to lift themselves out of poverty than it is for those of us who were handed opportunities. We shouldn’t be looking the other way, we need to be getting involved. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt and if we someone swindles us while we’re trying to help, we’ll at least know that we tried. If you’re not comfortable giving money, that’s fine. Maybe pick up some restaurant gift cards and give those instead. The worst that can happen is that you’ve given a swindler a free lunch. But in the meantime, you’ll also have helped people who could really use a free lunch. Sorry for the soapbox rant…this issue has always weighed heavily on my heart.
Hi Jenny,
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. However, if we’re talking about helping people, I believe teaching people the skills you mention is truly helping. A handout is not a permanent fix and it does nothing for the individual’s self-worth. Generally speaking, dependent people are resentful of those with their handouts. Nobody wants to be helpless and obligated. I also agree that swindlers come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and income brackets from homeless to mega rich.
Carmen – thanks for sharing your experiences.
I have a friend who is homeless. Maybe acquaintence is the right word today, but it is a relationship I want to engage. I give him small amounts of money. I sit down and visit with him as often as I can. I speak to him by name. I am hoping that my friendship will support him in ways that money cannot. I am also hoping that, as I get to know him, I will understand better how to help him meet his physical needs (right now he needs his bike fixed, and me giving him money is not going to help him there).
My point is this… engaging in a relationship with even just one homeless person is one way to go. Certainly not the only way, but it is a great way for me personally to engage. I know his life story (or some of it). I know I am not getting scammed. I hope I am helping him. I know it is life giving for me.
The scary thing is, I don’t know where it is going, and it will probably be painful at some point if I continue to engage. It is certainly a journey.
I learned when I was traveling a lot that home is
wherever you have the majority of your clean underwear.
if that happens to be your suitcase, home is where you is.
if you have no clean underwear your are either vagrant,
hopelessly degenerate, recently robbed, have flown on
Continental Airlines and have no luggage, or… homeless…
If he had no clean underwear, he had no home to go
to… scam is too obvious!
Carmen:
It is an interesting point that you are making or that I am reading into your observation on homelessness in America. Besides the obvious dialectic around the destruction of America as the land of opportunity by too many non white immigrants–(‘Look what’s happening to white men and their little white sons. Where is humanity?’)– there is the loud dialectic around nobility white fatherhood. You also bring up a conversation around the difference between pity and disgust and how race and gender factors into our affective behavior. I want to know why you would feel sorry for a white MAN and his white MAN child? Abjection for homelessness is not even an issue here. Single White male father homelessness is a novelty in America. It’s kinda romantic. You paint a Norman Rockwell canvas. The clean little white boy with blond hair and rosy white skin and the novelty of a white man who is taking care of his son. How sad that we as women applaud men for doing what we have done and continue to do. Women without husbands who care for their fatherless children do not solicit as much attention or sympathy or kudos. After all if a white man is homeless and begging then something in the world must have gone wrong–something beyond his control. Blackness or otherness paints the homeless body as lazy, drug-addicted, uneducated, and a drain on the American economy. The abjection that we feel is not aimed at the society at large but at the individual as a representative of the whole.
Should you have given him money? Yes of course you should have. Do we want to globalize the image of white men with children on street corners begging for money? What will this do to the moral spirit of the people at large? What will this do to our image as a global world power? Whatever it takes–please get white men with children off the streets before we are invaded by foreign governments and forced to speak Farsi.
Well, I think you all raise some very interesting/valid arguments. For example, I never considered the role race/gender may play in the perception of homeless people.
Well, I am am someone who does occasionally give money to homeless people. I do sometimes worry that they will not use it for the purposes I intended but I want to know that I at least tried and gave them the opportunity to do something positive.
In this case, I know I would have given the man and the boy money simply because the child was present. However, I think a better thing for anyone to do would be to dedicate a few hours or so actively helping this man find a job. Maybe someone could get his permission to write an ad online or in the paper stating his situation and what kind of work he is looking for and where to find him.
@Carmen – I think you did the right thing. Maybe he needed the extra cash, and was more than willing to work for it. Maybe he was working a scam. The only way to know for sure was to try and hire him for some handywork. I try to save the cash for the organizations that are better able to assist the homeless. There always seems to be a fine line between compassion and pity, and no one really wants pity.
@NeNe
I have to climb up on my big ole’ liberal soapbox at this point. This story had a personal tone for me, and your comment seemed, if you’ll forgive me, a bit glib on the matter.
For these individuals, the pain and the hardship is the same. The shame of the situation is the same. There’s nothing novel or romantic about being homeless (or so poor that you can’t find a job, much less hold one.)
I remember a photograph series someone shot of a homeless man searching through alley garbage cans with his daughter (about 8 years old.) They were both white. I don’t think the pictures would be any less moving if the pair were of color.
I’m curious why you feel that a homeless white man with a child is any less deserving than a homeless woman of color with a child. I understand that we (as a non-homeless people) will look to group and categorize people according to our beliefs and experiences. To me, this is the kind of issue that should force us to find similarities in one another, rather than break into camps to see who is lowest at the bottom.
You said “. . . if a white man is homeless and begging then something in the world must have gone wrong–something beyond his control. Blackness or otherness paints the homeless body as lazy, drug-addicted, uneducated, and a drain on the American economy.” There’s likely a lot of people who believe that. I would say that quite a few people who never have known poverty on a personal level would follow that logic. I would argue that this point of view is less a racist commentary and more a classist one.
I think that the purpose of this discussion is to look at the root of these issues and gain a little self-reflection on what we believe are issues about ethnicity. Poverty and homelessness is an issue that should transend what we think of as race, but we all tend to look at it from a perspective of what we feel (and what we have.) Rich or not, white or not, we all tend to serve judgement on why an individual (or a family) would be down on their luck and panhandling on the street.
You said that Carmen should have given the man her money rather than offer a meal. Supposing you had given the man your money, what would have been your reasoning for having done so? Would you have felt different about your reasons if he wasn’t white?
(Stepping off my soapbox now . . . )
@Grandpa: You said, “Poverty and homelessness is an issue that should transend what we think of as race, but we all tend to look at it from a perspective of what we feel (and what we have.)”
Well the truth of the matter is that race does play a role in poverty. Why is it that in 2006 only 8.6% of whites living below the poverty level in comparison to 24.3% of blacks and 20.6% of hispanics?
correction: “why is it that in 2006 only 8.6% of whites WERE living below the poverty level in comparison to 24.3% of blacks and 20.6% of hispanics?”
@Melli –
I looked at the data for from the [U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements], which contains data on poverty by population from 1959 through 2007.
(Really facinating stuff – You can find a lot of good data @ http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/perindex.html)
Concentrating on 2006-2007 data, it’s true that as a seperate demographic, blacks have a higher percentage of its people in poverty than whites and hispanics, but this does not tell all of the facts. This is what I got from the report:
* In 2007, across all population groups (298M people), 37M+ people were considered to be below the poverty level (12% of total population)
* The group [White Alone, Non-hispanic], making up 196M in 2007 had 16M+ people considered below the poverty level (8.2% of their respective population)
* The group [Black Alone], making up 37M, had 8.1M+ people considered to be below the poverty line (24.5% of their respective population)
* The group [Hispanic (of any race)], making up 45.9M, had 9.9M people cosidered to be below the poverty line (21.5% of their respective population)
The fact is that there are more whites in general, which means, numerically, there are more whites in poverty than any other group. Hispanics are second, blacks are a close third. I suspect that if Native American poverty rates were broken out seperately, theirs would be the highest ratio of all. Statistically speaking, their population would also be very small.
There is obviously a problem here when we look at the fact that there is such a high minority ratio of poverty given the population makeup. My issue was NeNe describing poverty among whites as more of a novelty. It takes away from the real pain of the situation. There are two seperate issues being discussed here. The original article was about how we interact with those without in our society, and or cynicism about what we should do when it’s in our personal space (well, that’s what I took from it.) The other issue is whether or not homelessness is worse within a given ethnicity. If the argument is that it’s worse to be black/hispanic and homeless than white and homeless, then I’m saying that the argument is fundamentally flawed. I doubt many homeless people want to be in that situation, and the color of their skin was obviously not enough to prevent the situation.
My point was that poverty, and especially homelessness, effects everyone the same. I fail to see how a white homeless person is any better off than any other minority – at a certian point it all becomes equal.
@Grandpa
I understand what you are saying and I agree that being homeless sucks regardless of what race you are. But we know that there are certain factors that have lead to the higher percentages of poverty amongst certain races. Of course in a country where there are 80% whites, there are going to be more homeless whites than other races.
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