Do you ever give money to the unfortunate?

[Natapoc]

Yes. When I have any money I always give to anyone who needs it.

[Kobrania]

90% of my earnings.

[Bavin]

I will always give somebody a ride, or a sandwich, or a bag of perishable food, and sometimes a place to stay.

I do not give cash, and I no longer give nonperishable items, including food but also toys. Why? Because too often I have seen the person who asked for them turn right around and sell them on the streetcorner for drugs.

One guy got mad at me when he had asked for some stuffed toys for his kids at Easter and I took the gifts straight to those kids without giving them to mehim. "What kind of crackhead move is that?" he screamed. "What use are those things to me now, you fool?"

Sounds like a nice guy.

You fool? Was he British?

[MisterBellyButtonMan]

If the guy says he wants food I offer him food. If he is looking for a pint and says he is looking for a pint, I give him cash.

[Thethunderdome]

I've given money to 3 this semester. If I don't think your going to by meth with it, and you show some class and humility I'll give a couple of bucks. Most people fail.

[Arumdaum]

My cousin said in the future I would become broke from giving away all my money to lying poor people.

[The Southron Nation]

volunteer at a prison 2x a month.

help with a work training program run at my church to get impoverished mothers the skills they need to make a living.

donate to a halfway house.

if a guy is hurting for liquor pretty badly ill get him a beer. its not up to me to judge him or hold him to account. im here to help his day get a little more bearable. sometimes ill ask to take them to dinner. sometimes i won't. depends on my mood and their willingness.

How the hell does enabling an addiction "help" them?

b/c he isn't asking for my judgement. he is asking for a moments respite.

you say "enabling" as if you have the authority to dismiss what he endures. i call that self righteous audacity.

dude just wants someone to feel with him. to be there. tossing a dollar in a can may seem like enough to some, but not to me. i live in a city with 34% poverty and i make it a point to experience as much of it as i can. who would i be if i stand before someone with no idea of what its like to see the world through his eyes and tell him that he is misguided? who made me his gaoler? i am called to be my brothers keeper. to keep is to understand, to empathize with. so i try my best to do just that.

[Lord-General Drache]

b/c he isn't asking for my judgement. he is asking for a moments respite.

you say "enabling" as if you have the authority to dismiss what he endures. i call that self righteous audacity.

dude just wants someone to feel with him. to be there. tossing a dollar in a can may seem like enough to some, but not to me. i live in a city with 34% poverty and i make it a point to experience as much of it as i can. who would i be if i stand before someone with no idea of what its like to see the world through his eyes and tell him that he is misguided? who made me his gaoler? i am called to be my brothers keeper. to keep is to understand, to empathize with. so i try my best to do just that.

If someone's asking you to donate your money, you should absolutely be judging where that money is going to and why.

I am not saying that life on the streets is easy. It is absolutely terrible for many, but that doesn't call for, nor excuse, developing an addiction to drugs and/or alcohol. I say enabling and scorn what you do, because as a student of psychology and future therapist, what you're doing is harmful to him by enabling him to further continue a condition which is crippling his mind and body, and helping keep him on the streets.

Being someone's "brother's keep," by definition, is to be their jailer in some sense, to willfully restrict their choices of free will so they fall more under your views of morality and comportment. Being someone's keeper does not imply understanding or empathy, beyond knowing what you view of as their faults, and keeping them from indulging in activities you disapprove of.

The fact that you do not seem to understand why it is a terrible idea to give an abused substance to an addict utterly appalls and saddens me.

[Pope Joan]

I will always give somebody a ride, or a sandwich, or a bag of perishable food, and sometimes a place to stay.

I do not give cash, and I no longer give nonperishable items, including food but also toys. Why? Because too often I have seen the person who asked for them turn right around and sell them on the streetcorner for drugs.

One guy got mad at me when he had asked for some stuffed toys for his kids at Easter and I took the gifts straight to those kids without giving them to mehim. "What kind of crackhead move is that?" he screamed. "What use are those things to me now, you fool?"

Sounds like a nice guy.

You fool? Was he British?

I have no idea where he hailed from; he hung around our inner city neighborhood.

His actual word was more precisely "foo".

[The Southron Nation]

The fact that you do not seem to understand why it is a terrible idea to give an abused substance to an addict utterly appalls and saddens me.

now now. don't go putting words in my mouth just yet. i don't recall ever saying that i didn't think it was a bad idea. i only emphasized that i try to understand their pain. the morality of the act was not, and i believe i explicitly stated as much, my position to take. you assume that i am trying to fix them. i cannot. nor did i go so far as to even imply that was my charge. i said i wanted to make their day a bit more bearable. i said they just want someone to feel with them.

i never claimed to be an expert.

never claimed to be a savior.

only a keeper.

please, before you go into the field you are pursuing, reflect on the differences. individuals can only change if they want to. you have little effect on them. either they heed your words, or they do not. period. as a former addict, your failure to see the difference between a text book and a person concerns me. its alright though. i believe you when you imply your heart is in the right place. we just aren't trying to do the same thing.

[Omnicracy]

As in the people who ask you personally on the street. I do sometimes--sometimes I have seen them buy booze with it, sometimes I have seen them buy food with it--most of the time I never know. I just wish that they would tell me if they needed alcohol, because I would be more inclined to generosity.

I do not give money to the beggers who do nothing, but to the people who play an instument or preform or something of the like.

[Lackadaisical2]

The fact that you do not seem to understand why it is a terrible idea to give an abused substance to an addict utterly appalls and saddens me.

now now. don't go putting words in my mouth just yet. i don't recall ever saying that i didn't think it was a bad idea. i only emphasized that i try to understand their pain. the morality of the act was not, and i believe i explicitly stated as much, my position to take. you assume that i am trying to fix them. i cannot. nor did i go so far as to even imply that was my charge. i said i wanted to make their day a bit more bearable. i said they just want someone to feel with them.

i never claimed to be an expert.

never claimed to be a savior.

only a keeper.

please, before you go into the field you are pursuing, reflect on the differences. individuals can only change if they want to. you have little effect on them. either they heed your words, or they do not. period. as a former addict, your failure to see the difference between a text book and a person concerns me. its alright though. i believe you when you imply your heart is in the right place. we just aren't trying to do the same thing.

It doesn't matter if you personally don't take a stance on the morality of something. If the end result of your actions are immoral, they're still immoral, whether you took the time to realize it or not. You might not be trying to fix them, but inadvertently helping them along their way towards a worse place than they are in (even if the short term consequences are that they feel a bit better), doesn't seem like the best thing to do.

[SD_Film Artists]

I'm surprised that you've seen them shop at all.

I'm often stopped in the street by people asking for spare change. So I either look rich or gullible, or both.

[The Black Forrest]

Yes I do all the time.

Especially for people that are "less developed" mentally. We had a state run facility but a few "free market" and or libertarian types thought it was better to privatize care for these people. Many of them ended up on the street.

[Lord-General Drache]

now now. don't go putting words in my mouth just yet. i don't recall ever saying that i didn't think it was a bad idea. i only emphasized that i try to understand their pain. the morality of the act was not, and i believe i explicitly stated as much, my position to take. you assume that i am trying to fix them. i cannot. nor did i go so far as to even imply that was my charge. i said i wanted to make their day a bit more bearable. i said they just want someone to feel with them.

i never claimed to be an expert.

never claimed to be a savior.

only a keeper.

please, before you go into the field you are pursuing, reflect on the differences. individuals can only change if they want to. you have little effect on them. either they heed your words, or they do not. period. as a former addict, your failure to see the difference between a text book and a person concerns me. its alright though. i believe you when you imply your heart is in the right place. we just aren't trying to do the same thing.
:)

I realize entirely that someone cannot and will not change their personality, traits, addictions and so on without wanting to do so. However, that does not mean that I should use that as an excuse to give them the substance they crave and abuse, to escape the shitty reality of the world around them. I can't, and won't, try to fix every person I see, especially if it's not in a safe, clinical setting. It cannot feasibly be my job to try to save every soul I come across, because there's just no way I can, no matter how much I may want to.

When you say "make their day a bit more bearable" in regards to an addict, and then talk of giving them whatever they're addicted to, that blatantly means that you're helping them sate their cravings. Doing so is not only detrimental to their health, but as I said, encouraging their addiction. It's hard enough to get off the streets, and it is all the more harder when you're addicted to a cheap, easy to access substance.

If you are indeed a former addict, and I'd like to believe you are, could you imagine trying to quit and someone offering up your beloved method of intoxication for free, no strings attached, no judgement offered? I imagine it would be damn hard to say no when you're first starting out.

[Dark Side Messiahs]

I only give money to people on the streets who have pets or are honest and hold up a sign that says 'Why lie, I need a beer!'

[Ceruleo]

I'll usually give some change or something because of my feeling of relative value. A couple of dollars isn't much more than 10 minutes of work for me, but it'll probably mean a bit more to a homeless person.

There's a homeless guy who lives in my town named Teddy Graham. I actually don't know if he's homeless, but he is definitely down on his luck. He used to live in Oregon, working for the water company, but then his wife left him and took his house and he lost his job. He moved to my town to live with his mother and try to start over, but we have a ridiculously high unemployment rate and he ended up getting into drugs.

It's probably one of the greatest wastes of a person I've ever seen. He's just a really bright guy, he used to come into a grocery store where I worked. I still actually remember the first time I met him, he walked into the store and asked if we had a coinstar, when we said we didn't, he said "good" and plopped some change on the counter and asked for paper money. Normally, that would have pissed me off royally, but he did it in such a good natured way that it was okay. He came in a lot and would just joke around and such.

He talked about how he used to work at Subway after he got laid off in Portland and he would sing to the customers about their sandwiches. Kind of like the burger king jingle, but he'd just make it up as he went along. He demonstrated this ability and if you cleaned him up, Teddy would make a fantastic Subway mascot.

A friend that also worked at the grocery store actually bought him a pair of nices shoes for an interview when he had gotten off of drugs for a while, but Teddy didn't get the job and got back into the drugs. Recently, I found out he was reading poetry at the local Barnes & Noble and I happened to be in there when he got up to read. I don't generally enjoy poetry, but the poem he read was quite funny. It was about five minutes of sentences that made perfect sense, but ended up saying absolutely nothing. Before he read it he had talked about when a government official releases a press release or a judge hands down a ruling, both take pages to say what you could say in a sentence.

I still see Teddy around, though not as often, but whenever I do, I'll usually give him a five or a ten if I have it. He always try to decline, but I almost feel it is my duty to try and make the guy's day a little bit easier.

[Maelstrom System]

I often do. Not sure if it's the right thing to do, but damn does it feel good.

[Allanea]

Yes.

[Dyakovo]

As in the people who ask you personally on the street. I do sometimes--sometimes I have seen them buy booze with it, sometimes I have seen them buy food with it--most of the time I never know. I just wish that they would tell me if they needed alcohol, because I would be more inclined to generosity.

No

[Panzerjaeger]

Yes, if I don't give anything, the guilt eats me alive.

Pretty much how I feel as well. i usually give them a couple of bucks even though I know 9 times out of 10 it is going to fuel a drug habit or buy some cheap hooch. Oh well their decision not mine.

[Cameroi]

hell yes. when i have it it makes me feel good to be generous with it.
other then getting tools to be creative with and staying out of trouble,
the way i look at it, that's what its for.

[Nordicus]

I don't live in a city, so I don't see homeless people around normally. I do donate to United Way (among other charities) regularly, and I donate to canned food drives and such whenever I see them.

[Parnassus]

If by "the unfortunate" you mean people on the street who ask for money, then no, never. It's one of the few traditionally liberal notions that I disagree with. My experiences have convinced me that street people tend to fall into one of two categories:

a) worthless piles of shit who have cheated and stolen from friends and family to the point that every single one of them would rather have that person live on the street than with them

I've known two or three guys like this, former friends. The worst one used to tell this story to girls about how he was homeless for three weeks - he thought it'd get him pity action. And truthfully, he was "homeless" for three weeks after he bought drugs with the rent money his parents gave him so he wouldn't be evicted (or that's what he told them). He stayed in his car, parked outside his ex-girlfriend's house, where he and another loser friend stayed high the whole time.

b) scam artists

The scam artists are my favorite. They always have a story to tell. "I here to live with my son after he came home from Iraq all shot up, but then they had to put him in the hospital with that PTSD. I was going to see him now, but need money for the train...", or "I'm from New Orleans and moved here after Katrina hit. I was supposed to stay with my sister, but she got cancer and has 4 kids so I can't stay with her. I'm going back to New Orleans to live with my son as soon as I get the money for the bus ticket..." etc, ad nauseum.

Of course, there are exceptions - but I think the classic "good guy who lost his job and needs to feed his family" homeless guy image is mostly just that, an image. If it were an organization that helped families in need (especially kids), then I'd consider it. But I definitely do not give money to panhandlers.

[Cameroi]

If by "the unfortunate" you mean people on the street who ask for money, then no, never. It's one of the few traditionally liberal notions that I disagree with. My experiences have convinced me that street people tend to fall into one of two categories:

a) worthless piles of shit who have cheated and stolen from friends and family to the point that every single one of them would rather have that person live on the street than with them

I've known two or three guys like this, former friends. The worst one used to tell this story to girls about how he was homeless for three weeks - he thought it'd get him pity action. And truthfully, he was "homeless" for three weeks after he bought drugs with the rent money his parents gave him so he wouldn't be evicted (or that's what he told them). He stayed in his car, parked outside his ex-girlfriend's house, where he and another loser friend stayed high the whole time.

b) scam artists

The scam artists are my favorite. They always have a story to tell. "I here to live with my son after he came home from Iraq all shot up, but then they had to put him in the hospital with that PTSD. I was going to see him now, but need money for the train...", or "I'm from New Orleans and moved here after Katrina hit. I was supposed to stay with my sister, but she got cancer and has 4 kids so I can't stay with her. I'm going back to New Orleans to live with my son as soon as I get the money for the bus ticket..." etc, ad nauseum.

Of course, there are exceptions - but I think the classic "good guy who lost his job and needs to feed his family" homeless guy image is mostly just that, an image. If it were an organization that helped families in need (especially kids), then I'd consider it. But I definitely do not give money to panhandlers.

actually there are people who are homeless either through no fault of their own, or make this sacrifice willingly to avoid supporting any number of things they have strong beliefs in not supporting.
generally speaking of course, it is seldom members of either of these groups who actually pan handle.
i don't mind giving a good story teller the price of drink though, if he or she are actually creative enough to be entertaining.

and again, entirely aside from THEIR character, it just makes ME FEEL GOOD to be able to when i can.