Can we really make a difference? (Homelessness and street begging)

Member Name: randomreviews

Product:	Homelessness and street begging
Date:	25/09/09 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: help others

Disadvantages: person could be lying

Its close to impossible not to encounter a homeless person on almost every street corner in New York. The subway system is flooded with people begging for food or money. While there are some people who genuinely appear like they deserve sympathy, I often times also find myself constantly encountering people who clearly abuse drugs to a point where they're in a terminal condition. You develop this mentality that homeless people in general are lazy or will just use your generosity to buy booze or narcotics. Its a cynical way to look at things, but I find myself being less likely to donate to people these days because I feel as if many are just trying to scam me.

On the train, you usually get stories - people telling you about how they lost their jobs, can't feed their kids, their home was destroyed by a fire, don't used drugs, lost a limb in an accident, and so on. At first I found myself digging into my pocket to help these people. But it almost becomes a show sometimes. Every passing week, its like I see the same few people, with the same problems and no progress. You wonder if the person really did go through those horrible experiences and if they ever intend to pick themselves up and stop panhandling. I'm not sure if they can't find a way out or are lying. And of course you feel terrible when you see a person digging through trash to eat someone's rotten leftovers.. but what is my dollar going to do for them other than get them a candy bar or something that won't even leave them satisified?

There are numerous credible organizations that help provide shelter, clothes and food to the homeless - I just don't know which ones they are. Sadly though they cannot always facilitate the massive amount of homeless people that come to their door and must turn them away. I'm also worried because I always hear about corrupt charities. It makes me nervous about making a donation because I really don't know how much of my money is really even going to help people.

These days we're living in tough economic times and I really can't afford to give someone a dollar or two on the train every time and I find myself just doing what a lot of people do - avoid eye contact, ignore the person as they speak directly at you, crank up the volume on my iPod to pretend I can't hear, or close my eyes like I'm sleeping.. Before I used to rationalize it as a good deed of the day, but now its become more of an annoyance.

I think our money is better off going to organizations to help them expand and be able to accomodate and help more people get back on their feet, rather than just give them a bed to sleep on for 1 night. The system itself is broken. The homeless always remain homeless and out of luck. Begging or going to shelters really doesn't help because they'll never get out of that rut. Like I said before, I just don't know what organizations can be trusted. There really doesn't seem to be much information available out there. You'd have to go and hunt it down and do all kinds of research.

There are homeless people in every part of the world but I think 1st world countries like the US need to tackle the problem head on and create a system that helps the homeless rise up. Its like that whole saying about "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, you feed him for life" type of thing. All we're doing right now is feeding people for a day - then they're back to being miserable on the streets. We're not doing enough but I think the cost of being able to really help the homeless is probably far too high especially with the rough economy.

Summary: More needs to be done to combat homelessness.