What Helps The Homeless

I was walking along today carrying a couple of bags of recyclables. A very obviously homeless guy pushing a shopping cart asked if I wanted more bottles. I said sure, though I couldn't take much more unless he could also give me a bag because my bags were nearly full. He gave me a 10 cent beer can. I crushed it and stuck it in one of my bags. He said with surprise "Where do you go that takes CRUSHED cans??!" I named the three closest places of the five I use. One was about a 10 or 15 minute walk behind him -- it was, in fact, where I was headed -- and another was about a 10 minute walk in the direction he was going. I repeated myself a time or two and gestured at the one I was going to. He said "I'm not going back down the hill." But then you could see by his face something clicked. I guess he realized how close he was to the one behind me. He got excited and asked a bunch of questions about where exactly he needed to go and what exactly he needed ...

Most people on the street have some kind of health issue, either medical or mental health or both. Free meals and other homeless services tend to attract the most desperate and destitute. Unsurprisingly, the average quality of health and ability to interact well socially for groups of homeless folks at meal sites and other services trends pretty poor. This means that if you have a serious health problem, getting the help you urgently need today in order to not starve can expose you to all kinds of other illnesses and even things like the threat of violence. It's an extremely stressful and sometimes downright counterproductive way to muddle through. It also tends to be hugely time consuming. There are typically long lines and if you want to be guaranteed to get something, that sometimes means showing up an hour or two early. They can also be incredibly hard to track down and hugely difficult to physically get to, in addition to sometimes requiring a lot of paperwork and so on. Unl...