Random Acts of Kindness
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. Unlike, say, businesses aimed at the well off, services for destitute people are rarely user-friendly or designed to respect the time of the recipient.
I did attend a variety of such services for about six months in downtown San Diego. The minute it was feasible to survive without such services, I left downtown. Since then, other than food stamps (and library access, not a homeless service per se), I don't get any public assistance. With serious health problems, big debts, no access to credit and limited ability to earn money, random acts of kindness from strangers has been a real godsend that has helped me stay fed, adequately warm and so on while not exposing myself to the germs, stress and other downsides of attending such services.
Generally speaking, for food needs, I far prefer cash gifts. Like many people on the street, my medical situation comes with a long list of dietary restrictions. So gifts of bag lunches and the like are often filled with things I cannot eat without undermining my long term health. But there have been times when free food was very much appreciated, so I am not saying that is a bad thing. I am just saying that it's more complicated than it may seem: With chronic health issues being an underlying cause of homelessness for many people, feeding them the wrong thing may be doing them more harm than good. If you have no other resources, it's really hard to choose to go hungry rather than eat the thing you were handed, even though you know it will cause you problems.
I also have gotten a few gift cards and things like warm clothes when I was underdressed in winter. Generally speaking, being given a jacket on a cold day is a lot better than being given enough money to buy a jacket. My budget is tight enough, I am generally reluctant to get something expensive like a jacket, especially since I know I won't keep it long term (something I plan to write about in another post). But a second hand jacket can be exactly the miracle I need to be okay for the next few days.
Sometimes, two or three relatively small gifts in a month from total strangers makes the difference between things falling completely apart and things being okay that month. The kinds of problems that result in long term homelessness take a lot of time and effort to resolve. Winning the lottery would not really fix the sorts of problems that keep people homeless, even if it managed to get them off the street. Progress towards a real solution is generally very hard won, meanwhile backsliding when overwhelmed by events is something that can wipe out weeks or months of hard work.
So, sometimes a small gift from a stranger literally prevents me from being suicidal, not just because it helps protect the small hard won progress I have made, but because it also helps make me feel like I am not simply hated by the entire world. Meal sites frequently require you to sit through a sermon in order to get fed. This does not give me a good impression of religion or the people that offer those services. The closest I come to feeling like "god loves me" is when some total stranger gives me something genuinely useful, without judging me, without grilling me, and with no strings attached so I can continue forward on my difficult journey of trying to solve my intractable problems. That sometimes really makes the critical difference in my mental health and my ability to not go postal in spite of the high levels of stress with which I live.
If you have ever handed a few dollars or a bag lunch or a jacket to a homeless person, bless you! That kind of help has been worth far more to me than the meal sites and other homeless services I used to attend. In addition to protecting me from germs, social friction with other desperate people (some of whom are also mentally ill and seriously unstable), and general stress, it helps preserve my time so I can spend it on the things I most need to do if I am to have any hope of solving my problems. As a homeless person with little more than the clothes on my back, having time to do what's most important is one of the few assets I do have. When that gets eroded by trying to access homeless services, it's a frustratingly, frighteningly high cost.
In comparison to accessing services, accepting an unexpected gift of cash or a gift card or a bag lunch from a stranger takes almost no time, doesn't require me to do any research, doesn't require special travel and is frequently experienced by me as practically like magic.
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. Unlike, say, businesses aimed at the well off, services for destitute people are rarely user-friendly or designed to respect the time of the recipient.
I did attend a variety of such services for about six months in downtown San Diego. The minute it was feasible to survive without such services, I left downtown. Since then, other than food stamps (and library access, not a homeless service per se), I don't get any public assistance. With serious health problems, big debts, no access to credit and limited ability to earn money, random acts of kindness from strangers has been a real godsend that has helped me stay fed, adequately warm and so on while not exposing myself to the germs, stress and other downsides of attending such services.
Generally speaking, for food needs, I far prefer cash gifts. Like many people on the street, my medical situation comes with a long list of dietary restrictions. So gifts of bag lunches and the like are often filled with things I cannot eat without undermining my long term health. But there have been times when free food was very much appreciated, so I am not saying that is a bad thing. I am just saying that it's more complicated than it may seem: With chronic health issues being an underlying cause of homelessness for many people, feeding them the wrong thing may be doing them more harm than good. If you have no other resources, it's really hard to choose to go hungry rather than eat the thing you were handed, even though you know it will cause you problems.
I also have gotten a few gift cards and things like warm clothes when I was underdressed in winter. Generally speaking, being given a jacket on a cold day is a lot better than being given enough money to buy a jacket. My budget is tight enough, I am generally reluctant to get something expensive like a jacket, especially since I know I won't keep it long term (something I plan to write about in another post). But a second hand jacket can be exactly the miracle I need to be okay for the next few days.
Sometimes, two or three relatively small gifts in a month from total strangers makes the difference between things falling completely apart and things being okay that month. The kinds of problems that result in long term homelessness take a lot of time and effort to resolve. Winning the lottery would not really fix the sorts of problems that keep people homeless, even if it managed to get them off the street. Progress towards a real solution is generally very hard won, meanwhile backsliding when overwhelmed by events is something that can wipe out weeks or months of hard work.
So, sometimes a small gift from a stranger literally prevents me from being suicidal, not just because it helps protect the small hard won progress I have made, but because it also helps make me feel like I am not simply hated by the entire world. Meal sites frequently require you to sit through a sermon in order to get fed. This does not give me a good impression of religion or the people that offer those services. The closest I come to feeling like "god loves me" is when some total stranger gives me something genuinely useful, without judging me, without grilling me, and with no strings attached so I can continue forward on my difficult journey of trying to solve my intractable problems. That sometimes really makes the critical difference in my mental health and my ability to not go postal in spite of the high levels of stress with which I live.
If you have ever handed a few dollars or a bag lunch or a jacket to a homeless person, bless you! That kind of help has been worth far more to me than the meal sites and other homeless services I used to attend. In addition to protecting me from germs, social friction with other desperate people (some of whom are also mentally ill and seriously unstable), and general stress, it helps preserve my time so I can spend it on the things I most need to do if I am to have any hope of solving my problems. As a homeless person with little more than the clothes on my back, having time to do what's most important is one of the few assets I do have. When that gets eroded by trying to access homeless services, it's a frustratingly, frighteningly high cost.
In comparison to accessing services, accepting an unexpected gift of cash or a gift card or a bag lunch from a stranger takes almost no time, doesn't require me to do any research, doesn't require special travel and is frequently experienced by me as practically like magic.