Good Food in a Clean, Civilized Environment
Most people on the street have medical problems of some sort. A lot of them also have mental health problems. Even if you didn't start with them, life on the street can make you a little loony, due to social isolation and other stressors.
I have a serious medical condition. I have been getting healthier for a lot of years. This started well before I went homeless, but has continued while on the street. Eating healthy and avoiding exposure to more germs is a big part of how I am doing that.
Most soup kitchens are unclean, crowd together people who are unclean and unwell, serve food that isn't all that good and are just uncivilized environments. My first six weeks in downtown San Diego, when I was especially destitute, I went to soup kitchens very regularly. As soon as I had food stamps, I mostly stopped.
I did keep getting a free breakfast at a women's center that was really good and I did sometimes have lunch there, when I was really flat broke late in the month. My sons would largely fast for one to three days if we did not have resources rather than go back to the soup kitchens. Most of them are just really bad.
Chipotle
One of the things that has been working really well for me is that I eat at Chipotle most days. Most folks think Chipotle is pricey. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. Chipotle is different from any other eating establishment I have ever been to. It can take a bit of time to wrap your head around the place and I think most customers really don't know how to make the most of it on a budget.
You can get a small cheese quesadilla ($1.35 plus tax) or a side of beans ($1 plus tax) or a single taco (under $3 -- prices vary depending upon whether it is beef, chicken, pork or vegetarian). It is not uncommon for me to order a small cheese quesadilla and a side of beans or a single taco or a sincle taco with a small quesadilla or other side. Add a cup of water (free) and you can eat a healthy meal (part organic) for not much money. I rarely spend more than $5 on a visit to Chipotle. I usually spent under $3.
So one of the things I have thought about is creating a business card sized print out of some of the affordable menu options, taking a homeless person for a meal there, introducing them to the fact that Chipotle works differently from other restaurants and helping through their (presumably) first experience with the chian, and then giving them the print out of cheap options plus a Chipotle gift card before parting ways. This would leave it up to them as to what to eat in specific while introducing them to a way to eat healthy for cheap while on the street.
For me, getting well is my only hope of solving my financial problems and getting my life back. I believe firmly that is a key issue for most homeless people. So if homeless people can be given an accessible means to eat healthy while still homeless, you start removing some of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to them solving some of their problems.
A Soup Kitchen Model That Works
Most soup kitchens have a long line that starts well before the start of the meal. It is full of other people who are desperate, ill, smoking, coughing, and often being assholes to you and everyone around them. Because I have a compromised immune system, I often was made sick from being in line before the meal.
There is also a lot of jockeying for position, people leaving "place holders" so they can get a good spot without actually staying there the whole time, people getting pissed off about folks doing that, and on and on. There is lots of stress and drama. In short, the line is a really miserable experience.
If you ran a business that way, you wouldn't have any customers. No one would put up with this crap. And a lot of homeless people do not go to meal sites in part because they don't want to put up with this crap either. It is also completely unnecessary.
I recently went to a meal site where there are a few chairs outside for people who show up early, but there isn't a big crowd beforehand. Yet, plenty of people do show up. It was a lovely, civilized experience.
A few days later, I went to a different meal site, where people were queuing up more than an hour ahead of time (and smoking and coughing and being jerks, etc) and was reminded all over again why I and my sons long ago decided we would rather go hungry than continue going to soup kitchens. We didn't bother to stay for the meal, in spite of having barely eaten that day.
The contrast between the two is what inspired this post.
Here are the things they did right at the site the good meal site:
It gets really hard to preserve your social graces when so many of your social interactions are with lying asshole cops who claim to want to "help" you but are really just running your ID because they don't trust you and people call the cops on you for waiting around for something to open when they wouldn't call the cops on another customer doing the same thing and on and on. So if you want to help the homeless, you really need to try to give them a pleasant, civilized social environment as much as possible while serving them. This is the most civilized one I have seen. It also served good food.
So it can be done well. Most of them just seem to be doing it wrong.
I have a serious medical condition. I have been getting healthier for a lot of years. This started well before I went homeless, but has continued while on the street. Eating healthy and avoiding exposure to more germs is a big part of how I am doing that.
Most soup kitchens are unclean, crowd together people who are unclean and unwell, serve food that isn't all that good and are just uncivilized environments. My first six weeks in downtown San Diego, when I was especially destitute, I went to soup kitchens very regularly. As soon as I had food stamps, I mostly stopped.
I did keep getting a free breakfast at a women's center that was really good and I did sometimes have lunch there, when I was really flat broke late in the month. My sons would largely fast for one to three days if we did not have resources rather than go back to the soup kitchens. Most of them are just really bad.
Chipotle
One of the things that has been working really well for me is that I eat at Chipotle most days. Most folks think Chipotle is pricey. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. Chipotle is different from any other eating establishment I have ever been to. It can take a bit of time to wrap your head around the place and I think most customers really don't know how to make the most of it on a budget.
You can get a small cheese quesadilla ($1.35 plus tax) or a side of beans ($1 plus tax) or a single taco (under $3 -- prices vary depending upon whether it is beef, chicken, pork or vegetarian). It is not uncommon for me to order a small cheese quesadilla and a side of beans or a single taco or a sincle taco with a small quesadilla or other side. Add a cup of water (free) and you can eat a healthy meal (part organic) for not much money. I rarely spend more than $5 on a visit to Chipotle. I usually spent under $3.
So one of the things I have thought about is creating a business card sized print out of some of the affordable menu options, taking a homeless person for a meal there, introducing them to the fact that Chipotle works differently from other restaurants and helping through their (presumably) first experience with the chian, and then giving them the print out of cheap options plus a Chipotle gift card before parting ways. This would leave it up to them as to what to eat in specific while introducing them to a way to eat healthy for cheap while on the street.
For me, getting well is my only hope of solving my financial problems and getting my life back. I believe firmly that is a key issue for most homeless people. So if homeless people can be given an accessible means to eat healthy while still homeless, you start removing some of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to them solving some of their problems.
A Soup Kitchen Model That Works
Most soup kitchens have a long line that starts well before the start of the meal. It is full of other people who are desperate, ill, smoking, coughing, and often being assholes to you and everyone around them. Because I have a compromised immune system, I often was made sick from being in line before the meal.
There is also a lot of jockeying for position, people leaving "place holders" so they can get a good spot without actually staying there the whole time, people getting pissed off about folks doing that, and on and on. There is lots of stress and drama. In short, the line is a really miserable experience.
If you ran a business that way, you wouldn't have any customers. No one would put up with this crap. And a lot of homeless people do not go to meal sites in part because they don't want to put up with this crap either. It is also completely unnecessary.
I recently went to a meal site where there are a few chairs outside for people who show up early, but there isn't a big crowd beforehand. Yet, plenty of people do show up. It was a lovely, civilized experience.
A few days later, I went to a different meal site, where people were queuing up more than an hour ahead of time (and smoking and coughing and being jerks, etc) and was reminded all over again why I and my sons long ago decided we would rather go hungry than continue going to soup kitchens. We didn't bother to stay for the meal, in spite of having barely eaten that day.
The contrast between the two is what inspired this post.
Here are the things they did right at the site the good meal site:
- They start each meal with a polite, respectful, informative orientation where they let everyone know where the bathrooms are and what the agenda for the evening is. Most meal sites are terrible about assuming you already know, even though some people will be newcomers (and then acting like jerks if you don't actually know and do something wrong because of it). Because most meal sites don't do any kind of announcement at the start as to how the evening will go, you tend to miss out on opportunities, sometimes for weeks or months until you happen to trip across the fact that there is a place where they have free bread to go or whatever.
- There is a group of numbered round tables. Round tables have no "head." Everyone is equal.
- Numbers are randomly drawn at the start of the meal to determine the order in which each table lines up. So there is no jockeying for position and no need to show up an hour early. All tables are equally likely to go first.
- The tables had actual honest to god butter on them in the form of individually wrapped squares in a small bowl at the center of the table. I have never seen real butter at any free meal before ever. Real butter does my medical condition a lot of good, so, to me, it is very valuable. It was also just a very civilized little touch.
- The tables were set like a family table or a restaurant table, with utensils at each place and a small centerpiece of some sort. There were table clothes. Again, I have never seen something like this at another meal site. It was very pleasant and people were incredibly nice and well behaved in this environment. Most meal sites are, at best, like horrible cafeterias, which does not help the social atmosphere at all.
- After the meal, desert was served.
- After a sermon, if there was any food left, we were allowed to take go boxes of food with us. So I suspect all food disappears every week at this site and there are no leftovers. This means every meal is relatively fresh. I don't know the source of the food, but it was a decent meal and I had seconds, instead of what I usually do of picking at it and barely eating.
- It was clean and spacious and when I started to not feel well because I was around too many people, I was able to move to an empty table. This helped me feel less sick and no one bothered me about it.
- All of the people running it were genuinely nice people who treated me with respect. I can't tell you how awful some people are at some of the meal sites I have been to. Given how badly most people on the street are treated on a routine basis by most people with whom they interact, I think it is critically important to treat homeless people in a civil, respectful fashion if you really want to help them.
It gets really hard to preserve your social graces when so many of your social interactions are with lying asshole cops who claim to want to "help" you but are really just running your ID because they don't trust you and people call the cops on you for waiting around for something to open when they wouldn't call the cops on another customer doing the same thing and on and on. So if you want to help the homeless, you really need to try to give them a pleasant, civilized social environment as much as possible while serving them. This is the most civilized one I have seen. It also served good food.
So it can be done well. Most of them just seem to be doing it wrong.