Cold, Homeless, at F Stop
Sitting at the bus stop today after yoga, I noticed a guy that I had noticed a few weeks ago, and even took a photo that he was included in, so I scrounged it up and am posting it here. If you click on the picture and go to Flickr, I’ve put a photo note on him.
So after writing about the police blotter, I was thinking of the fact that somewhere in Chinatown it is remote enough that someone could be laying there dead for a day and nobody noticed. OK, so maybe that Chinatown body was in plain sight? So I am thinking- here, this guy, I wonder if anyone noticed him. Could he be dead? Sure. Anyways a lot of the homeless debate was running around in my head for a good twenty minutes of waiting for the F. Long story short, got over my quandaries by doing this charitable act in the name of a friend who had recently died, and had suffered at one time on the street. So I gave him my 1/2 an apple juice and talked to him for a bit. Seems small and dumb here, but it was a big deal to me to “break the stranger barrier”!
Gee, a homeless guy in SF, who whudda thunk it?
Sit out there for a freezing, windy night and thunk about it, Joe.
And how is this different than every night in SF where there’s 10,000 homeless dirtying up the streets in SF? Keep on feeding these guys and they’ll never leave.
So, you’re saying people = pigeons. Next time you’re homeless on the street I’ll remember your comments. “Sorry, I’m going to throw away this apple juice instead of give it to you because I want you to leave, and if I feed you, you’ll stay.”
Yeah, that will never happen. I’ll never be homeless because I take care of myself and work for a living. These guys never dig themselves out of their hole, all the compassion you give them, and they keep on coming back for more. Your compassion is keeping him on the street.
Oh you’re one of the “get a job” kind of people. My attitude is that most of the homeless drunk people on the street are self-medicating mental illnesses/PTSD, as a result from not having medical insurance & veterans assistance. Blame Reagan. Blame Bush. That was the issue with my friend, at least. He was schizophrenic.
Ok, you’re right about the mentally impaired people, they deserve social services. Not all of them are though. Walk down Haight street, with all the gutter punks & runaways. It’s a mess! How do you know who to give food or money to?
Walk down 6th street at night, does that make you comfortable to be harrassed for change? You have to admit that some of those people are perfectly sane and do nothing but beg.
SF has a major problem, and I think that sympathy should only go to the truly deserving.
Yeah there are definitely people workin’ it-and Haight is a good example. “Yo girl in GAP sweater, give me beer!” is one of my least favorite taunts from Upper Haight. What made me think this guy was legit was that I’d seen him, sitting there inoffensively, in really cold weather, just trying to sleep. After talking to him, he did seem kind of bewildered, but didn’t know if that was fatigue or mental illness.
So I’m curious Anna, what should be done to help these guys? I agree, something has to be done. I don’t think what’s happening how is helping much.
I don’t think that giving out random food & care is helping, kind of like putting a band-aid on a severed leg. Yeah, it helps that person in the short term, but what can be done to make this person truly better in the long run?
It seems that giving help to everyone draws in the lazy as well, which is hurting SF. We end up footing the bill for the street cleaning, police and social workers who are overwhelmed as it is. The tourists are turned off by this problem and it hurts the downtown hotels & restaurants.
I’m not promoting policy. I had very much the same quandary ethically as we have had here on the comment board, that is, until I made it personal by thinking of my guilt at not helping my friend who was homeless.
One thing that seems to work is something we do in North Beach- North Beach Citizens. I won’t recap here but if you’re interested, that site’s worth a read.