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I used to be homeless. (I am doing significantly better now though. Hard work and luck.)
I did actually have a job, it just didn't pay enough to get me a place to live at the time. I was too ashamed to beg for money, but I did occasionally hang around restaurants and ask people for food. (So much shame because I had so many peers with family that helped them and they would look down on me for "failing to launch.")
Why didn't I go to a food bank? Because the bus system sucked and I couldn't get everywhere I needed in the amount of time I had in the day. Additionally, I had no kitchen. No place to prepare food that isn't ready made. The shelter did not allow me to store food.
Government help and charities were definitely not enough, but it did help. A lot of people in charity were good people, but there were quite a few that were just plain nasty. At the shelter, I would get yelled at for following their rules and asking for my phone that they held at the front desk so I could get to my job for instance.
It does not feel good when your family lets you down, your community lets you down, the government lets you down, and even the people that are supposed to fill in the gaps lets you down. Really makes you think that you are undeserving.
You are right that some homeless people have a hard time finding a job. A lot of places will discriminate against you if you do not have a permanent address (and some will even look for addresses of shelters). If you went to jail, a lot of places won't consider hiring you. And if course wages are just really low compared to cost of living.
Yes, it is ok to feel bad for those people that don't have what you have. That is human. Yes, some of them may have made some bad choices and some of them might not need the help. But a lot of those people are just victims of an uncaring system. If you do not help them (which is fine, it is not always possible), at least treat them with dignity. Being treated like a worthy person, rather than a second class citizen, means a lot to someone who society let down.
I'm glad that you are doing better now. Thank you for sharing your story and experiences.
Thanks for talking about it. It's more than I could do. It's interesting and aggravating to have spent most of your life in a certain situation, then working to help other people in that situation, then studying it...then reading a bunch of comments by people arguing over it who are so certain they're all right when it's obvious that most of them have never come close to experiencing it.
This must be what it feels like to be a lawyer and have to talk to a sovereign citizen or something.
And none of this addresses whether or not giving money to panhandlers helps them.
I've lived on the street before, it sucks, but what the typical visibly homeless person does isn't sustainable and doesn't help them. It's just a rut of wasteful and irrational behaviour, if you are panhandling you're not engaging in productive behaviour that will result in long-term changes.