What time do the homeless usually go to sleep?

Yeah. No arrogance or assumptions on your part that all homeless (you speak of the "homeless" as if they are some other breed of creature); go to bed around the same time, that you have a better system of servicing people than agencies and business whose sole purpose is providing to the needs of this segment of the population.

Also, that some God is going to take time out of his busy schedule of watching people die of cancer and babies getting raped, to follow you around with his holy shield of protection.
No, God wants you to stay safe by not wandering around the streets at night, approaching random strangers.


There's negative, and there's pragmatic.

The pragmatic way to help someone without a permanent home is not to wander around looking for people sleeping at a particular time, underneath street lamps.

Here's a clue, if they were under street lamps, they will be seen, they don't want to be seen when they are going to sleep for the night. They wouldn't be safe, and they would be accosted by any number of people, including the police.

The best way to help the homeless, and others, is to donate non-perishable food items to a food bank, donate money to food banks and shelters, volunteer your time at the above.

People do everything for a selfish reason, even if it benefits someone else too.

You want the feel good feeling of approaching strangers and giving them something they may or may not want, then probably asking them to pray with you, or letting them know you'll pray with them.

Someone who was actually homeless has already told you he would be leery of a stranger doing that.

How do you know whatever food you're giving to someone is even something they like?

At least give people the dignity of choosing what they want, by donating what you have through the proper channels.

Homeless folk go to sleep at all sorts of different times. Many sleep during the day and wander about during the night. Get to know a few of them and do what you can for them individually or serve as a volunteer in a soup kitchen or shelter which provides meals to their clientele.

That right there would be enough for me to avoid her.

Me too.

However, maybe she wouldn't pray over us.

She did say we need Christ to do something or another for us, but didn't say she'd do any praying over it.

So there's that at least.

Quote chai2:

While I imagine that a few employed people do find themselves suddenly homeless for short periods of time, most homeless people are not holding down jobs. Most homeless people are destitute, and quite frequently drug addicted or in need of mental health services. My guess that they likely go to sleep when it gets dark was just that, a guess, and it was clearly labelled as such.

Your portrayal of homeless people who haven't bothered to eat for awhile as people with a full schedule of appointments is ludicrous. I realize your intent in this thread is to make fun of someone who is trying to help people in bad shape, but do you have to do it so badly?

Sorry, but at least partially wrong on all counts blinkers.

Rather than imagining what might be the time they go to bed, the cause of their homelessness, illegal drug use and mental illness, you might want to actually want to learn the truth.

According to the Washington Post, about 45% of homeless people have some income that has to be reported, meaning a job held within the last 30 days. Many others make money by working under the table. They get jobs as house cleaners, working as day labor at car washes, doing yard work, etc. I've hired plenty of homeless people over the years to do odd jobs around the house and believe me, they are always hustling to find ways to make money through doing legal activities.

They don't work full time, or contistantly, ergo the reason they can't get enough money to pay deposits on places to live, but more than half either have a job, or cobble together odd jobs and day labor. That amounts to a lot of hours worked.

Many people in the general population don't work full time, or don't work at all. The difference is they have some sort of support system that allows them to keep a roof over their head. Be that through marriage, family, friends, trading work for a room, etc. Think about how many people would prefer to not be living where they are, i.e. abused spouses. However, they choose to take their chances, or stay because of children or other reasons, rather than leaving.

According to Newsweek, in 2014, about 20% of all people in the US have some sort of mental illness, only 63% of those received any treatment.

The percentage of homeless with severe mental illness according to a mental illness policy organization, is at least 26%, that 165,000 people. The total homeless with any sort of mental illness is more like 200,000.

Not all that far off from the general population. They just had the bad luck of also not having enough money to afford a room.

Yes, drugs are a problem, 26% regularly use drugs. In the general population, it's a little over 9%. However, I wonder how many people who can maintain a home actually do take drugs, and are unreported. A lot I think. It's easier to see homeless people engaging in this, because, well, they don't have a home to do them in, and not be seen.

I believe the mental illness and drug addictions are cousins. Many homeless are vets, suffering from PTSD, or people who have left abusive relationships, with or without children with them.

The problem with finding a permanent home isn't just about insufficient income, it also about affordable housing, and the location where the affordable housing is. Choices have to be made whether to live somewhere with a lot of crime, and perhaps become a victim, or staying on the street, where they could even be safer.

As far as going to sleep just because it's dark, rather than guessing, how about thinking for a second? I live a mile from downtown, and from my porch I can see the city lights. They stay on all night long blinker. I'm pretty sure a person without a permanent home keeps pretty much the same hours as any other person.

Anyway, they have to use the cover of night to engage in their drug addict activities.

Perhaps you are misled by the signs some homeless hold on street corners, saying they are hungry. I've asked multiple people I've come to know, who either were, or are presently homeless, about the food situation. There is total agreement that food is pretty far down on the list of things they are worried about. Food is pretty easy to come by.

What they need most is drinkable water, socks and underwear, tampons and other hygeine products, toothpaste and toothbrushes, etc. Maybe a little starbucks gift card.

I'm not portraying homeless people as anything other than what they are. They are you, me, your friends and relatives, with simply the misfortune of not having a permanent home at the moment.

They have places to go, things to do. On the whole, they hustle to make a few bucks to plan their days and weeks. It takes longer for them to get the most simple tasks done, like laundry, or a shower, or getting to some paying gig. Actually yeah, they have a pretty full schedule just to get through the day.

It's ludicrous of you to think they sit around doing nothing, just waiting for someone to give them some dinty moore, with the price tag of having to listen to the giver trying to bring them to Jesus.

Thank you for raising questions about how we may assist the homeless.

It's not just a case of contacting politicians and exhorting them to help.

Your charitable nature is commendable and your actions are an example to us all.

Build with existing services at the municipal level by contacting them.

You may also want to consider enjoying some robust chats here on religion and topics of interest.

Please let us know how things develop on this project.

Well said.

Any more fantasies you want to entertain us with? Homeless people with busy social calendars, etc. How about some reality?

Drug Addicts Among the Homeless: Case Studies of Some 'Lost Dreams'
By GINA KOLATA
Published: May 30, 1989

The major role that drug or alcohol abuse plays in causing homelessness has emerged in recent comments by advocates for the homeless, who estimate that addicts constitute a higher proportion of the homeless than do the mentally ill or other identifiable subgroups.

But the tragic human devastation caused by such addiction, driving working-class people into poverty and life in homeless shelters or on the streets, only becomes apparent by examining recent surveys and the case histories of people who have fallen from secure jobs because of drugs or alcohol.

For example, in a study of men arriving at the Franklin Avenue shelter in the South Bronx, the anthropologist Kostas Gounis of Columbia University found that the vast majority had recently held jobs. Only 1 percent said they had never been employed, and 70 percent had been employed within the last year. Seventy-five percent of the men surveyed said they were addicted to drugs or alcohol. Peter Smith, director of the Partnership for the Homeless, a New York-based advocacy group, found in a survey of homeless men and women in 24 cities that, on average, 25 to 30 percent were actually employed while they were homeless.

People addicted to crack, a concentrated form of cocaine, typically spend at least $200 a day for the drug, and heroin addicts spend about $150 a day, said Kenneth Martin, program director at McKenna House in Washington, a residential program that helps homeless men re-enter society. Many sell drugs, steal or panhandle to help support their habit.

At McKenna House, current and former residents told in recent interviews of how they got drawn into a downward spiral that ended, often after many years, in the shelters or on the streets. Their stories, and the views of the program's director, provide a glimpse of how and why men become homeless and why it can be so hard for them to come back.

For Henry Pelham, a 31-year-old resident of McKenna House, homelessness was the end of a decade-long slide that took him from being what he called ''responsible and respected'' -a man with a job, a car, an apartment and credit cards - to a person who was utterly destitute, sleeping in crack houses, in the basements and hallways of buildings, ''wherever I could find shelter.'' The reason he fell so far, he said, is that his addiction to crack took over his life until he no longer cared about supporting himself. Life in 'Crack Haven'

Herman Epps, 28, is a former professional boxer who sparred with Sugar Ray Leonard and was an apprentice sheetmetal worker when he ''dropped out.'' He and a woman companion used crack, he said, and they and their baby eventually ended up at the Capital City Inn, a hotel for the homeless in Washington. ''It was a crack haven,'' Mr. Epps said, adding that his companion and baby are still there.

Although crack is usually the culprit, other drugs have also led to the downfall of some homeless people.

Gregory Parmenter, a former McKenna House resident who now supervises a crew that installs air-conditioning ducts in commercial buildings, attributes his problems to his extensive use of marijuana. He had been an assistant manager at a drugstore chain, but as his marijuana habit got worse, he said, ''I found myself not caring anymore.''

Mr. Parmenter quit his job and began working at various odd jobs, mostly construction work, until his drug habit got so bad that he could no longer afford a place to live. Three and a half years after he quit his job at the drug store, he ended up in a Washington shelter, where he worked as a janitor. But his money went for drugs. He said he was smoking 50 to 60 joints of marijauna a day. 'Fast Women and Drugs'

Norman Moore, 42, another former McKenna House resident who now works at a drop-in center, helping homeless men to stop using drugs and find jobs, became homeless when heroin took over his life. He said he quit his job as a mental health counselor for the City of Washington and spent his $10,000 pension in a month, using the money for ''fast women and drugs.'' He ended up on the streets, living in abandoned cars, then went to a shelter.

Robert Means, also 42, who now does maintenance work for an apartment complex, was an alcoholic. After about 15 years of drinking, he said, he could no longer support himself. He had been living with his sister, but when she got married and asked him to move out he ended up in a city shelter.

He worked almost every day he was at the shelter, mostly digging ditches as a temporary laborer. ''All my money was going to drink,'' he said.

McKenna House is full of men who seemed to have a future, who often are articulate and highly intelligent, but who said they became homeless because of drugs or alcohol abuse.

In 1984, when McKenna House was founded by three Franciscans, it was not conceived as the sort of second stage drug recovery program that it has become today. One of its founders, the Rev. Jack Pfannenstiel, a wiry, ebulliant priest who is now director of McKenna House, said he initially had no idea that substance abuse was so prevalent among homeless men. Young Men on the Streets

In the beginning, Father Pfannenstiel said, he and the two other Franciscans were struck primarily by the large numbers of young men living on the streets of Washington and in its shelters. ''We had expected more mentally ill and older men,'' he said. ''The numbers of young men struck us so vividly. We wanted to get together a program to help these guys get off the street.''

McKenna House, which has a capacity of 15 residents, is an immaculate brick town house on Park Road in Washington, situated halfway between 14th Street, a street of utter poverty, and 16th Street, a middle-class area.

The McKenna House program gives homeless men a second chance by teaching them the skills they need to re-enter society, giving them a telephone number for prospective employers to call, helping them to write resumes, to learn how to look for a job and to find an apartment.

But it started off as a failure. The men who stayed there could get jobs, but they soon ended up back on the street. After nine months of operation, the Franciscans closed McKenna House and began to re-think the problem. They decided that the only way they could help the men would be to insist that all McKenna House residents solve their addiction problems first. Success Rate Put at 60%

Now men who want to take part in the program must refrain from using drugs or alcohol for at least a month beforehand. Sixty percent of the more than 400 men who have been accepted make it through the program, get jobs that pay at least $6 an hour and find housing that they can afford, Father Pfannensteil said. Of those who make it through, only 15 percent fall back into homelessness again, he added.

When the men lived in shelters, they said it was much easier to continue using drugs than to stop.

Mr. Parmenter said the shelter where he lived ''was infested with rodents and pests and there were drugs all over the place.''

''Men were committing homosexual acts out in the open, and there were crimes and even deaths,'' he recalled. ''I saw one man stabbed to death and another man beaten to death. Eighty percent of the shelter population and 50 percent of the staff were doing drugs.''

Still, he said he eventually looked at the people around him, saw ''the lost dreams, the wasted lives,'' and somehow managed to stop using drugs on his own while living in the shelter.

Mr. Moore said he also stopped using heroin on his own at a city shelter. And Mr. Pelham stopped smoking crack while living in a city shelter. A Point of No Return

Father Pfannenstiel says he believes that a homeless person living in a shelter or on the street, in the company of other addicts, can reach a point of no return, a point where it is nearly impossible to return to society.

After about three years, a man's social network, all of his friends, are other homeless people, the Franciscan said. He has cut himself off from the rest of society.

''The company that a drug user keeps is as important as the drugs he uses,'' Father Pfannenstiel said. ''To be part of that group, to belong, is also why people use drugs.''

On a recent Thursday night, when a new group of men had just come to McKenna House, Father Pfannenstiel told the men at an after-dinner meeting that they would face their most trying time when they left McKenna House and were alone in their apartments. ''You're going to sit in that apartment and your loneliness is going to say, 'I don't know if sobriety is worth it,' '' he said.

While the success rate at McKenna House is good, he told the new men: ''If I were to put down all the names of the guys here that we call a success and all the guys that we call a failure, do you know what the line is right down the middle? You know what it is. It's sobriety. It's staying clean. Gentlemen, it comes down to sobriety - a drug-free existence.''

The Rev. Jack Pfannenstiel, founder and director of McKenna House in Washington, a residential program that helps homeless men re-enter society after they have solved their addiction problems. (NYT/Lisa Berg)

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/30/us/drug-addicts-among-the-homeless-case-studies-of-some-lost-dreams.html?pagewanted=all

Drug, alcohol and mental issues are the very core of the homelessness problem. Asmitha wants to help by giving people who live on the street food, she's made that clear. She should be applauded for her kindness, not made the target of your snarls.

Where did I say that the homeless have a busy "social calander"?

I said they are busy trying to just to the activities of daily living, like getting showers, clothes cleaned, travel to wherever they need to get to, seeking some kind of work to make some money.

Where did I say drug addiction isn't a big problem, and that combined with mental health issues, inability to find work, creates very difficult situations?

Where did I say that the homeless don't have higher than normal unemployment? I stated that according to the Washington Post, 45% of the homeless reported having some kind of work within the last 30 days.

As I said before, my opinion is that percentage is higher, when taking into consideration, odd jobs that pay under the table. If they claimed that case money as work, it could screw them out of some kind of other government benefit.

Where did I present any kind of rosey case at all?

That does not conflict at all with your findings that, at any given time, 25 to 30% of them are employed, or that during any given period within the last year, 75% were unemployed.

Absolutely nothing of what you cut and pasted contradicts anything I said in my prior post.

You just don't like it that some religious nut that thinks some God is going to protect her while she foolishly goes out alone, so she can dispense food and religion. In addition, she says that if her God happens to be looking the other way at the moment, she's fine with getting herself killed.

Sounds more like she wants to get out there and tell people she comes across how God is protecting her, and the power bar, can of beans or whatever stuff that they can get anyway, is secondary. The amount of food (that the homeless person could get anyway) is negligible. She can leverage her desire to help to much bigger results by other safer, more effective means.

Common sense, and the professionals who advocate and work with the homeless, tell people not to do this as it's dangerous, and to instead go out in groups, or donate their time and money through the proper channels.

So yeah, she's pretty much her annoying, non reality based religious nutcase with little common sense.

Thanks

Quote:
quote chai2:

Oh, baloney. You made it sound like the homeless are people with problems that are only marginally greater than what lots of non-homeless have. And it's just not true.

Chai's words:


The situation of the homeless is not, by and large, people with problems only slightly more than many of the rest of the us. Most of them have problems much, much greater than the non-homeless, as my Times article illustrated. Moreover, your whole snide "analysis" of asmitha's question misses the point, because many of the statistics you stated are counting homeless people who are in shelters, good or bad, or various programs where they have a roof, heat and plumbing. Asmitha's desire is to address the people who have none of these things, the destitute who do live on the street and might be in such a such a state of mind that they don't even bother to go down to the soup kitchen.

Your entire participation in this thread has been to try to run down someone who is trying to help these downtrodden people while giving yourself the moral high ground. You fail to do so, people who take the time to help the most helpless among us deserve to be applauded, not put down.

So the OP got what she came for.

Seems to me she got a heap of undeserved insults and not a lot of advice, other than to not do what she wants, which is to go where the street people are to bring food. There are people who do what asmitha wants to do, people who go directly where the homeless are and bring them food since they can't think straight enough or or are too depressed to even go down to the soup kitchen.

As far as asmitha's seeing this as a religious calling, so what? Since colonial times, and going back even before that, religious people have seen it as a religious calling to feed and help the poor. What's so bad about that?

If you disagree with her religious teachings, fine. But as long as the poor and destitute get helped, whether the helper's motiviation is moral, religious, philosophical or otherwise, it's still a good and noble thing.

I don't care what she does. Or why she does it, but she comes on here basically announcing to the world what a fine and charitable Christian she is and how brave and dutiful and faithful to God she is. She's fishing for compliments and she won't get them from me. Let the other Christians stroke her Ego. That crap about what time the homeless go to bed (besides being ignorant) is just the excuse for posting.

Run "anyone " down? Or the one person that wants to do some largely ineffectual, potentially dangerous activity , who is also delusional in thinking some supernatural power is going to magically protect her, and if it doesn't, she's ok with just giving up on life, and if put in a dangerous situation, get killed?

That's one person as far as I can count.

Her idea of how to help is foolish, dangerous and ill thought out.

Don't know where you have picked up anything about me saying being homeless doesn't suck and isn't really challenging. Maybe because I'' not choosing to use words like destitute, hopeless and the like. That kind of goes unsaid about the worst cases.

I just looked up the meaning of the word destitute. It means with the basic necessities of life. The homeless, because like most people have intelligence and survival instincts, can be extremely clever in figuring out ways to make it work. Make it work so well that in fact, that unless you know them, you may not realize they don't have a permanent residence at the time. Yes, there are those that are unkempt, truly hopeless, staring of into space. There are also those with the ability, drive and pride to keep themselves together and make it work. You seem to want to paint a broad picture that "the homeless" are childlike creatures constantly on the verge of dropping dead or running amuck in the streets.

It's easy to pick out the drug addled, mentally ill person person pushing a shopping cart down the street, mumbling to themselves or yelling a random invisible people. In fact these people are more the reason you don't want to go wandering around at night seeking them out.

You'd have a more difficult time pinpointing that guy that looks like anyone else. It's not like they have been ordered to where something like a Star of David on their clothes to identify them.

You don't like how I talked to one person?

Tough.

At least you're standing up for yourself and stating your opinion. Anyone can respect that.

The person you're so hell bent on protecting her delicate little feelings left long ago. Along with the typical parting shot of religious fanatics all over that Jesus needs to lift us out of our evil ways. She wasn't even Chistlike enough to say she'd pray for us.

You want to help people? Go about it in the most useful way, which includes giving of yourself in a safe way, and the with no strings attached. I'd eat my hat if she planned on giving out food without the requisite praying over and preaching to them.

Oh God yes. In all the excitement I totally forgot about that.

I have been wondering though, what time do bunny rabbits get up?

I wanted to go down to a pasture and set up a carrot juice stand for them, but I'm worried I'll get there to late and they'll already be off for the day.

Quote chai2:

From you, and I quoted back to you in an above post. You attempt to portray the homeless as just people with the same problems as anyone else, their problems just happened to make them homeless. And it's crap, as far as most of them are concerned. Their problems in terms of drug/alcohol addiction and other issues are much greater, as the Times article I quoted illustrated. This is the second go-round we are having on the same point, now you are just denying.

Quote chai2:

So now you try to disguise your snobbery as trying to help asmitha? Hah. Look, all asmitha wants to do is to drive around the streets and give people who are homeless and on the street some food. She came to A2K to ask if anyone had any ideas as to when these people are likely to go to sleep so she can give them something to eat before they turn in for the night. Her question was met with sarcasm, and when it turned out she was religious the answers became worse than that. What both you and Binks have clearly indicated is that if religious beliefs are in any way part of the motivation for someone doing something, mockery must follow no matter how decent or kind the action being undertaken. We get it-you and Tom feel that religion is so poisonous that it despoils even the act of feeding the hungry and poor. Because, no doubt, the poor might run the risk of being converted to a religion as a consequence of this, and you figure the poor would be better off risking death by starvation than to go through that.

Both you and Tom should get a bumper sticker which says, "The only good potential religious convert is a dead potential religious convert" . It would summarize your position succinctly.