6 ms·

I would have shit in that alley, too

54 points by vermilingua 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bell-cot 2y ago
Welcome to modern America, the greatest nation on earth! Not that things were all that much better, at the bottom, in previous decades. Or centuries.
- workingdog 2y ago
  The best thing about America is that we'll eventually colonize the moon, and we'll have Americans homeless there too.
JohnFen 2y ago
(US here) I've been making and giving out care packages to the homeless in my area for years. I've learned a ton of things along the lines of what the article talks about. When I'm looking for a person to give a package to, I try to spot the ones that look like they're in the roughest shape. If they want to, I'll spend time just shooting the breeze with them. While they're certainly appreciative of the gift, I have very frequently heard two things from them: the main thing is that they really appreciate someone treating them like a human being rather than ignoring them or treating them like garbage. And they also really appreciate someone just having a chat with them. I think lots of people tend to objectify the homeless, to think of them as somehow less than, or fundamentally different from, "decent society". The truth is that they're not. Any of us is just a disaster or two away from joining their ranks. EDIT: I just wanted to add one anecdote (of several) to highlight my point. One day when I was making my rounds, I spotted a man who didn't look particularly homeless in appearance. He had clean clothes in good repair, reasonably well-groomed, etc. But over the years I seem to have developed a kind of "sixth sense" and asked him if he was homeless. He told me that he'd been on the street for about a week. A few months earlier, he had an excellent professional job, plenty of money in the bank, owned a house, and generally had everything that people strive for. Then he suffered through a bitter divorce that ended up with him stripped of everything, leaving him broke and homeless. There was nothing obviously wrong with him -- he didn't seem to have a serious drug problem or crippling mental/emotional issues. He could have been any of us. (I gave him a care package and some advice: to make it his priority to get off the street as quickly as possible. If he stays homeless for more than a couple of weeks, he's likely to remain there for years, maybe forever. My care packages include a list of where to get help and resources of various sorts, so I pointed out one that is particularly suited to his situation and strongly encouraged him to go to them. I hope that he did. I never saw him again, so I think he may have.)
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Questions: What is in your Care Packages? How much is that based on feedback from the recipients, and how much is it based on expert opinions? (Social workers, homeless agencies, whatever.) Is your local homeless population small enough, or stable and well-connected enough, that you've acquired a minor local reputation as "Care Package guy"?
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    When I started, I selected items for my packages based on professional advice. Over the years, I've listened to feedback from the people getting them and have refined them a lot. Because I don't hand out thousands of them, I can make them a bit more generous than most. Each package currently costs me about $7. I have two flavors, one for winter and one for summer. I don't have a complete inventory list with me right now, but from memory: socks (1 pair in summer, 2 in winter: socks are perhaps the most difficult clothing item for homeless people to find), a small first aid kit, sun screen, ibuprofen, hand warmers, mylar blanket, toothpaste & toothbrush, a menstrual pad (amazingly useful even if you don't menstruate), a snack that can be eaten with bad or no teeth, a P-51 can opener, a personal letter from me and a sheet listing local resources (including places to get free meals: if someone uses them all, they can eat a solid meal six days out of the week), that sort of thing. My goal is that the package provides, basically, emergency urban survival items that will last for 2-3 days. I think the best things to include vary from place to place, so if you are thinking of doing this yourself, my advice is to talk to homeless service providers in your area to get an initial list, then refine over time. There is a very large homeless population in my area, and about 2/3rds of them are "regulars". I have a pretty fixed territory and the people in my area know who I am enough that I'm no longer really considered an "outsider" anymore. In fact, I often have regulars point me toward people who are in particular need or who are newly homeless. The care packages are only part of it, though. Another big part is just letting people know that someone out there sees and values them as people, and another big part is just general wellness checks. If someone is having a crisis, others will tell me when they won't tell those they consider outsiders, then I can call in a local agency that will come out to give them a level of assistance I'm not able to. This has happened a dozen or so times now.
Tuto58 2y ago
It is ban of plastic shopping bags. Try to find something else to contain and scoop poop. Even dogs have their little plastic bags for free.
woopwoop 2y ago
I've lived in cities with decent homeless populations (Austin, New York) for almost my entire life. I read about this phenomenon of homeless people defecating on the streets all the time. I've literally never seen this in real life. Neither the act itself, nor human waste on the ground. Am I just very lucky? What gives?
- starkparker 2y ago
  You're lucky.
- workingdog 2y ago
  It's more of a modern problem: Old-school homeless would shit in the toilet. New school homeless on fentanyl sometimes leave drug paraphernalia. Hence, businesses won't let randos in their toilets. And, therefore, more shitting on the sidewalk.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    When I was a kid, there were public toilets everywhere. They're all gone now.
cjk2 2y ago
The barista doesn’t want homeless people in the toilet because inevitably crack paraphernalia goes in there too. Better to have shit on the street than crack paraphernalia in your business toilet. As a data point, yesterday I was walking watching two guys smoking crack outside Costa in Covent Garden, London. Alas it works to the lowest common denominator. A better solution would be government investment in mental health and housing but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”
- __s 2y ago
  Have a friend who's a barista. Had a dispute at work where they wanted her to clean the blood all over the bathroom after someone had bled all over the place (she didn't think that should fall under her job description)
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Without the right PPE and training, there's a strong case they shouldn't be made to do it.
- dsego 2y ago
  Of course, but even with help there are folks who are just way too confrontational and difficult to deal with. So they get kicked out of shelters and even healthcare professionals hesitate to deal with them.
- giantg2 2y ago
  'but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”' I think this is an oversimplification and misrepresentation. I certainly see it in some additudes (my wife's opinion of aome of our neighbors, unfortunately), but there are some others. I more often see the additudes that come from responsibility. Like you mentioned about not giving money but food instead. Most government housing comes with some sort of requirements currently. I think many people just want assurances that the money is helping people and that they aren't being taken advantage of.
ralferoo 2y ago
Years ago in Sydney, I passed a homeless guy begging outside McDonalds. I too was always of the opinion that it's better not to give money to homeless people (who might just spend it on alcohol or drugs [1]), but instead get them the thing they need. As he was outside McDonalds, I asked if he wanted me to get him something. He gladly accepted, as he'd apparently been banned from going inside after they picked up on his routine of buying one coffee in the morning and staying there all day having the free refills. (To be fair, I get both sides of that argument). I came back out and handed over his meal expecting that to be it, but as he was thanking me, he said I was the first person who'd stopped to speak to him for months (presumably apart from people telling him he had to leave) and to me it seemed such a shame that while people were willing to throw a few dollars in his hat, not a single person had stopped to ask how he was. It certainly made me realise how lonely and isolating that life could be, which I'd never previously considered. [1] FWIW, I now think that's a gross over-simplification - getting drunk might be the best way to keep warm / not feel cold etc., and they might actually need money for things other than food, but the younger me hadn't thought about any of those things either.
- AndrewOMartin 2y ago
  I also find that spending money on something of your choice makes you feel a bit more like a decent human than being charitably gifted something of your choice, even if you were gifted the money.
- mingus88 2y ago
  The sad reality of city life is that there are so many people constantly in your vicinity that it's impossible to have true human connections with people. However, even more sad is the reality that people learn to turtle up and keep their heads down out of necessity. Frankly, it's dangerous to engage with strange people who are desperate. More commonly, you'll just get taken advantage of. I've been in a situation many times where I'll help a person out who says they need money for gas or food or a bus ticket, only to watch them take my money and stay in the same spot for over an hour asking even more people the same thing. Or worse, you'll offer them the food directly, as you did, and they'll give you a nasty insult and refuse the food. They'll say anything to get that money, it's often a matter of survival. But kind people become hardened and the cycle continues. I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems like income inequality is to blame and no amount of kindness will actually solve what is going on more broadly in society. But we should all try to stay kind and human.
kkfx 2y ago
I suggest another consideration: where the homeless live? In all countries we have poor and rich areas, but curiously homeless are mostly concentrated in large cities, while many are anyway poor outside they tent to have at least something resembling a home, maybe an ancient barrack or a camping van but still something. They still being able to find some occasional or regular low wage jobs still better then nothing.
b112 2y ago
I think in some cases, people are making the wrong presumption here. "Scruffy looking" person can be a homeless person, or a drug addict. And people in these businesses are employees typically, not owners. While many (most?) homeless people may be very tidy, and cause no issues, there is also a subset of homeless people which are mentally unstable. So how do you tell "good homeless" from "worrisome homeless" and lastly from "drug addict"? And if you are forced to make this choice many times per day, and get it wrong, you have customers coming to you and saying "My kid was in your bathroom and it had human shit on the wall and vomit all over the toilet!", how do you deal with that review on Yelp? Trying to claim that without any reason, just randomly, businesses started to become wary is not fair. From personal experience decades ago, I was on welfare. As I appeared somewhat respectable, I was given a discount on the largest room, as long as I kept the landlord notified of issues, vacuumed once a week, and mopped the shared bathrooms daily. The bathrooms were simple, clean, and each tenant used their own toilet paper. One day I entered a bathroom to find shit speared all over the walls. Literally, at least 60 or 70 smears of shit. Apparently one of the tenants had a friend over, he ran out of tp, and so his friend used the wall. I basically had to mop the walls, took hours to get it all off. I assure you that any such incident will make most people extremely wary of allowing anyone that appears questionable, in to use a bathroom. It's not "keep the homeless out" but "keep the scruffy looking person out" along with fear of having to clean that up again, dear god no please!, and oh no I'm going to get a bad yelp review.
ragtagtag 2y ago
> Who’s going around giving pro bono Brazilian waxes to the homeless? Apparently this is most likely to be a local clinic; when handling lower-income clients, it's often a routine part of any sexual health treatment. (A friend who is a medic is slowly enlightening me on all the necessary parts of life and healthcare that we're too polite to talk about in school.)

54 points by vermilingua 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Welcome to modern America, the greatest nation on earth! Not that things were all that much better, at the bottom, in previous decades. Or centuries.

workingdog 2y ago
The best thing about America is that we'll eventually colonize the moon, and we'll have Americans homeless there too.

JohnFen 2y ago

(US here) I've been making and giving out care packages to the homeless in my area for years. I've learned a ton of things along the lines of what the article talks about. When I'm looking for a person to give a package to, I try to spot the ones that look like they're in the roughest shape. If they want to, I'll spend time just shooting the breeze with them. While they're certainly appreciative of the gift, I have very frequently heard two things from them: the main thing is that they really appreciate someone treating them like a human being rather than ignoring them or treating them like garbage. And they also really appreciate someone just having a chat with them. I think lots of people tend to objectify the homeless, to think of them as somehow less than, or fundamentally different from, "decent society". The truth is that they're not. Any of us is just a disaster or two away from joining their ranks. EDIT: I just wanted to add one anecdote (of several) to highlight my point. One day when I was making my rounds, I spotted a man who didn't look particularly homeless in appearance. He had clean clothes in good repair, reasonably well-groomed, etc. But over the years I seem to have developed a kind of "sixth sense" and asked him if he was homeless. He told me that he'd been on the street for about a week. A few months earlier, he had an excellent professional job, plenty of money in the bank, owned a house, and generally had everything that people strive for. Then he suffered through a bitter divorce that ended up with him stripped of everything, leaving him broke and homeless. There was nothing obviously wrong with him -- he didn't seem to have a serious drug problem or crippling mental/emotional issues. He could have been any of us. (I gave him a care package and some advice: to make it his priority to get off the street as quickly as possible. If he stays homeless for more than a couple of weeks, he's likely to remain there for years, maybe forever. My care packages include a list of where to get help and resources of various sorts, so I pointed out one that is particularly suited to his situation and strongly encouraged him to go to them. I hope that he did. I never saw him again, so I think he may have.)

bell-cot 2y ago
Questions: What is in your Care Packages? How much is that based on feedback from the recipients, and how much is it based on expert opinions? (Social workers, homeless agencies, whatever.) Is your local homeless population small enough, or stable and well-connected enough, that you've acquired a minor local reputation as "Care Package guy"?
- JohnFen 2y ago
  When I started, I selected items for my packages based on professional advice. Over the years, I've listened to feedback from the people getting them and have refined them a lot. Because I don't hand out thousands of them, I can make them a bit more generous than most. Each package currently costs me about $7. I have two flavors, one for winter and one for summer. I don't have a complete inventory list with me right now, but from memory: socks (1 pair in summer, 2 in winter: socks are perhaps the most difficult clothing item for homeless people to find), a small first aid kit, sun screen, ibuprofen, hand warmers, mylar blanket, toothpaste & toothbrush, a menstrual pad (amazingly useful even if you don't menstruate), a snack that can be eaten with bad or no teeth, a P-51 can opener, a personal letter from me and a sheet listing local resources (including places to get free meals: if someone uses them all, they can eat a solid meal six days out of the week), that sort of thing. My goal is that the package provides, basically, emergency urban survival items that will last for 2-3 days. I think the best things to include vary from place to place, so if you are thinking of doing this yourself, my advice is to talk to homeless service providers in your area to get an initial list, then refine over time. There is a very large homeless population in my area, and about 2/3rds of them are "regulars". I have a pretty fixed territory and the people in my area know who I am enough that I'm no longer really considered an "outsider" anymore. In fact, I often have regulars point me toward people who are in particular need or who are newly homeless. The care packages are only part of it, though. Another big part is just letting people know that someone out there sees and values them as people, and another big part is just general wellness checks. If someone is having a crisis, others will tell me when they won't tell those they consider outsiders, then I can call in a local agency that will come out to give them a level of assistance I'm not able to. This has happened a dozen or so times now.

Tuto58 2y ago

It is ban of plastic shopping bags. Try to find something else to contain and scoop poop. Even dogs have their little plastic bags for free.

woopwoop 2y ago

I've lived in cities with decent homeless populations (Austin, New York) for almost my entire life. I read about this phenomenon of homeless people defecating on the streets all the time. I've literally never seen this in real life. Neither the act itself, nor human waste on the ground. Am I just very lucky? What gives?

starkparker 2y ago
You're lucky.
workingdog 2y ago
It's more of a modern problem: Old-school homeless would shit in the toilet. New school homeless on fentanyl sometimes leave drug paraphernalia. Hence, businesses won't let randos in their toilets. And, therefore, more shitting on the sidewalk.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  When I was a kid, there were public toilets everywhere. They're all gone now.

cjk2 2y ago

The barista doesn’t want homeless people in the toilet because inevitably crack paraphernalia goes in there too. Better to have shit on the street than crack paraphernalia in your business toilet. As a data point, yesterday I was walking watching two guys smoking crack outside Costa in Covent Garden, London. Alas it works to the lowest common denominator. A better solution would be government investment in mental health and housing but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”

__s 2y ago
Have a friend who's a barista. Had a dispute at work where they wanted her to clean the blood all over the bathroom after someone had bled all over the place (she didn't think that should fall under her job description)
- giantg2 2y ago
  Without the right PPE and training, there's a strong case they shouldn't be made to do it.
dsego 2y ago
Of course, but even with help there are folks who are just way too confrontational and difficult to deal with. So they get kicked out of shelters and even healthcare professionals hesitate to deal with them.
giantg2 2y ago
'but most of the world works on “fuck you I’ve got mine”' I think this is an oversimplification and misrepresentation. I certainly see it in some additudes (my wife's opinion of aome of our neighbors, unfortunately), but there are some others. I more often see the additudes that come from responsibility. Like you mentioned about not giving money but food instead. Most government housing comes with some sort of requirements currently. I think many people just want assurances that the money is helping people and that they aren't being taken advantage of.

ralferoo 2y ago

Years ago in Sydney, I passed a homeless guy begging outside McDonalds. I too was always of the opinion that it's better not to give money to homeless people (who might just spend it on alcohol or drugs [1]), but instead get them the thing they need. As he was outside McDonalds, I asked if he wanted me to get him something. He gladly accepted, as he'd apparently been banned from going inside after they picked up on his routine of buying one coffee in the morning and staying there all day having the free refills. (To be fair, I get both sides of that argument). I came back out and handed over his meal expecting that to be it, but as he was thanking me, he said I was the first person who'd stopped to speak to him for months (presumably apart from people telling him he had to leave) and to me it seemed such a shame that while people were willing to throw a few dollars in his hat, not a single person had stopped to ask how he was. It certainly made me realise how lonely and isolating that life could be, which I'd never previously considered. [1] FWIW, I now think that's a gross over-simplification - getting drunk might be the best way to keep warm / not feel cold etc., and they might actually need money for things other than food, but the younger me hadn't thought about any of those things either.

AndrewOMartin 2y ago
I also find that spending money on something of your choice makes you feel a bit more like a decent human than being charitably gifted something of your choice, even if you were gifted the money.
mingus88 2y ago
The sad reality of city life is that there are so many people constantly in your vicinity that it's impossible to have true human connections with people. However, even more sad is the reality that people learn to turtle up and keep their heads down out of necessity. Frankly, it's dangerous to engage with strange people who are desperate. More commonly, you'll just get taken advantage of. I've been in a situation many times where I'll help a person out who says they need money for gas or food or a bus ticket, only to watch them take my money and stay in the same spot for over an hour asking even more people the same thing. Or worse, you'll offer them the food directly, as you did, and they'll give you a nasty insult and refuse the food. They'll say anything to get that money, it's often a matter of survival. But kind people become hardened and the cycle continues. I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems like income inequality is to blame and no amount of kindness will actually solve what is going on more broadly in society. But we should all try to stay kind and human.

kkfx 2y ago

I suggest another consideration: where the homeless live? In all countries we have poor and rich areas, but curiously homeless are mostly concentrated in large cities, while many are anyway poor outside they tent to have at least something resembling a home, maybe an ancient barrack or a camping van but still something. They still being able to find some occasional or regular low wage jobs still better then nothing.

b112 2y ago

I think in some cases, people are making the wrong presumption here. "Scruffy looking" person can be a homeless person, or a drug addict. And people in these businesses are employees typically, not owners. While many (most?) homeless people may be very tidy, and cause no issues, there is also a subset of homeless people which are mentally unstable. So how do you tell "good homeless" from "worrisome homeless" and lastly from "drug addict"? And if you are forced to make this choice many times per day, and get it wrong, you have customers coming to you and saying "My kid was in your bathroom and it had human shit on the wall and vomit all over the toilet!", how do you deal with that review on Yelp? Trying to claim that without any reason, just randomly, businesses started to become wary is not fair. From personal experience decades ago, I was on welfare. As I appeared somewhat respectable, I was given a discount on the largest room, as long as I kept the landlord notified of issues, vacuumed once a week, and mopped the shared bathrooms daily. The bathrooms were simple, clean, and each tenant used their own toilet paper. One day I entered a bathroom to find shit speared all over the walls. Literally, at least 60 or 70 smears of shit. Apparently one of the tenants had a friend over, he ran out of tp, and so his friend used the wall. I basically had to mop the walls, took hours to get it all off. I assure you that any such incident will make most people extremely wary of allowing anyone that appears questionable, in to use a bathroom. It's not "keep the homeless out" but "keep the scruffy looking person out" along with fear of having to clean that up again, dear god no please!, and oh no I'm going to get a bad yelp review.

ragtagtag 2y ago

> Who’s going around giving pro bono Brazilian waxes to the homeless? Apparently this is most likely to be a local clinic; when handling lower-income clients, it's often a routine part of any sexual health treatment. (A friend who is a medic is slowly enlightening me on all the necessary parts of life and healthcare that we're too polite to talk about in school.)