Tonight I saw a homeless girl. She was wearing a hoodie and nothing else, nothing covering her feet, legs, or genitals. It was dark and some distance away so I can’t be sure but she appeared to be a teenager. Her movements were very childlike. She was scavenging through a pile of rotted fruit outside a produce warehouse. She ran off when a man approached her. My heart physically aches.😥
Can’t believe there will still be people who will look at her and say, “Don’t worry, if she can work hard enough, she’ll get out of her situation!”
Or just “what a shame,” that her situation is a tragedy but I mean, hey, that’s just how the world works. She shouldn’t have done XYZ or she wouldn’t be here. There was nothing to be done, and if anything COULD have been done it rested solely in her hands.
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I´ve worked in a homeless shelter for a while and it’s just heartbreaking. These people go through stuff that if some random dude told you, you wouldn’t believe it.
Abuse, rape, violence, addiction, murder, death, starvation, hypothermia, you name it and I’ve seen it happen.
Homeless people coming in high that forgot they had kids, which they left in the cold outside at night. Homeless people randomly walking in with stab wounds. Homeless people threatening me with weapons. People overdosing on drugs. People beating their partners in front of you. People beating you.
That shit is truly mental and no form of education can prepare you for this work.
And for what? Beause some dumb fucks need to make money on houses.
I’m not saying giving these people homes would magically solve all their issues. But they’d at least don’t have to worry about dying on the street for whatever preventable reason. It really radicalized me.
…This sounds like the damage is too great to fix.
People who have fallen that low should be given a home to live in and grocery deliveries and basic needs and not be expected to do anything in return. It sounds like it would be cheaper and less violent to just give them the necessities to live and let them finish their days in relative safety and stability. Because frankly… The damage to the mind I imagine is just for too much to get anything out of it NOR should the victims of such a society be expected to give anything of themselves back in the event that they do get all their needs met.
Too far gone… 🥺
There’s an increase of so called Housing First projects over here that provide housing to people that need it where they then can get help for their problems. This way they will at least have a place to stay and some sort of stability. These projects can have great results in my experience. Once people stop worrying about where they can safely sleep and eat, they’ll have more time to work on their problems.
You’d also be surprised how much the mind of some people can take. It’s very much on a case to case basis what someone can go through. I’ve had people that went through absolute hell that turned out fine once they had a stable life and I’ve had people that went through seemingly mild trouble that never recovered.
spoiler
___I also recently had a run in with a homeless man. He told me to give him money because “he didn’t want to have to steal it.” I thought he was implying he would rob me. He was frail and either on hard drugs or had had a lifetime of being on hard drugs, I could have K.O.'d him in one swipe and I’m usually very aggressive when someone does something even mildly threatening to me but something about him and his energy made me want to be compassionate even if it might be seen as risky.
He was nearly unintelligible due to being high but I could tell he was smart albeit very uneducated, very wise with a lot of soul. I pieced together he just recently got out of prison after being locked up for years and years due to gang activity, he got out and became homeless and eventually a rival gang shot him (he had a 1-3 day old gunshot wound in his torso he showed me), none of his friends family or even fellow gang members showed up to visit him in the hospital. He forgot how long he had been wandering aimlessly around.
He wouldn’t look me in the eye when I was asking him something so I asked him to look me in the eye and tell me he was telling the truth. He shot at me the hardest, saddest stare I’ve ever seen in my life. He cycled through flashing all of his gang signs and swore on them, his life, his mom. On the surface he was imitating bravado from his youth, belligerence, but I could see he was deeply hurt, that he gave everything to this gang out of desperation and lost it all tenfold and now their ways are all he has left. He was hurt that I thought he was robbing him and I didn’t trust him, I explained that unfortunately I want to trust him but I can’t. I gave him a cigarette and all my cash tips and I honestly don’t even care if he spent it on drugs or alcohol, if my life was half like that I would have done the same.
I wrote my phone number on a receipt and gave jt to him. He had a stranger he ran into call me later to give him a ride. Me and my friend and his gf I’m visiting were about to do a group activity and they told me not to, that he’s crazy, that it’s a dangerous and a bad idea, that he’s taking advantage of me, that I need to set boundaries etc. I ended up not giving him a ride but telling him I could give him a ride the next day…he never called again.
Maybe it would have ended badly. But I just feel like it wouldn’t have. No I can’t save everybody in the world, no everybody is not “my responsibility,” but I connected with him and I deeply regret letting them talk me out of it. It’s sad but at this point I relate to homeless people more than I do almost anybody else. I also know I could be in that same position very easily if just one or two of my life circumstances changed…which would be worse, that me failing this man led to me similarly being disappointed when I am in desperate need for help? Or me getting the help I would need and living to know that I got to coast along and survive and he didn’t? I am deeply disturbed. I keep returning to the spot I ran into him and pacing around and silently sitting there. I just don’t feel like I want life while people like that are treated like walking trash. I’m honestly surprised nobody called the cops on him. God forbid you look like a shambling menace because life chewed you up and spit you on on some street.
I have way too many firsthand and secondhand homeless stories. It’s bad enough that people will sit and bake on hot pavement with a sign, but then there’s stories like that, far too often…this is such a deeply depraved society, if it doesn’t get better I will rest peacefully if at the very least it burns down and a forest grows out of the ash.
On my way to work I pass by at least two to three homeless people on the interstate and at each major intersection baking in the sun with cardboard signs. It’s horrific how numb one eventually gets to it, seeing it everywhere ever day.
There are approximately 15 million vacant housing units in Amerika. The housing market is a fucking abomination
I really, really hate this country.
