Will blog for food

I’m a little torn on how I feel toward homeless people. Everyone’s seen them standing at the freeway offramp, or at a stoplight on the center median, holding the stereotypical cardboard sign with some phrase describing their hardship written in a sharpie (one question always comes to mind: where did they get the sharpie?). Some are old, some surprisingly young, some have their pets with them, some have their children, some are Vietnam vets, others recently lost their jobs. However, despite their apparently destitute situation, I’m always hesitant to hand out money or sympathy whenever I see such a person.

I currently work two careers to make my living and to fuel my ambitions for a prosperous life. I’m at a desk for 50 hours a week doing commercial graphic design, and for my fine art career I probably spend another 30 hours at home painting or hustling at art events. I’m constantly up into the wee hours of the night to get my artwork done, when many times I’d much rather just go to bed. But I do what I must to progress my career(s) forward. Hell even when I was a kid, my dad and I used to collect aluminum cans in alleys, take them to the recycling center, and he'd let my brother and I have all the money that we earned. So I can’t help but feel a little resentful when I’m driving home after just having spent 10 hours in an office earning a living, and I see a perfectly healthy looking man standing on the street corner with his cardboard sign, holding his hand out. I can understand if someone has just lost their job and are having a hard time, but I know for a fact that there are a multitude of programs out there to help people off the street. Shelters where they provide you with food, clean clothes, an address so you can apply for jobs. Or if they have the drive, they can start their own career working for themselves – just as I’ve done with my fine art career. I can’t help but feel many homeless people are there because they either choose to be there, or don't fully understand how to be anywhere else.

I made this silly little chart showing what I think are different categories of one's acknowledgment of their poor situation, as well as their understanding/desire for how to get out of it.


I bring up the homeless issue on this blog because it’s always the poor and misfortunate that are the supposed to be the recipients of our charity in many religions. And I’m all for helping people on hard times get back on their feet again. Soup kitchens, unemployment programs, food stamps, shelters – to help them in their time of destitution to get back on THEIR feet. Not to sustain them indefinitely. I feel the same thing is being done when I reach into my pocket and hand someone my spare change. I’m perpetuating their lifestyle of pan-handling. I’ve seen too many immigrants come over to this country with the shirt on their back – not even speaking our language – who work their asses off and prosper very nicely. So I know it can be done.

Though I guess there may be certain incentives to a homeless lifestyle. Standing at a busy intersection all day, being passed by 20 cars a minute for 10 hours – that could be 12,000 cars. And if only 1% of them stop and give that guy $1, that guy just made $120 cash. The tax-paid equivalent of that could be $144. And he just stood there, looking unhappy. Some people sweat all day with a hammer in their hand or pushing groceries across a barcode scanner and don’t make that much. This is not to say I think at all that being homeless is an easy, lucrative lifestyle. I can only imagine the extent of disease, drugs, and prostitution that are part of that way of life. But you'd think that would be even more of an incentive to climb out.

I do feel that many sidewalk wanderers are not mentally stable. And perhaps this is what prevents them from having the drive to move out of their situation. Perhaps the sane ones in the shelters trying to clean up and get their life back together actually DO, so we don’t seem them anymore. In college I helped a friend of mine film a documentary in LA on homeless people, and we interviewed several people on the street, and then several more in a shelter. And my sentiments were pretty much dead on. The grungy people living by the dumpster at 7-11 made me feel like I was talking to a cross between Jim Carrey and Hannibal Lector, and many people in the homeless shelter were folks who had lost their jobs and their homes and were earnestly trying to get back on top of their life. But there are also great numbers of people who don't know any other way of life, so their pit of despair is invisible to them.

So all in all, I agree with what many religions say about helping the needy and the poor. And I think helping the wretched souls of the world doesn’t need to hinge on any religion, just the desire to extend a hand to those who need it. However I’m all about teaching people to fish so that if they choose, they can realize their own ocean of potential – rather than handing them anchovies the rest of their life.