http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/

Now, I’m not trying to be Mother Theresa, and I’m not trying to climb up on the proverbial high horse…but forgive me when I start to give us all shit for being contributors to such a sucky world. We live in Canada…we are supposed to be a nation that prides itself on our social consciousness, and our ability to uphold the utmost in Human rights standards….

Or do we?

Every day and night there are people who slink past the side of my townhouse, and through the parking lot to right outside my door where the complex dumpster sits…I see homeless seniors, prostitutes, and people with obvious mental issues and addictions digging through my trash on a daily basis. There are those who will keep anything salvageable outside of the dumpsters and accessible to anyone who may need it…and every so often someone will be bold enough to go door to door and ask for bottles, and those of us who have empathy will kindly oblige. Then there are those who are miserly…those who are more content to throw out perfectly good items than to make them available to people who may need them. These are the people that own the shoe box they live in and the car they drive, yet are compelled to keep that seven dollars and sixty five cents worth of pop cans to themselves…because the gospel according to them states that any person who digs through a dumpster would probably use that $7.65 for heroine, or condoms.

But isn’t that how we are programmed to think? Survival of the fittest??? From the time we’re born we are told not to speak to the friendly old man who sits outside the grocery store everyday with a tin cup. We are taught that these people are ‘bums’. The phrase, “get a job!” has always been on our tongues. What the status quo retort has failed to provide us with is an understanding of what being homeless means, and what contributing factors play a role in making a person homeless.

Of course it’s an attitude only we can be responsible for creating: a world that makes the homeless man/woman who lives downtown lazy and intolerable, and makes the unemployed 25 yr old man living under his rich parents’ roof up in White Rock free spirited and confused.

Start here to learn more about how most homeless people are just like you and I, yet have fallen on some hard times or have some form of mental illness. They’re NOT lazy people by an means….

http://thehomelessguy.wordpress.com/

http://jamiesbigvoice.blogspot.com/

http://wanderingscribe.blogspot.com/index.html

http://homelessmanspeaks.wordpress.com/

All seemingly good, decent people who are anything but lazy….they find ways to survive in conditions that would cause a lazy man to just curl up and die.

….. i guess what i should have put is: How much of it isn’t by choice, and how much of it is because of -and for lack of a better word- laziness

you probably represent the thinking of most people who view homelessness as a lazy man’s problem. There’s so much more to it and I urge you to do more research.

Quoting MitchMacCallum:

….. i guess what i should have put is: How much of it isn’t by choice, and how much of it is because of -and for lack of a better word- laziness

Do you honestly think these people choose to sleep outside in the freezing cold? That they enjoy being harassed and beaten and spit on? Are you of the opinion that severely depressed people can just “snap out of it”? I hope you never lose your house and you’re job because you’re too sick to keep either.

Well, obviously they cannot expect them to pay the fines. So, they probably just want to lock them up, which i think someone may have already pointed out.

Call me a cruel hearted bastard, but i don’t see any reason for people to be on the streets. I mean, come on get a job, man. Do something worthwhile with your life. Use your cart pushing skills at the grocery store if you have to.

For once, for ONCE.. I would like someone to sit there and have some damned compassion. Do you honestly think that people choose to be homeless? To have a medical condition that PREVENTS them from getting the proper medical attention, sit on the streets each day knowing that if they had meds they could have a real job, real shelter etc..Not one person I have ever met who is homeless, would choose this for themselves. Not one person on the street is any less a human being then the jackass who throws a smartass remark their way and walks by. Circumstances places in different places in life. In a New York minute it could all change. Easily.

Most people are homeless cause they do not have the access to the medicine they need to function properly. But I am sure you are aware of this. Well the usual response to that is: Well there are government programs out there that help them.. Answer to that: Umm.. No there isnt. If you do not have a permenant place of residence, that means a roof over your head, then you are not able to get access to government assistance. So day by day you get worse. And then you panhandle and hope that the change you get can either, get you someplace warm to sleep or gets you some drugs/alcohol. Cause anything to still the voices that terrorize you day in and day out is a blessing.. good or bad.

You know, what saddens me the most about todays world, we are so quick to judge.. yet we offer no solution.. The select few of us out there who really give a shit are called pacifists.. Call me what you will. but in the end I am called a human being.. and I dont think that I am better then the man who lives just across the way from me who has no arms and no legs.. nor do I think I am better then the woman who pushes a needle into her arm to make the voices stop, to make the hunger go, to warm her cold body.. Those are the real victims, not the select few who get to drive by in the souped up Mercedes and turn their noses down.. Cause most of them are just a coke line away from being in those shoes themselves.

I can appreciate your sentiment, I am sure there are some who have opportunity to get jobs who dont. But with that said:

“New York has a department of homeless services, and the New York Police Department has a homeless outreach unit. Any reports of unsafe shelters are forwarded to the 300-strong unit of the department of homeless services”, he said.

“Clean streets are also a big factor in reducing crime”, said Lemcke, who noted all businesses must have a recycling centre at the back of the property.

“Businesses are responsible for cleaning up, twice a day, the sidewalk in front of their business and 15 inches out from the curb on the road. Think about that? What if we had that in the Downtown Eastside?”

So Mr. Lemcke’s obviously put his own spin on this and, rather than ticketing business owners who don’t clean up in front of their property (he should - it’s disgusting), he’s decided that it’s a good idea to sweep homeless people up off the streets when they can’t afford to pay their tickets (what a ridiculous concept!).

You know, being homeless isn’t pretty…it doesn’t look pretty and I’m sure it doesn’t feel pretty. The crime related news stories coming out of Vancouver that I hear of on a daily basis have nothing to do with homeless people (unless they’re the victims). It’s not the homeless guys out shooting off guns in full restaurants or beating elderly people in their homes. If they think that harassing homeless people is going to do anything other than waste time and manpower, they’re wrong…this will NOT do anything to “fix” Vancouver. But why am I not surprised?…this city thinks the Olympics are the best thing to ever happen to us.

Many of Vancouver’s problems stem from money (and greed), not the lack of it.

Call me a cruel hearted bastard, but i don’t see any reason for people to be on the streets. I mean, come on get a job, man. Do something worthwhile with your life. Use your cart pushing skills at the grocery store if you have to.

It is mind bogglling to say the least.

just a thought.

So here are some thoughts as this mind races to find some inner peace tonight.

There id so much tragedy in all of this.

We live in countries, such as the US and Canada, that have the ability to feed, cloth, educate, home and employee all people of all backgrounds and refuse to do this. We have the medical know how to make our people healthy and happy ( to a degree ) and don’t do this. We have the ability and let it pass through our fingertips each day. We let pieces of our humanity slide right on by as we let the ” man” dictate to us what we should feel, eat, drink, smoke, drive, wear, watch, read etc.. And the one time we have a voice that can be raised in a furious roar, we sit with out hands over our eyes, ears and mouths and let the world pass us by.. If we didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, if we didn’t hear it, it didn’t happen, if we didn’t speak it, it didn’t happen. This is tragedy.

Tragedy is knowing that right now there are homeless men, woman and children on our streets day in and day out without anything to give them that shelter from the rain of life. Tragedy is knowing that right now a woman is selling her body, the only thing that ties her to who she is, so she can feed her child. Tragedy is knowing that there is some man out there driving a needle in his arm, cause heroin makes the voices still for just a little while, and the meds that could aren’t available to him or its cheaper. Tragedy is knowing that some child is sitting under some overpass somewhere wondering where God is in all of this bullshit.

Tragedy is knowing that as I type these words on the screen there is some cop that is beating the shit out of some homeless man ,cause he can. Or maybe he is getting a kick out of harassing the ladies who sell themselves.. ” give me this and I will keep you out of jail.” Knowing that she might be doing this to feed her kid.

Tragedy is knowing that the more we allow our dignities to be taken from us, the more we slip into a world where we all become less then zero. When we as a nation get enraged at the lack of government control when a hurricane hits.. And will give all we can afford to help out a charity that we “deem” appropriate, but give nothing to the man that we see on the street.. Where is that rage when that hurricane hits everyday.. every single day..And it does.. its hits the street every hour of every minute. A hurricane of unparalleled reality. When do we as a human race start looking at the world we live in and wonder how we can make it better.. Not for us..but for each other,for our children? When do we just say stop?

We can be silent .. or we can be a pissed off people who say enough is enough and make things happen.

When did we stop believing that we can only be a better people when we start remembering that being HUMAN is part of the word HUMANITY? When did it pay to stop caring? It started the day that some idiot who would never know whats its like to not be able to feed your child, decided its a “offense” to be homeless and issue a ticket. To kick them in the teeth that one last time. To show them “I have this so I am better then you.”

I pray they will never have to know what its like to hear the voice in your head giving you NO options.
I pray they will never have to know what its like to hear your child cry for milk, when you have none to give.
I pray they will never have to deal with the inner devils that mental illness can bring.
I pray they will never have to sell their body for anything.

I can pray or I can get more pissed.. I decided to get more pissed.

What happens when homeless people get tickets is that the charges build up in a computer somewhere…and when that person finally fights their way to the brink of starting a new life, they are slammed with collection notices. It is very difficult to start from scratch when you are already in debt.

This is one of the stupidest fucking phenomenons I have ever witnessed. Maybe I’m just bitter that having to put a few thousand dollars of my ex-husband’s fines on my credit card started me off to a life of debt as well. Boo.