There are reasons for homelessness. Different reasons. Just like there are various coping strategies with all the homeys when they walk up to you.
I used to put change for spare in the pocket, but not any more. I asked C why would there be so many young people opting for living on the street and becoming panhandling. C sighed. In her point of views, the most common reasons are mental illness, psychological problems that obstruct their way going back to the mainstream.
To see the problem simply as most homey's "laid-back" attitude or substance abuse is over-simplifying the whole train of problems. Multiple reasons might be contributing to homelessness. Gentrification, substance abuse, domestic violence, and mental illness can be all related. And amongst all, surrounding response to homelessness can be another effect.
Out-of-control housing prices and uprising living expense further push the imbalance of social order and polarize inequality. Young people run away from home due to domestic violence and later problems of intoxication appear as a result of temporary relief from the reality. The demand and abuse of substance becomes intense and push them further away from the mainstream pathway. In addition, the youth and the senior homeys are the groups particularly oppose to the idea of being controlled and contained.
There were days that I kept my pocket with change to spare for all those who hold up signs of help. But then some day I realized the food that we offered to help have been dumped on the exact panhandling site, causing public disorder and health concern. I felt that our compassion and little help have been taken advantage of. All those years, friends have been persuading me from handing out little gesture to help. "You are helping them to get further intoxicated and abuse themselves with substance," they said. I simply ignore them and kept doing it. Nonetheless, it was right there, I saw my food scattered on the ground where that homey sat. The muffin was intact, dumped at where he sat. The news had another man angrily protested for helping a panhandler constantly, only to find it later that that homey he's been helping was actually driving a new car, far better than his old oldsmobile. There were even a whole family standing at the intersection, with a mom holding onto one infant and the rest of the two or three children squatting beside whilst the dad holding up the sign for help. I found my heart pounding hard and I hate to see kids as a prop, begging for my sympathy.
So manipulative.
So there I stopped helping any. I drove by, still feeling kind of guilty and uncomfortable.