We’ve all seen "them." We often refer to the homeless population in terms of "them" because it’s easy to forget that they are more than just unclean faces on the side of the road. We see homeless people on the sidewalk when we stroll around town, or standing in the middle of traffic islands, holding up tattered cardboard signs with cries for help that all too often go unanswered. Many of us are reluctant to give them money for fear that they’ll just squander it on drugs. I remember a car ride with my mom several years ago, where we were driving up to Costco to buy some food for our Thanksgiving dinner. We were getting to an intersection, and there on the sidewalk, sitting down with his back against a concrete wall, was a bleached-blonde haired, 20 something year-old homeless man. He was wearing a windbreaker that looked pretty heavily used and a cheap pair of jeans that were far too big for him. His eyes were red and bleary, with deep purple bags underneath them. My first thought was that he was some kind of addict. He may have been an alcoholic or a crack head that wasted all of his money on his poison and ended up on the streets. “Maybe if I give him money, I’m really just part of the problem,” I thought to myself.
But then I started to wonder why I had just assumed that he was a drug addict. Sure, his eyes are red, he’s got bags under his eyes and he appears to be suffering from a lack of hygiene, but wouldn’t anyone’s eyes be red if they had to sleep on a concrete floor under a noisy overpass? Wouldn’t anyone look like a “junkie” if they never had the chance to shave, shower, brush their teeth, get a haircut or buy a new set of clothes? I realized that I was basing my assumption of his drug use on the tiny amount of information I gathered just from looking at him. I pulled three dollars out of my pocket, rolled down the window, and was just about to give him the money when my mom suddenly stopped me. She said that he was obviously a drug addict, that I was only enabling his addiction to whatever substance he might have been using and that I was only perpetuating his life on the streets. Regardless, I gave the man the money. Maybe he was a drug addict, and maybe he would end up spending the money to fuel his addiction, but I had no way of knowing that. If those three dollars could buy him a bag of chips, a bottle of water or anything that he might’ve needed at the time, then I had done my job as a fellow human being.
According to United Way of San Diego County, approximately 17 percent of homeless people report alcohol or substance abuse problems. So what about the 83 percent that don’t? There are a myriad of reasons why people can end up without a home. They could be escaping from domestic violence, they might have been laid off from a job or maybe they just never had the resources to move forward in life. Each homeless person has their own story; we can’t look at them as one giant group and assume that they all ended up in the same place for the same exact reasons. They have hopes and dreams like every one of us does, and they need money in order to buy food, drink clean water, stay warm, survive. Some people might look at homeless individuals with scorn for being "lazy" and not looking for jobs, but how exactly are they supposed to get jobs? What employer would grant a homeless person an interview with their lack of hygiene and proper clothes? Not to mention all of the homeless people that suffer from disabilities, whether physical or mental and never received the quality care that they deserved. Next time you run into a homeless person, consider giving them a couple bucks, or maybe even buy them lunch. You and I, whether upper or middle class, have the fortune of having everything, and it is my belief that we should use our economic advantages to help those that have nothing. After all, the Bible tells us to help the poor. Wouldn’t Jesus have done the same thing? It’s time that we treat them like our brothers and sisters, because in God’s eyes, every soul on Earth weighs the same.
