The best thing you can do for a homeless person is acknowledge that they exist.
You might even choose to engage with them and listen to them, even if it is just small talk.
The homeless are just people, like you and I, members of society, with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Housed citizens and normies make it a ritual to demonize the homeless for doing all the same bad things they do: (drugs, fires, assault, being unemployed, mental disability, being a slob, etc.) The only difference is that the homeless have no expectation of privacy when they engage in those activities!
Think about what we are doing to the homeless by criminalizing them.
It is like saying:
“If you have no choice but to be outside, you can’t sleep, sit, or loiter anywhere!”
“If you can’t afford an apartment with your own bathroom, you shouldn’t be going to the bathroom!”
The homeless don’t need to be shunned or shown ‘tough love’ or be told what they should be doing or what they shouldn’t be doing. Unless, of course, they asked you for your advice and motivational speeches. But really, stop doing that. They’re homeless, not stupid.
Until we can “see” the homeless as legitimate people and be on their level, nothing can be done to fix the core of the homeless problem. But whose problem, is it?
Why is it a crime to simply exist outside of the system? So many resources are used to pressure us to conform to the expectations of capitalism. Wage labor is not the most important thing in life. Why are we so obsessed with the employability of the homeless?
Why do we automatically assume that homelessness is always a problem that needs to be solved or fixed? For some, homelessness is a choice. Why not try a harm-reduction approach? Why don’t we decriminalize homelessness and learn to manage it effectively and realistically? Personal failures or not, homeless people have always been here and always will be.
It is time for the housed, the normies and NIMBYs to stop acting like their version of reality is the only one that is valid.
The homeless don’t need to be morally scrutinized, profiled and judged, or used to fulfill our own self-fulfilling prophesies about bad human behavior.
Acknowledge that the homeless are entitled to the same expectation of justice and self-determination as everyone else.
Don’t look down on them from a place of pity and contempt. Don’t assume your life is more rewarding or more fulfilling than theirs.
And finally, please don’t give them money with some expectation or obligation of yours attached to it.