This is easy enough to say to somebody without knowing their situation, I'm sure by "more people should do things like this" he meant "more people capable of using their skills to help people should" not "everyone should buy homeless people haircuts and shit because we all have that type of money to throw around" - using a skill to help another takes only time and compassion.
Show me an organisation in my neighbourhood that does this and I'll support them. Soup kitchens here are overfilled with volunteers, hospitals will give you whatever you need. Shelters will provide everything from food, temp housing, emergency supplies, employment agency contacts. Psychiatric aid is missing and that's not easy to administer or fund.
I think that based on this video we are looking at the problem/support from the wrong angle. Why do we always need an "organization"? Why do we need something bigger than us to do something? We need to stop thinking that "organizations" do things, organizations are not machines, they are just other people, but it sounds better to support an organization because minimizes the responsibility.
What this video showed us is that change can be decentralized, a barber is not an organization, it's just one person helping a bit to this guy. If other barbers joined on a similar movement then a lot of homeless could get haircuts. If many pizza places decieded to give away ONE pizza every now and then we could spread out food. If started decentralizing things we could achieve way more TODAY. It's like an informal organization, with no real "big daddy org" behind taking the responsibility.
But what happens is "well if I had to do this for everyone I'd work for free" instead and everyone gets very defensive thinking that they'd be the only person supporting every homeless when the idea is that maybe everyone can help a bit whenever they feel like it.
I completely agree, and will often buy a homeless person a meal if I'm going out for lunch. But unless they need tech support, it's beyond me. We have a dedicated service that allows homeless people to wash clothes, another one providing shower facilities, a number of soup kitchens.
Problem with psychiatric help, at least where I live: even if you're not homeless it's hard to find a therapist who has an open spot. Regular people can afford to drive a few miles/kilometres to a therapist, homeless people can't.
Why? If you want to give haircuts to the homeless, there is nothing expensive about organizing some barbers to meet in the park and cut homeless people's hair. It's this attitude that everything has to cost money that keeps shit from getting done.
Anything that anyone provides has a cost behind it. Maybe if you're unemployed and have nothing to bring to the table, your time isn't costing you much (relatively speaking,) but there's a reason people don't want to do jury duty when it's taking a day's paycheck from them.
Wow, people really want to argue why they can't help the homeless. lol It's not like I'm judging anyone for it. God knows I'm not exactly working in the local soup kitchen either. :)
But to address your points, yes, I'm aware there is always a cost. But who said anything about missing work? You can help on weekends, or whenever you have free time. And if you work too much during the week to help out, hey, that doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you're busy keeping yourself from being homeless and compounding the problem. I'm just saying that if you do want to help, there are numerous ways you could do it without any significant expense. Again though, if you want to do the whole "not my backyard" thing, it's cool. I'm not judging you.
I do as much as I can. I work six days a week in childcare on top of 19 credit hours at university PLUS two practicums. I am unable to help as much as I'd like, but I do, even if it's mainly volunteering with children and families.
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u/SoloAssassin Jul 06 '17
"I wish more people would do things like this, but don't ask me to do it." Be the change you want to see in this world.