this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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There is a difference between a homeless person and a thief. It's a bad stereotype to consider all homeless people as thieves.
In my experiences in life, thieves almost always have a home. I mean, where is a homeless person gonna store your television?
They're not the same.
It's true that not everyone fits stereotypes, but be realistic. The vast majority of homeless people are drug addicts, alcoholics, or both. Addicts with no legal source of income are going to steal.
I don't hate homeless people at all, and I legitimately have sympathy for someone who fell on hard times and is trying to get their life together; I do hate addicts who are willing to take advantage of hard-working people. The venn diagram between homeless and addicts is very close to being a circle.
Want a little plot twist? Everyone is addicted to something or another. Why is caffeine legal, but cocaine illegal? People piss money away at Starbucks while dissing the homeless.
There's a slight but significant difference between being addicted to Starbucks and crack.
There's also the fact that instead of buying a $20 cup of coffee, you can get a $2 or so cup of coffee at most any old random gas station, and still have money left to buy 2 or 3 burgers to feed a couple homeless people instead.
I don't want to buy 2 or 3 burgers to feed homeless people. I mentioned this in another comment, but the group of people who are homeless and the group of people who are addicted to meth, heroin, whatever are largely the same group, maybe with a few outliers. Why the hell would I want to buy lunch for someone who's going to go out and rob or harass someone for $20 so they can go buy a bag of their drug of choice?
People like myself (and others in this comment section) don't hate the homeless. We hate drug addicts who shit all over society (sometimes literally) in order to get their next fix.
Here's an experiment you can try: The next time you see a homeless person begging for money so they can buy some food, refuse to give them money and offer to buy them food instead. They're probably going to call you a piece of shit and if you're lucky, they might leave you alone after that, but probably not.
People need to have sympathy for the homeless, but not for addicts. We should have social programs to house the homeless, as long as they can pass a drug test. Food banks, work-placement programs, they should all exist and be taxpayer funded, as long as those using them can pass a drug test.
I've already done exactly this with an ex girlfriend. Wonder why she's an ex..