What do you think about this video of a homeless person?

Err, where’s the chuffing vid? :D

Oops. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AUBTAdI7zuY

The whole thing looks stage managed to me, very dubious.

He insists it wasn’t staged. The guy who filmed it set up some sort if site to raise money for this particular homeless man and it has raised over $90k from what I understand.

I just wondered if anyone who have a negative reaction about the homeless guy giving away his money, or what I mean is spending the money right away, even if it is to help others.

I once saw this show where they gave a homeless person $100k and he spent it all and gave it away really fast. He did it mostly helping family. He put himself right back in the same financial situation fast.

He did go to the liquor store but just because he is homeless and potentially an alcoholic does not mean the man does not have compassion or is a bad person. The problem with giving money to the homeless is you just don’t know. In this case his compassion appears to be part of his personality and likely a contributing factor in his situation. That is.. if it’s real. It’s been my experience that a percentage of the homeless are like this man while the others are drug addicts or have mental issues. I generally don’t give money because it usually just fuels addiction but on rare occasions I do when it appears that the situation is different. It’s really impossible to tell though.

I wondered why on earth he was going to a liquor store to buy food. I live in NY and I don’t recall ever seeing food in one. Maybe liquor stores in other states sell food.
In any case he would get more for his money if he bought from a grocery store.

Even though it could be a setup it still got the word out about the homeless.

Maybe in that part of town the liquor store was the closest store with food.

Also, the folks he gave stuff to, not one had their face pixelated, normal practice when filming is revealed to a less than amenable demographic.

That made me cry, goes to show we can never make snap judgements about others. As the poor man said, many people end up homeless due to circumstance. There but for the grace of god, and I’ll tell you what, I was in fear of this myself after losing my house in 2013 and taking my nest egg down to nothing after weathering the trickle down effect of the economic downturn, job loss and trying to hang onto my property for 3 years until I could no longer sustain myself.
Never in a gazillion years did I think it might happen to me.

Does anyone?

I was walking a thin line and the terror I experienced made me suicidal for the first time in my life, which for my personality was a very scary thing.
When one of the worlds most cheerful, humorous and life loving people starts thinking about how they will do themselves in if it came to homelessness, well….. I will never judge anyone again.
This man is a precious soul that embraces the true meaning of altruism. snif, snif

For those wondering why a liquor store might be (a) selling food and (b) a person’s first choice when shopping for food, let me introduce you to the food desert. Affluent people don’t experience this, because they either are catered to by supermarkets who want their business, or because they can drive as far as necessary to get food. Food deserts are a serious barrier to nutritious eating for poor people.

That’s exactly what I thought would happen. People who have been “there” are far more generous than people who have never had to struggle, as this video shows.
The guy basically gave away everything he had to lighten the load for others. The rich person may donate, but it doesn’t hurt. They may give away a million dollars, but they still have $89 million left.

If the events that occurred actually did happen as filmed and I think they might have, then the whole scenario is a lesson in human kindness. The guy who gave the original $100 away to someone less fortunate and the unselfish act of the homeless man sharing his good fortune with others. There are all kinds of good, decent people who hit a wall of intense unforeseen misfortunes and become homeless. It is inspiring to see the goodness in people instead of all the nasty things that people do. Thank you @JLeslie for sharing this.

The flip side, and I do agree those who are less fortunate often do show incredible compassion and generosity to those also in a bad place, is if the people with little money are always giving away their money they will never have money. Being in the hole can cost a lot of money. A person with some savings who misses a day of work can still pay their rent, while a person with no savings might need to charge their credit cards and not be able to pay in full. Then they wind up paying interest and fees, and they pay much more in the end, and have a hard time catching up. I know this is a case where the person is homeless and flat broke, and I think I would be compelled to help the people who had been good to me on the street if I were in the same situation, but I also wonder the spending and saving habits of people in that situation. I do believe bad times can hit anyone. Any of us can wind up losing everything, no matter how much we think we are smart about money. I also think some people just don’t know how to hold onto money. They feel bad about it, or want to enjoy the good times when possible, or a zillion other reasons. I’m not assuming anything about this particular guy. If they give him the supposed $90k that has been donated it will be interesting to see what he does with it.

I don’t see any reason to think the footage isn’t genuine. Even if it was staged which I don’t believe you don’t have to look very far in the USA to find people in exactly those circumstances. Isn’t it odd that the less we have the more willing we are to share?

I’m conflicted about the ethics involved with giving someone money, then clandestinely filming them. But then again, if the clip is genuine, who knows how many of the down and out our film maker had to shoot before coming across someone as idyllic as the guy in this clip. My cynical disposition tugs me toward “the film is staged”, due to decades of survival drilling where the rule is “always look for the con”. I mean realistically, what are the chances of handing $100.00 to a guy obviously down on his luck, then watch that man immediately distribute his good fortune to STRANGERS. What are the chances that you might attempt a good deed, and bump into Jesus your first time out? If this episode is genuine, it must be a truly humbling experience for the man making the film as well as his cameraman. But only the 2 of them will know for sure. And that’s usually the way it works anyway.

Fake.

First, there is his linkedin profile that raises the skeptiscism link

Josh Lin – E-commerce SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Branding, Web Advertising Specialist, YouTube, actor, producer, diector

Produced and managed a 750,000+ subscribes growing YouTube channel, with 10 – 20+ million monthly views and 2,500+ subscribers per day within one year.

Specializes – YouTube, content producing, SEO, PPC, CMS, affiliate marketing, social media, online branding, remarketing, audience engagement, email marketing and Google Analytics

Secondly, looking at his other videos, it drastically increases the probability of this being another fake.

Thirdly, if this is real, it doesn’t change the facts about the homeless:

215,344 are homeless (non-sheltered)
26.2% of those (56,420) are severely mentally ill.
34.7% of those (74,724) are chronic drug users
38% of those (81830) are alcohol abusers source

Crunch those numbers and you end up with 99% of the homeless being either severely mentality ill and/or chronic drug and/or alcohol abusers. They’re not going to spend their donations on someone else.

As for the remaining 1% of the homeless (2,370) who don’t fit neither category, a portion of them are fakers and scammers

So the odds of running into and videotaping a normal homeless man like the one in the video who buys food for the homeless using his own donations is extremely slim to none.

Fourthly, if the video is real, the homeless man’s story is not making a whole lot of sense.

What happened to the money from the sale of the house?
Why did he quit his job if that could have helped cover the expenses?
Why didn’t he take the cash to go buy himself some clothing so he could get another job?

^^ Absolute no brainer that its fake, amazed that so many are sucked in by this type of sugar coated shite.

I wonder if the man in the clip sleeps in a shelter? We just know he was panhandling, and that he lost his home.

I had to stay in a homeless shelter for a bit in North Las Vegas when I was 15 years old. The demand was so high that we could only stay four nights out of the month. So it is bullshit to pretend that there is some magical organization that takes care of the homeless. Shelters are band-aids. They do nothing to actually fix the problem.

Battered womans shelters are way better at finding people jobs and homes.

@johnpowell Who was pretending that?

Without asking direct questions we can’t know anything for certain. Man, some of you are awfully cynical. The man said he gave up his work to be a caregiver for sick parents, maybe they were renting the condo. Fake or not I am sure there are plenty of homeless that would share with their peers on the street. Until we all walk a mile in anothers shoes we don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to judging.

Cynical? Judging? You’re talking out of your arse again :D
No one is saying its not hard to be homeless, or we’re unaware or uncaring, I knew homelessness was real before this thread & i’ll still know when I wake up tomorrow.
The guy making these vids is the one manipulating & didtorting their plight, if you can’t see that then that’s your problem, fake as fuck!

After my divorce my ex quit his job at Boeing and moved to Seattle, homeless, jobless. He stayed at a homeless shelter for over 6 months, with my 14 year old daughter.

@Coloma Some of our evaluations are cynical, but from an objective standpoint, skepticism is all but required. Once again, if you decide to donate $100 to a beggar, what is the likelihood of bumping into Jesus on your first attempt?

@stanleybmanly Why do odds make any difference? It is what it is. IMO the video showed our, all too often, negative and degrading stereotypes of the homeless. I also find calling a homeless person a “beggar” insulting. I am a quality woman who has lived a good life and have traveled the terrifying road of potential homelessness.

It has humbled me and taught me to not make snap judgements about others circumstances. Go the website . ” over 50 and out of work” and read the stories. Lots of hard working, decent people have found themselves teetering on the edge of homelessness in the last handful of years since the economy tanked.

@stanleybmanly _“Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”

Yeah, this concept is really not about playing the odds. It is about learning to approach everyone without judgment.

@Coloma Beggar may be derisive, but it is the shortest and most accurate description of one BEGGING for money. I’m not insulting anyone. Jesus referred to beggars as beggars, and announced to the world that they were first in line for the kingdom of heaven. The point is that odds matter. Any healthy view of reality depends very much on our ability to predict the likelihood of whether or not we are confronting the truth. The question “what do you think about this video of a homeless person” is a question about judgement.

@stanleybmanly Well…I have come face to face with a Mountain Lion and tripped over a lot of rattlesnakes, odds are I should have been attacked or bitten, I wasn’t. Goes to show odds don’t always hold truth. I agree about the question being about judgement, my point is that it’s ultimate message is about suspending judgement and stereotypes.

ALL acts of charity are about suspending judgement and stereotypes. The question is whether THIS was an act of charity or a staged opportunity for a moving piece of film. Your death defying escapes from the perils of nature may be heartwarming, but they should not prevent you from asking the very sensible question “Were I to repeat the “experiment” in the clip,should I expect the same result?”

What would be more interesting would be to give $100 to 100 different homeless people around the country and film those experiences,and film what happens next in all those instances. To show one example, which may very well have been one of who-knows-how-many, is kind of dishonest, in my opinion. Not that it’s not possible that this first and only experience yielded this incredible outcome, but I would be more accepting of being shown 99 other examples.

@stanleybmanly It’s just curious that you keep returning to a Jesus meme in a way that completely misses the point of the original reference. Your point of view is different than mine, and that’s fine – but I think you should drop the reference, which is not supporting your point at all.

You can significantly reduce doubt by actually buying what the homeless request instead of giving out money and then questioning their motives. If they’re hungry, buy them a meal. If their clothes are soiled, buy them clean clothes. That is how you expose “homeless” frauds. If they’re frauds, they’re just going to throw whatever you bought them in the garbage after you leave. They hate that because they cannot use actual cash to buy drugs and alcohol. You don’t just hand out $100 like that guy did.

Even if the episode is totally true, after one day the guy and his friends are right back where they started – except now they have an even more urgent need to use a bathroom.

The situation requires much more than just money. If you are going to spend $100 it is far better to spend $20 on food and $80 to pay them for performing 6 hours of some work: cleaning the highway, helping repair a vacant house, picking vegetables, etc. If the person completes the work as promised, they can come another day and be paid the same if they pee in a cup and blow in a breathalyzer. Food, restrooms, a shared telephone and one hour of counseling will be provided each day.
They are free to refuse the drug test and breathalyzer – and the donor is free to not take them back.

(I am required to pee in cup if asked. I accept that arrangement to continue doing what I do.)

@LuckyGuy Thank you! That’s my point. Spend the $100 and you have nothing again just one hour later.

I do want to say that regarding the mentally ill I have a completely different way of looking at this, I believe in society helping to support and give medical help to the severely mentally ill. However, if the guy in the film’s story is true, and he was an average guy who hit bad luck, I would be curious to know what he will do with the $90k raised for him. I am not worried so much about a quick $100, because I said he might be very grateful to those people who have helped him survive on the streets. Although, if he soent every penny of it, it does make me wonder. If you were down to nothing and received $90k you would be living in an apartment, and trying to find work within a week with the bulk of the money still in the bank. A lot of people get a big windfall and don’t understand the money will run out.

@grac3alot I disagree.
If I choose to “give” a “gift” to a homeless person, I could care less what they use it for. $100 crappy bucks is not going to buy them a new wardrobe, a car, pay for the deposits on a apartment or a computer or cell phone so they can actually seek work.
If I ended up homeless I’d probably freaking drink too, wouldn’t you? haha

Whatever gets them through their day is my mantra and if I can make it a little better whether that is a sandwich or a beer, who the hell cares?
Just because some poor homeless person buys a quart of beer doesn’t make them a fraud.
I bet’cha a gazillion dollars anyone of us here would turn to drinking if we ended up homeless. Also…just for the record, I once did give a homeless guy $100, it’s a long story but, suffice it to say, it made my day and his.

We have a homeless guy on our community here with 2 horses. He rides one and packs his worldly possessions on the other. Our community gives him money all the time for himself and his horses. I saw him yesterday, horse tied in the parking lot of a local hub, being a horse lover I always help him out and his animals, unlike our show mares here at the ranch, are a little underweight, their feet could stand a trimming, but this guy LOVES his horses and they are 1st on his agenda of how he spends his gift monies.

@JLeslie Hopefully he will be able to secure a decent little place to live and go from there. He may have to skim from his savings at times, but short of having millions it will run out eventually. If he made 20k a year and skimmed 10k to make up the difference it would last about 9 years. The odds of him getting a masters degree are slim, we have to be realistic. If he landed a minimum wage job that money would just be a safety net for as long as it lasted.

I think it would be remiss of us all not to reflect on the plight of the three little pigs at this time.
Curse that fucking big bad wolf & his huffy puffy ways…evil bastard.

@Coloma If his story is true, he has been affording life for well over 20 years. No reason why he can’t find his way back if given a chance to get back on his feet with some start up money. Why does he need a masters degree? Millions of people afford life without a masters.

I happen to agree with you that if I give someone on the street money I don’t worry about how they spend it, and I don’t want rules about what food people buy with food stamps, etc. My only point is there are people who spend money as fast as they get it and they are destined to be poor. They can make $100k a year and if they live check to check, some don’t even do that, they have debt, then the first bad bump in the road they lose everything. They can’t ride out any storms. I have a lot of empathy for the person making only $20k, because it’s hard to stash any money for a rainy day, but the person making $100k? He better not be out on the street in 3 months of being out of work. There are exceptions and extremes to that, but I am talking in general.

I hope you are not saying that since the calculation is 9 years that he might as well not worry so much about stretching the money? Who cares if it lasts 5 or 9? A lot can happen in 9 years. Plus, he might be a $40k income guy. We have no idea. If he buys a modest house eventually he might have no mortgage by the time he can get social security.

When I started in my 20’s I had $2k in the bank and was making $25k. I lived with a roommate and had a very nice life overall. If I had had $90k in the bank it would have been amazing.

With $100, I can buy a homeless person food, clothes, toiletries and a motel room for him to shower and sleep for the night. The difference is that if I bought him all these things, I’m not killing him and temporary stabilizing his life, where as your $100 unsupervised would allow him to buy more alcohol and drugs that is killing him. You might be helping him get through the day, but you’re decreasing his days on earth and increasing the suffering he will have to experience from the health consequences of his abuses.

A homeless man who buys a beer is not a fraud, but he is a gigantic fraud when he tells me that he wanted my money because he was extremely hungry but instead bought beer or drugs

@grac3alot A lot of homeless who are alcoholics are mentally ill also. They are self medicating and unfortunately get addicted. You don’t seem to have any compassion for that at all. Even though I was critical of the money spent so quickly, I find you to be extremely harsh.

I fail to see your point. Whether they’re mentally ill and/or both alcohol and/or drug abusers, doesn’t change the fact that giving them $100 unsupervised will only help fuel their alcohol and drug abuse. You’re increasing their suffering from consequential poor health and decreasing their days on earth. Now that is extremely harsh.

. @grac3alot So what? My point is that if I choose to give I relinquish all control over how my gift is used and yes, it IS about one day at a time for people in those circumstances. If I can brighten their day a bit, so be it, they can buy whatever they want with the gift I give and I don’t afford myself some superior status because, god forbid, they might choose to buy a drink along with their sandwich. My contribution is not going to make a major difference in their sad situation.

As @JLeslie says, many mentally unwell people are on the streets and anyone in that situation is going to want some small measure of relief from their suffering. I imagine many are looking exactly to do that anyway, decrease their days on earth because of the hopelessness of their circumstance.

I understand, I just don’t agree. Statistically, it will be wasted or worsen the situation. That is why I never donate to the homeless, but if I were to ever give, or give advice to someone who wants to donate, I would follow my own standards. My standards are based on the potential value of the recipient and the background stories of what brought them to poverty. If I don’t see that my donation stabilizes or improves the situation (long-term) or if the reason they’re poor is because of their own irresponsible behavior rather than by unforeseeable consequences, or the story doesn’t make sense at all, then I don’t donate.

@grac3alot I’m not trying to convince you to donate. You can do whatever you want obviously.

Do you feel society has some responsibility to help the mentally ill though? Maybe through taxes?

As far as addiction, middle class, educated, fairly mentally stable people get addicted and have a hard time quitting and staying clean. You want to put your money towards trying to help the mentally I’ll on the street get dry? That’s probably more expensive than letting them drink and eat. I want them to recover, but the stats are against them.

When I worked in a psych hospital very few of the homeless people were addicts at our facility.

@JLeslie You bring up a really good point, addiction does not discriminate based on financial status. Why is it more acceptable for someone that keeps up appearances, maintains a stable lifestyle, to be a drinker or drug user but we persecute the homeless the most down and out segment of our society. How many people will be attending New Years parties with alcoholic family memebers and friends and looking the other way, if not bringing along a bottle or 3 to encourage more drinking, but, god forbid, how DARE a homeless person buy a quart of beer with our paltry little tidings?

Some people wind up in the streets because of their addiction. It does frustrate me. A person from an alcoholic family with a college degree who knows alcoholism is genetic goes ahead and partakes in the drink and then does things that endanger all of us and themselves it’s frustrating. It also can cost us all money. When I worked in rehab one exercise was for the addicts to calculate how much money they lost because of their addiction. It was often well over $100k.

Addiction can help cause mental instability. It basically halts your development from the time you become an alcoholic. Start when your 17 and you are an adolescent mind the rest of your life unless something major happens. Temperamental, angry, sure you are right about everything, selfish. Not a great age to be stuck at.

Some people wouldn’t be mentally ill if they hadn’t taken that drink. Or, at least would not have been as unstable. Some people are mentally ill and try to self medicate. Two different things.

My grandfather only drank Manischewitz at Passover, but he was mentally ill. In his old age what kept him in decent living conditions was my father (his son) making sure he was cared for.

@JLeslie

I do not support any active social responsibility like helping the mentally ill (this should be a personal, individual choice), however, I do support passive social responsibility like not causing harm to others and stopping it when it happens.

No, I have no interest in helping any addicts either for the same reasons as not helping the homeless. Doesn’t matter if they’re mentally stable or unstable. Statistically, only 40% of addicts recover and within those 40%, up to 60% relapse. Based on my donating standards, this is a red flag. A waste of money because the potential value is too low, too long, too costly, and too risky. And that is not even incorporating background checks prior to addiction.

I asked if you believe should help the mentally ill through tax money.

I answered you I do not support any active social responsibility like helping the mentally ill (this should be a personal, individual choice).

No, we should not be using tax money to help the mentally ill.

I had read it wrong I guess. I thought you had written addicts not mentally ill.

I don’t see how we can not put federal money towards helping the mentally I’ll, but that’s my opinion, you’re welcome to disagree.

I think that we all should embrace the “there but for the grace of god, the universe, the flying spaghetti monster go I ” mantra.
@grac3alot Consider yourself lucky that your ivory tower is intact, anyone can fall victim to addiction, mental illness, homelessness or poverty. Why else are these people called “The less fortunate”? Helping in whatever way we can is part of being a decent human being, period.

It’s about shared humanity not egoic superiority.

There for the grace of God. Exactly what I was thinking. Anything can happen at any time.

@Coloma

I only partially agree because you made some extreme statements that make it sound like it can only be one or another. I agree that luck has some role in keeping one healthy, compensated, and protected, but so do one’s efforts and acquired skills.

Sure, one’s life can be devoted to sharing, but life can also be about egoism, or both. This is based on personal prioritizations. There is no right answer here.

As for the rest, I agree with you, but we have a completely different understanding of what help means and how it should be applied. I see no difference between burning money or giving it away to help an addiction cause with only a 20% complete recovery rate.

I don’t usually give to homeless people, because I am one who doesn’t like to think that my hard earned money is going to crack or liquor. I don’t typically drink liquor myself, partly because it’s expensive. If I don’t buy it for myself, I don’t want to buy it for other people. Of course, there’s no way of knowing whether the recipient will buy a ham sandwich or a pint of rum, but I am a hard working single mom who has a responsibility right here at home.

I know people say it’s not a gift if you try to control what happens to it. I know people will say I have the wrong attitude. Again, my number one responsibility is to my 7 year old. Paying for someone else’s addiction can be a bottomless pit.

I am for my tax dollars going to programs to help mentally ill. If the mentally ill person wants to go to rehab or detox or needs a program to treat whatever their illness is, I am all for it. I will donate to programs and organizations that help the homeless and mentally ill, and the work that I used to do was largely with that type of population.

There but for the Grace of God. My daughter got a DUI four years ago. God, she was just shaking over having to tell me. She was grown but she knew she couldn’t get through this without me.
How could I get mad? She got caught…I never did and I’m sure I drove 10X drunker than her in the past. The attorney we consulted said the same thing. No judging.

@Dutchess_III Yep, anyone can fall from grace, after all, we’re only human.
@jca I agree, your child is a priority and we should never give under duress or out of a sense of obligation.
@JLeslie Yes, exactly.
@grac3alot I had a great financial plan and a nice nest egg until the economy tanked. The road to hell and all that jazz. One thing’s for certain you really DO find out who your friends are when the magic carpet deteriorates and you need a little help to fly again. I have some of the best friends anyone could ask for, and they have never once judged me, only praised my strength and resilience even when I felt like duct taping myself in the bathroom and lighting a Hibachi.

I have learned that humility is something one must come by on their own, no room to talk until you’ve taken the walk.
I’m also addicted to coffee, I sure hope if I ever end up homeless someone will buy me a big steaming cup of my addiction. God, to not have that morning coffee, makes me want to die already. haha

Good discussion all. :-)