Sometimes you might encounter some youtube video or other piece of media where some people try to Do The Right Thing for at least one person, by going to a homeless person and giving him a new chance at life. As in not just giving him some pocket money, but going all the way out: Give him a place to stay, find him a job, give him some serious starting money, all so that he can get back on his feet, get his life in order and start a new one where he can sustain himself and stop being poor and homeless.
These projects try to show altruism: Helping someone who has fallen to hard times to get back on his feet and get a new chance. Help a homeless person get a home and a job, a stable income, and thus a higher quality of life and a brighter prospect for the future. Helping some poor guy, as a random act of kindness.
While these sound really good and commendable, the problem is that they seldom work out in the end, and usually end up failing catastrophically.
The main problem with this idea is that it assumes that the homeless person is just a normal everyday good citizen who is homeless because of bad luck and unfortunate circumstances out of his control. Maybe he lost his job, he couldn't find a new one, he was deeply indebted because of bad financial decisions, perhaps corrupt government officials went really hard after him, he ended up losing his family, his car, his home, and he ended up homeless on the streets, begging for money for his survival. If he just were given a second chance he would gladly take it and work hard to get back on his feet.
Problem is, while this sometimes happens, these people are a microscopic minority of all homeless people. Trying to find one of them from among the others is like trying to find a needle in a haystack (something that's made even harder by the fact that most of the other homeless people will gladly lie about why they are homeless in order to take advantage of the charity they are being offered.)
The unfortunate reality is, however, that the vast, vast majority of people who are homeless are so because they are substance addicts. They are either pathological alcoholics, or drug addicts, or both. Some of them may be pathological gamblers (which, in terms of succeeding in life, isn't significantly better).
And the problem is that in the vast, vast majority of cases you just can't help an addict by giving him free money, free housing and a job. This even if the addict in question would want to become better (not to talk about the ones that don't give a flying fuck and only want to take advantage of people showing them kindness.)
Alcohol, drug and gambling addiction is not something that can be cured just like that. They are really, really bad problems and require serious help to solve (and even with the best possible help in existence it's still not a guarantee). Even when the person himself would honestly want to be better and get over his addiction, that's unfortunately just not how it works. Wanting to be cured is the right first step, but unfortunately it rarely is enough. The addiction just is too strong.
Thus, time and again when this kind of altruistic charity event is done, and some random homeless person is given a second chance at life, it ends up failing. Perhaps during the first weeks or even months it might look like he's getting his life in order and coming back to a normal successful life, but sooner or later he will just fall back to the addiction and just fail. (Invariably he'll try to hide his substance abuse or gambling, either because of shame or in order to take as much advantage of the charity as possible, but sooner or later it will become obvious that he's using or gambling again.)
Sometimes the situation may even become worse than that, and it might even backfire on the people trying to help. The homeless person might start doing all kinds of things to take advantage of the charity. For example he might start demanding more and more money, using all kinds of excuses and sob stories, or even outright blackmail (as happened at least in one actual case.) He might get other people involved, and suddenly the people who were initially trying to help might find themselves as the target of a gang of people trying to extort them and take advantage of them. If the formerly-homeless person happens to be smart and devious enough, he might even turn the community against his benefactors, trying to shame them because of not "helping him enough" (ie. giving him more money). (Again, real case.)
The fact is that if you want to help an addict, it requires a lot more than just giving him free money and housing. Addicts tend to need some serious professional help (and even then it's not guaranteed). Just giving them free money is a waste of that money. It's not how you help them.
Comments
Post a Comment