The Homeless Pretenders.
This is the true story of some fake homeless people I came across, who were taking advantage of other's good will.
Several years ago a friend and I lived in a small house in a suburban neighborhood. Down the street a few blocks was a 7-Eleven which was the residence of a local homeless man. You could generally find him sitting outside in his tattered garments, long grey beard hanging over his checkered shirt, always watchful of his overflowing shopping cart.
He was a gentle man, quiet and kind, and someone who was clearly down on his luck. Being a veteran of some unknown war, he kept a large green duffel bag by his left leg. A rather old shaggy brown dog slept by the other one. His eyes were world-weary...... and it was evident that he had seen too much.
My friend and I would occasionally bring him food or some small amount of money.......what few dollars we could afford even though we were both broke. We weren't the only ones because this man seemed to have quite the following. Everyday I would see people give him home cooked meals, and everyone enjoyed spending time talking to him.
This story isn't about him though. It is about another group of "so-called" homeless people that I am calling "The Homeless Pretenders".
One day a few years back my car broke down. Since I don't live that far from my job I figured I could just take the bus for a while until I got things back on track. I couldn't afford to get a new car at that moment. During the year that I rode the bus I discovered a lot about people. Some wanted to talk to you because they were lonely. Others wanted to vent at anyone. Most wanted to be left alone.
Near the restaurant where I work a few people are always standing outside near the highway. They hold signs that say "will work for food", and other things like that. They sit all day in the hot sun, collecting ten dollar bills from a passerby here and there. At first glance they don't appear homeless, since they have on fairly nice clothing, but you would assume that they are based on the signs and their actions. I always assumed that until I started riding the bus.
One day I got on the bus and the sign holders followed me in. One of them immediately pulled out her iPhone and started talking to her friend. She said she would be at her apartment soon and that night they would go out to the club together. Shortly after getting off the phone she unzipped a large black bag and offered me a free t-shirt. She told me somebody had dropped her off like fifty of them and she didn't need them.
I mentioned they might be helpful in fighting the cold, or they could be sold for a few dollars. She told me that she had plenty of blankets at her apartment and selling them was too much effort. I looked around at the three of them in amazement. "Let me try to understand this" I said. "You guys stand out here with your signs all day long, collecting money from good Samaritans. Then you just get on the bus and go to your apartment, like clocking out of a job?"
The homeless pretender stared at me hard for a good long minute and said "The world's a hard place honey, and I make a lot more money doing this than I ever did as a receptionist or waitress so don't judge me". With that she turned away.
It made me think back to my homeless veteran friend and what a difficult life he was having. These people were just taking advantage of the system. From that point forward I was always wary of a sign that said "will work for food". They certainly wouldn't have worked for food, they just wanted to take your money. They were making things even more difficult for actual homeless people. The worst part was she didn't even see herself as doing anything wrong.
Now how does that make you feel?
Thanks.
It can actually be worse than this when you consider all of this is effectively under the table, so they can avoid reporting it for taxes. Furthermore, they can say they have no job so in our increasingly socialist countries they can get free healthcare, and in the U.S. they likely get some good amount of Food Stamps and cash. Some of them may avoid such programs, others may embrace it completely, and they likely live quite well.
Yet none of that was free. Everyone else paid for it. The government cannot offer FREE services, they don't produce anything, but waste, rules, and war, so the only people that can pay for it are those paying taxes whether as income tax, property tax, or sales taxes.
Oha? I thought you would say it people gave them money out of their own free will (to feel better themselves of all reasons), so everything is ok.
I doubt that anyone offered work for food or asked of they were homeless, so it is not even a swindle.
I like to compare things, so:
In Germany everyone is entitled to help. So you rarely see homeless people and for most of them you not only see that they are homeless but also what their main problem is - alcohol or worse.
And then there is the sort where you don't see it, but again, since everybody can get help it is your choice if you give, you don't need to feel bad if you don't.
That's the thing you don't SEE homeless much here either. They type she was referring to that swindle people are typically panhandling. They will go with signs and sit near a busy intersection somewhere. There are not a ton of them.
Those that are there often are there for your "alcohol or worse" type of situation. I know because I have an uncle who does that. He's one of the worst alcoholics I've ever encountered.
Yet short of going and asking for VERIFICATION (which you won't get) when you are in your car trying to drive past it becomes an exchange based upon a very brief period of time so they can capitalize on that.
Sometimes their sign, demenor, etc can be quite moving and people will want to help.
There has actually been a documentary on this before where there are people making $60K+ per year doing this. The problem is due to passing in a car at an intersection, there really is no time for verification.
The best ways to verify are if you see a sign that says "will work for food", offer them some work. The fakes will generally refuse such an offer no matter the work you offer.
We do have neighborhoods with a lot of homeless people usually somewhere near the dense city locations, and sometimes they are there for purely voluntary reasons. Other times they may not be. It is hard to say again without getting the persons story and they are often very reserved about that. It also sometimes is mental illness related. Since we do tend to subsidize a lot of things in the U.S. as well it is not as though some entity could not make good money helping those people. It is not always so clear cut.
I never thought about that.
Haha! This is a great topic to disagree on! I believe you cannot put a price on education, because knowledge is public property. Thus all knowledge should be accessible for free! Oh and you can google yourself to the knowledge degree of a BA, but without the approval of an institution it becomes worth much less.
College is free in Germany btw :^)
Do they pay the professors? If they do then the money comes from somewhere. Do they pay their electric bills? Same thing.
Most likely the government.
Government's do not produce money, they take it from the citizens typically in some form of taxation. It is therefore NOT Free. It is just divided up across the citizenry and paid for with taxes.
If this is not the case I'll be curious to hear how they make it free.
EDIT: Taxes and FREE are not the same thing. I know of no way the government gives anything for "free" that isn't paid for with taxes.
ofc it's paid with taxes. We need to have more of our taxes go into education! Our universities look ugly. Filled with smart people, but they look like sh*t. Unless it's for the medical students.
Btw I think I realized why I dont see that many american exchange students. You need latin or old greek for many studies, like philosphy. I mean I still had none of both and sat in the same courses as full blown philosophers, but that is a story on its own.
Juristic you need Latin. Medicin you need Latin. I think you can try to learn into during your first semesters but thats rough. Oh and pharmaceutical vocabular it is not worth to break my no hard curses on Steemit over it but I almost did :D.
Anyways yes we pay for it and for wholistic reasons: you have to pay about 250€ for every state university, which are most, but you get a ticket for all public transports for the semester and other benefits. Some people stay student just because benefits outweight cost.
We have massive funds going into education actually they've been increasing. Education is gone down. Unfortunately the amount of money spent is no guarantee of better results. Our results are actually worse due to the waste and where the money is spent. This is especially true of higher education. Guaranteed student loans have lead to prices of books, college, etc to skyrocket and leave people in debt in some cases for their life. It has also resulted in some sub-standard universities that are charging large fees to get that guaranteed paycheck.
mhh, I actually do not think that the current problem is state vs private school. I think learning, education and subsequently the way we will do our jobs will change. A change we should push for, but I think it is just a matter of time tbh.
There is also a controversal mechanic in place to avoid massive depts of students in Germany. The 10.000€ Bafög cap. Bafög is a loan given out to students and apprentices by the state. If your loan exceeds 10.000€ you will still only have to pay 10.000€ back. I am not a big fan of that rule, because you can profit from taking a loan, but regarding student debts it is a good mechanism to prevent a downwards spiral in debt.
The main problem, I see, is our society and how learning, teachers and education are perceived. And to be honest, I got no clue how to change that. Well other than giving pupils and students more freedom in their school life.
This is not true in the U.S. We've been increasingly spending more and getting less and less quality. The system knows it is guaranteed a paycheck, so they focus on making sure as with any budget that they get the maximum amount the guarantee permits. We also have tons of schools popping up to tap into this guaranteed money and offering very poor quality.
yeah, I have a big problem with how "state institutions" are managed in general, I would guess we agree on that. It needs to change. I'm just not convinced privatizing everything will solve that problem.
I think the very concept of having to squeeze me in a building with thousands of others is preposterous, when I could watch the lesson at home and get all the material sent to my PC. There should have been a major change in how we learn 10 years ago already.
To be fair, I once watched a really cool online Harvard class on computer scienes, it was like an introduction to basic programming, it was pretty well made, but I didnt finish it ^^*. Im a lazy fool
We see a lot of these pretenders around Sydney, and the sad thing is that the truly homeless people are, generally speaking, are too mentally unstable to make a sign as find a good spot where lots of people will walk by... mental illness is a bitch, it could happen to any of us, and sadly many of the truly needy go unnoticed and without.
A friend of mine recently got married and moved Australia. It's sad to hear that happens all around the world.
btw this is the champion (I searched for the best picture, this is not, he has increased his offers of choice)
That's interesting.
Hahahaha, I've seen that picture before!! Sprinkled all over with yummy words in a good post. LoL
Funny, but it depends on the demographics of where he is located. There might be 25% christians and only 1% muslim.
We actually have this same problem where I live. It's a small town so it's easy for word to travel which people are fakers and which really need help. Once I was on a road trip to Atlanta. I went to a Checkers (also known as Rally's) fast food place. The homeless guys there made a killing. There were two drive through lines. Two guys would pan handle on each line right after the speaker to order food. I watched those guys a while as I ate and they were given soooo much money it was crazy. Almost every car gave something because they were on their way to the window to pay. I'd say if they did that regularly they really were pulling in more than if they had a regular job.
Perfect capitalism / market.
I guess it happens wherever you go.
In South Africa scams of all types abound! Including "homeless scams", to such a degree that it is ill advisable to give money, unless to a registered charity.
Wow that's terrible to think we live in a world like that.
I know it happens and it burns me up that people take advantage. Well, I try not to judge - I really try. I just hope the fakers and takers get their just rewards. Karma is a bitch.
I agree 100%.
We see this a lot of this kind of fraud here in the Twin Cities (MN). People who take advantage of goodwill are the worst of the worst. Recently, while downtown, a woman asked me to "bless her with money to buy something to eat." I told her I'd walk with her I didn't carry Chad but would buy her a sandwich...she turned me down.
It's crazy how much people try to get away with. I remember when picking up a girlfriend's son from Children's World, a man approached us and asked me for $5 because his car supposedly broke down. I didn't want her son to get a bad impression of people so I gave him the $5 and told him I hope I don't see you again. We then stopped for fast food down the road and when I was coming out of the door with the food the same man told me the same story then he looked up and saw my face and turned around and ran like a bat out of hell.
It burns me up! That's way l put out a post called BROTHERS KEEPER. Unfortunately some people are full of shit. So you have to be careful.
I will check your post out. Thanks for commenting.
There was a story written about how groups of people holding signs go to the malls day in and day out hassling people even 70 year olds each week and if they don't give them money they follow them and verbally abuse them.
Some sit by themselfs and was saying they arn't homeless but they sit each day holding a sign for money and get roughly $150NZD a day.
Which is a lot of money, so if they did that 7 days a week and they got min $150 a day, would be $1050 a week, $54,600 a year which average NZ gets min $20 -$30k a year - which they still need to pay tax on, but because these people are getting donations it's non taxable, so that all goes to them.
That's terrible.