Hi everyone. I don't usually do this type of thing, but hear me out briefly (although that in itself is sometimes a signpost for people to do exactly the opposite).
On any given night, one in two hundred people will be homeless.
As a kid (and this is quite sappy but it's true), I always tended to pity homeless people, and I would make this wild self-promises that if I became rich one day, I would go around and give every homeless person on the street a $50 bill. As I grew older, I became more skeptical of the situation of homeless people: what incredibly poor decisions did they make to get to the point that they no longer had a home to live and no friends to help them out?
Truth is, by the time I was in late high school, I was still skeptical of giving money to homeless people given that I had heard (stress on heard) of statistics that homeless people earn the same amount in day compared with those in menial jobs.
But ultimately, who am I to judge? Sucked away by material ambition we sometimes forget about the inequalities and inequitable distributions in the world. Life is perhaps, some would argue, just about luck and timing. Some people are worse off and have to suffer worse consequences than those who may have been better supported financially.
The point is, helping out a homeless person seems to be something everyone more or less agrees is a social justice problem; but because people don't know how to go about giving money to people who they suppose might use the money to fuel a drug problem, or any other distress causing condition; they are put off by the prospect all together.
This might be way I've recently started to purchase the Big Issue. The smile and genuine thankfulness and people's faces when I give them a $10 or $20 note for a $6 magazine and tell them to keep the change is a feeling like no other.
I may complain about being poor, and not having enough money to buy the umpteenth leather item that I've caught my eye on, but at the end of the day, I have a job, I live at home, I never have fear of not having enough money for food or basic requirements.
So next time you're tromping through the city and you inevitably pass someone trying to sell you a copy of The Big Issue, give them a $10 or $20, take your magazine, and tell them to keep the change; you'll have a literal warm and fuzzy powered spring to your step for the most part of the better day.
xx