Now I'm curious about the story of how you overcame homelessness.
But what eventually happened that caused you to no longer be homeless, if you don't mind me asking?
The short version is... when I was 15-16, my family got evicted from the house we were renting because the owner wanted to sell it off and we couldn't afford to buy it outright from them. And at the same time, my dad got laid off. For the next 8ish months, we bounced around living with friends, family, 'camping' in the woods, sleeping in cars, motels, parks, shelters, etc. Eventually my dad picked up a new job, and we stayed with a relative for about a year until we were able to afford our own place again.
You may want to spit in someone's face for offering you shitty compensation, but hate to say this, you are in no position to demand anything from anyone...... especially people who are willing to offer something to complete stranger who they will likely never see or talk to again. Whether you like it or not, you aren't going to get steak dinners or limo ride to the mall to buy bags of fancy clothes. That's life.
That's an unfortunate and inaccurate takeaway from what was being said. No one is demanding anything from anyone. It was pointing out to people that their supposed generosity is actually worthless, selfish and insulting. The "Only Food!" camp is extremely judgmental and condescending and, on top of that, factually wrong in their assumptions. The realities of homelessness have been repeated throughout the thread, yet you still have people ignoring that in favor of their own bullshit opinions. And then trying to defend those opinions by yet again shitting on the less fortunate by making the entire discussion about themselves, and how their 'generosity' is both extremely conditional and still somehow noble - when it's actually further from it than simply doing nothing. Which, again, no one is saying you
should do nothing, only that if you actually want to help there are a million better ways to do it. The way you've decided to do it isn't actually helping - it's only making
you feel better about
yourself.
Like, how can you say that sometimes the money was for drugs or alcohol, and at the same time telling people to fuck off for assuming you would spend the money they gave you on drugs or alcohol?
Because the assumption is that all (or even most) homeless people are addicts who will spend all (or most) of their money on drugs and alcohol.
And because if you went into any thread on here where people admit, even brag, about doing recreational drugs or consuming alcohol and you called them an addict, they would lose their fucking shit and you'd get run out of the thread, if not outright warned or banned by a mod.
And because conditional generosity has always been some ole' bullshit.
EDIT: Also, to elaborate on that specific comment about using money for drugs and alcohol...
If we didn't have friends and family to lean on, I don't know how we would have made it. My dad getting a new job was extremely reliant on having easy access to places to shower/dress/prepare for interviews and having enough gas money at the time to get there and back - which we didn't have when we weren't staying with friends/family temporarily. During the worst part of it, I got roped into working for a drug dealer as a delivery mule. They used teenagers to bike mostly weed and coke across town to buyers and other dealers. I once showed up at the place we were staying after disappearing for two weeks
(they thought I was staying with a friend) with $2000 in cash and my mom hesitated for minute before taking it. She never asked where I got it and I've never told her to this day.
Other than that, I knew my parents would occasionally spend money on alcohol. And honestly, who could blame them. I was just trying to be honest that when you are homeless, drugs and alcohol are a real part of your world, whether they were before or not. They are absolutely everywhere, especially at shelters - which is why we mostly avoided them when we could. But that doesn't mean everyone is an addict. Most of the other homeless I interacted with didn't do anything more than the typical non-homeless person I know. I actually probably saw just as much flagrant drug usage as a homeless teen as I did working for a software company in San Francisco years later.
