Homeless
Last night on the train home, I saw a homeless old man who talked to himself loudly and incessantly for an hour. While living in the Bay Area I always felt sad and guilty whenever I walked past those who were homeless because I felt that I should be doing something to help them. Out of that sense of responsibility, I joined Night Outreach. Once a week in the fall quarter of my junior year, I would meet with a couple of other Stanford students and talk to homeless people on the streets of downtown Palo Alto. Our goal was to engage them in conversations and bring them various items such as soap, shampoo, fruit, vitamins. In other words, we wanted to let them know that there are people out there who are concerned about their welfare.
I dropped out of the program after a quarter. I quit because I was disillusioned with the whole experience. For the duration of my participation in Night Outreach, the homeless people I met could be divided into two groups. The first group was composed of people who were handicapped, be it mentally or physically. There was Vietnam Joey, who always wore a tethered leather jacket decorated with various military insignia. Through the few encounters between us, I don't ever remember him talking coherently. It seemed like he was always drunk or high. Then there was Rob -- I think that's his name -- who always sat with his body slouched and his head leaning sideways on the back of a bench. Like Vietname Joey, he also seemed to be in a constant state of stupor. Occasionally, he had violent outbursts during which he would hurl profanities at someone for no reason. I believe he had some kind of ailment or ailments that caused him a lot of pain, which could help to explain why he was always heavily medicated. To be honest, I don't think I have ever met anyone whose body, mind, and spirit were so disintegrated. (An interesting side note: once while we were talking to Rob, or rather, trying to talk to him, there was another guy our age that attempted to engage him in a conversation. We didn't realize until afterwards that this guy was probably trying to score some medicinal marijuana from Rob, judging by his cautious glances to his furtive demeanor.)
Besides Joey and Rob, I had also seen a few people in wheelchairs, but never got the chance to talk to them. The more I interacted with these afflicted people, the more it became apparent that we could not really help them in any significant way. I know the purpose of Night Outreach is not to give them money or make them dependent on us, but to befriend them and make them feel like part of society. Nonetheless it was extremely disheartening for me to see the amount of pain and suffering these people experienced on a daily basis. What good was a pack of dental floss to Rob if he had to battle immense physical pains constantly and was always drugged out of his mind? While our intentions were good, we could not begin to alleviate their tremendous suffering. Those people belonged in hospitals and mental institutions.
As much sympathy as I had and still have for those poor souls, I felt the same amount of contempt towards the people who belonged in the other category. These people were of sound health and mind but were too lazy to work to support themselves. They didn't seem to feel embarassed at all about panhandling. Victor is a case in point. An old man with a surpringly well-kept appearance, Victor was almost the antithesis of your stereotypical homeless person. His hair was always neatly combed and his face clean-shaven. His clothes were almost spotless. With his gold-rimmed glasses and polite manners, he could almost be mistaken for a Stanford professor, if it weren't for the fact that he's asking you for money. Based on the conversations I had with Victor, he seemed like a clear-headed, intelligent person who could have easily held a steady job. I mean, before the tech bubble bursted, a monkey could have been hired to design web pages for start-ups with names like "Woosh" and "Psoom" (two actual companies). Instead, Victor was content with taking out trash for Subway in exchange for sandwiches. And asking people for money.
Then there were people like Larry, who felt that the world owes them because of their homelessness. Although not as clean or polite as Victor, Larry was also very intelligent and opinionated. Of course, he didn't want to work either. I still remember him urging us to protest plans to built a new homeless shelter because the people behind the project apparently had the preposterous belief that spots in the shelter should go to people who had the best prospects of gaining self-independence. To Larry, such plans smacked of elitism. He argued that placements should be totally random so things would be fair, as if his lazy ass deserved to live in a shelter as much as someone who had hit upon bad luck and needed a place to sleep while he or she looked for a job. Larry also liked to feel indignant and to attend protest rallies for the homeless. He wanted to pen an article for a new publication launched by Night Outreach to give homeless people a voice. Looking back now, I wish I had asked him why he didn't just use all this pent-up energy to try to find a job so that he didn't have to demand us to go on a clothing drive to collect winter clothing for him.
After almost 3 months of guilt and frustration, I quit. Now that I'm in New York, I still encounter homeless people from time to time, although not nearly as many as in San Francisco for some odd reason, given the higher cost of living here. Sometimes I give money to the disabled panhandlers as well as the subway performers. I don't feel so guilty any more, but I am still just as sympathetic, at least to the ones who actually need help.
