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DickParasite posted:Your heart's in the right place OP but you were absolutely enabling him. I bought him weed carts because I could get them cheaper than he could and I got some of his prints in exchange, as well as some menial house chores. I wasn’t buying him alcohol, that came from his own funding. I supplied him with coffee to face the day and the opportunity to use the tools at his disposal to make a change in his life. He chose not to use those but I do not hold that against him.
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Oct 19, 2020 03:52
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My radical take here is that it's good a guy provided a struggling addict with a place to feel like a human being.
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Oct 19, 2020 04:45
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Killed a Girl in 96 posted:My radical take here is that it's good a guy provided a struggling addict with a place to feel like a human being. 
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Oct 19, 2020 05:56
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:there was a dude living in the park across from my house. i tried making contact a few times but he never reciprocated. i did find an aid group to get him supplies and it looked like he had finally cleared out when he broke into an unused part of my in-law's apartment and made off with a handful of old coins. i knew it was him because i saw him escape out the back door while i was jacking off out the window. not really sure anything icould have done would have helped him more, but i'm open to strategies if anyone has tips. Jacking off out the window may seem like it saves time on cleanup but it’s not great for the community
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Oct 19, 2020 06:26
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Killed a Girl in 96 posted:My radical take here is that it's good a guy provided a struggling addict with a place to feel like a human being. Yeah sure, I can agree with this too, what’s purely good or bad? Thank you for clarifying Phiz, for what it’s worth I agree with that too. One of my long time close friends is a recovering heroin addict, along with a bunch of people I like less than her. Many of my close friends have hep c. I was a homeless youth. I hope that clarifies my analogy. Take it as you will.
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Oct 19, 2020 06:31
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Video Nasty posted:He had physical capabilities to perform manual labor, but his resume was spotty-at-best with the previous eight years of his life in and out of protest camps or living adjacent-to homelessness so he relied on selling his artwork instead. My point is even within that week of waiting to know about full time employment, day labor always just needs warm bodies. You're not going to make enough to pay rent but you can make enough for some food, a bottle, a pack of smokes, and still have a few bucks left over. It sucks, but if squatting in someone's backyard made him feel like a burden, he could have contributed something. We can all disagree with capitalism but sometimes you gotta live under it's rules if you don't want to rely on other people's kindness. It's hosed but life sometimes sucks. Just get the dude to show up at 5 am to a day labor office, and ask for like $20 A day and you'll see if he's serious about whatever. I guess it doesn't matter now it's just upsetting to me that you think this is forced on him and not a choice when he doesn't even try anything.
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Oct 19, 2020 08:38
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baby delivery truck posted:My point is even within that week of waiting to know about full time employment, day labor always just needs warm bodies. You're not going to make enough to pay rent but you can make enough for some food, a bottle, a pack of smokes, and still have a few bucks left over. It sucks, but if squatting in someone's backyard made him feel like a burden, he could have contributed something. We can all disagree with capitalism but sometimes you gotta live under it's rules if you don't want to rely on other people's kindness. It's hosed but life sometimes sucks. Just get the dude to show up at 5 am to a day labor office, and ask for like $20 A day and you'll see if he's serious about whatever. I guess it doesn't matter now it's just upsetting to me that you think this is forced on him and not a choice when he doesn't even try anything. To that extent, I paid him $50 to clean up our basement, which honestly was a full day of work because of all the messes our cats have made of things down there. He was not averse to that kind of work so believe me when I say he wasn't trying to avoid it so much as recognize what was immediately available based on our location relative to the city proper. e: Solvent posted:One of my long time close friends is a recovering heroin addict, along with a bunch of people I like less than her. Many of my close friends have hep c. I was a homeless youth. That sucks and I'm sorry if I came off as hostile previously. I don't equate alcohol /weed to the same degree as heroin and would not have allowed that kind of poo poo to happen in my household or back yard.
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Oct 19, 2020 15:29
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UPDATE: He is going back to the protest vigil in D.C. with the meager amount he was able to save up for a flight.Gonzo posted:Hey, you did what you could, but Chicago didn't. Getting into a homeless shelter here is a nightmare. The only other option was hospitalization and well, ugh, no.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:27
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I'm currently typing this as a recovering alcoholic on my break at my day labor job, wearing a hi vis vest and all, and have had an AA sponsor for years. This thread has basically already said what I was going to. At the end of the day, this guy wasn't adverse to work and wanted to improve his life, and you were a good dude for giving him a place where he could have a degree of dignity. I've also been homeless, and it's very eye-opening to see how the system is designed against the poor. That being said, there are predictably amazing people who try to help the lesser, and they're all saints. You'd better believe that the world is not designed to give those people fair compensation ("I'm going into social work because of the sweet paycheck and benefits"), which makes their work all the more blessed. When you're on the bottom of the capitalist dog pile, it's very hard to get back up, and intentionally so. I've had a whirlwind of a life, like in 2009 to 2011 I was the CS lead on Farmville at the peak of its popularity, left to another job, was living in SF making 110k a year, and ended up back in Colorado and homeless in a stunning amount of time. So maybe that colors my empathy towards the homeless. I'm sure it does. So when people like Gonz show up in the world, helping them if you're in the position to do so is, in my opinion, almost a civic and human responsibility. That being said, what your help LOOKS like is a delicate thing, especially for someone who has compound issues like addiction. OP did a good job providing the basics but leaving the other stuff, like booze, up to them. What were they supposed to do, sober this dude up? No one else can do it but the person who wants to get sober, bottom line. They were absolutely doing "enough" by giving them a safe place to live, hygiene basics, and some semblance of stable footing to get to wherever their next step is. These days, when I'm out there with my stop sign and my thoughts, and the only other sound is heavy machinery or nothing at all, I sometimes end up in that mire of "I should have done X or Y", imagining alternative actions that would have somehow deflected my current station in life. But I am where I am and the only thing to do is keep moving forward (and for me specifically, that also means stating sober, which I am and have been). My next step will look different than Gonzo's, but I feel like our shared experience is that neither of us could have done it without the compassion of another individual or collective. So when people kramer into the thread talking about what the right or wrong thing is to do, it's almost like naked human empathy gets very quickly clouded and pecked to death by a sea of "ACSHULLY,". This day labor gig is temporary for me, as it is for most people, as I continue to try to get back to the world that I got to be a part of for many years before I decided to Irish Exit from it. When I read about people like Gonzo, yeah, it's a hella interesting read, but I would argue that the best character in it is you, OP, for going out on a limb and offering help. I know you didn't make this thread for accolades or anything, but as an ex-homeless recovering alcoholic working day labor right this second, this thread resonated with me and I'm thankful for people like you in the world. 
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Oct 20, 2020 16:23
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His situation doesn't really seem like it stems from the usual causes of homelessness, from what I could gather from his Twitter. Seems like more of a "heavily committed to being an anarchist" issue than a substance abuse one, which I guess might count as its own disabling mental illness worthy of help. Just not the more prototypical homeless situation people seem to be reading it as.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:30
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Floodixor posted:I'm currently typing this as a recovering alcoholic on my break at my day labor job, wearing a hi vis vest and all, and have had an AA sponsor for years. This thread has basically already said what I was going to. Thank you for sharing your experiences! I would house a hundred people in tents if I had the property to do so. My life was not largely interrupted by providing those ammenities to another individual besides maybe sharing a single bathroom between three people. He was pretty adamant about not wanting to watch the Tiger Joe series on Netflix but he had great stories about all the regulars that he worked with who were interviewed in the show. Moon Atari posted:His situation doesn't really seem like it stems from the usual causes of homelessness, from what I could gather from his Twitter. Seems like more of a "heavily committed to being an anarchist" issue than a substance abuse one, which I guess might count as its own disabling mental illness worthy of help. Just not the more prototypical homeless situation people seem to be reading it as. I can agree with these sentiments.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:46
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