nolabeings:“It was my first month on the job and I was the only social worker in the office, so if p
nolabeings:“It was my first month on the job and I was the only social worker in the office, so if people would walk in looking for homeless services they would come to me. I was also running a rental assistance program, so I could sometimes help folks get off the streets. So I had this guy come in who was homeless - his clothes were dirty, his hair was a mess, he was so unkempt. He wanted a house and he was fired up. So I was interviewing him inconspicuously and asking him questions and I realized that he would fit into the [rental assistance] program! [I told him] and he goes ‘Well, who is going to pay my rent!?!’ and I said ‘We have a program that will pay your rent, but you have a little bit of income. You’ll just pay a little bit towards your rent.’ And he goes 'Well who’s going to pay my utilities!?!’ and I said 'We can try to get your utilities included in your rent so you don’t have to worry about it.’ 'Well how am I going to get food?!’ I said, 'You can still go to the food banks but we can also help you budget your money.’ 'How am I going to do laundry!?!’ … we go through all these things, and finally he’s just like 'I can’t do it.’ And walks out. He left me speechless, because here I am offering him everything that he says he wants and now he doesn’t want it.At the time I couldn’t understand it, but now it makes perfect sense. It was a really overwhelming feeling for him to have been on the streets almost all of his life, and now all of a sudden I’m going to offer him this opportunity for housing, but also all this other responsibility that he doesn’t know and he’s not used to. That experience always sticks with me. I think the public sees folks that are homeless in public areas and they say 'Why can’t you just get them off the street?’ but it’s not as easy as that. People don’t want to get off the streets for a variety of reasons, and it’s not necessarily just because they’d rather camp out. There are so many other components that go with it that are just hard to understand. I think we as adults judge really quickly. But if we can see people more as human beings rather than just homeless persons, then we could feel more compassion about their situation.” -- source link
#homelessness#poverty