Cheerful Giving

When my wife divorced me to pursue adultery I could very well have ended up homeless. I was left with no assets and my wife threatened to lie to the courts to get what she wanted, which was everything. That said, it’s a very, very rare instance in which I will give to a panhandler. I ended up in the worst neighborhood in town. It is infested with homeless, and I use that word intentionally. They are primarily drug addicts who have no intention of getting off the streets. I have woken up to a half dozen used or still loaded heroin needles at the foot of my stairs outside the building. They have no respect for property rights. They will trespass and vandalize without a second thought. I will not send my kids to take out the garbage because the dumpster enclosure is a favorite hangout where they can do drugs without being seen. They leave piles of garbage all over the neighborhood. I have been threatened just for walking down the street. There was one guy who would come into our common area and smoke pot while ogling little girls playing. I make sure to walk my 13 year-old daughter to the bus stop due to the creepy men around the neighborhood. Anything we do to stop this behavior is against the law in Oregon. The police will do nothing. I and other dads forced him out repeated until he finally stopped coming despite it being against the law for us to do so. Just this year alone there have been six shootings within a mile of my place, presumably drug related. I have witnessed homeless drug addicts assaulting each other. They have broken into my vehicle. When I take a walk during my lunch break (working from home due to Covid) the air and the people smell like marijuana. On more than one occasion I have seen homeless people engaged in carnal relations with each other in the open on the sidewalk. The convenience store near me sells meth pipes. We don’t have a homeless problem or poverty problem so much as we have a complete breakdown of moral behavior and the rule of law. If I had to imagine what it was like in the time of Noah, or Lot, it’s my neighborhood right now. No, I’m not going to give any of these people money, although I did give to a woman in a wheelchair with no legs whom I never saw impaired. I will give to Mary Queen of Heaven Missionaries who help the poor in the Philippines. Before losing everything in the divorce, I bought a couple of months’ worth of groceries and the amount she was short from paying her rent to a coworker who had metastatic breast cancer and couldn’t work. A lot of groups who work with the homeless say that giving to panhandlers is more about how it makes the giver feel than actually helping the homeless person. One need not enable drug abuse to aid the poor, and when people give to panhandlers they are unintentionally contributing to the huge financial, social, and security problems they create in neighborhoods like mine. Please, please stop giving cash if in any way they look like they are drug addicts.

I love clear-cut biblical moral principles. I hate the idea of saying that some old rule no longer applies. And, as Don rightly notes, the stakes are the highest. But I don’t think I’m supposed to give money to people who are visibly in free-fall.

I hate ambiguities like this. I’d been tossing a little extra to the food bank during the first year of covid, but now there are a record number of job openings and I don’t understand how someone with basic physical and mental resources can’t put food on the table. But then I hear Scrooge’s voice saying the same thing, and not near the end of the book. I’ve gone back to my previous patterns of giving, and I hope it’s right.

So I guess it comes down to prudence? I hate that.

Philip, they don’t want recovery. Oregon decriminalized possession of hard drugs after completely legalizing marijuana. In the voter’s pamphlet there was a statement against the measure (it went to the voters) by a group of addiction medicine physicians who stated prison is where the bulk of addicts get sober and into treatment and counseling. Taking the prospect of prison away from them means they won’t get treatment and counseling. Now, if they are arrested or stopped for something unrelated to drugs and drugs are found on them then they are given a referral for drug treatment that they will never follow up on. In addition, the legislature made it illegal for local governments to pass any laws against the public consumption of drugs and alcohol. And so, the Democratic Party in Oregon, which has exercised one party rule for decades, has enabled people to hit rock bottom while ruining the neighborhoods around them in the name of ‘compassion.’ Those who treat addictions warned what would happen in the voter’s guide, and everything they predicted has come to pass. There is treatment available, but they won’t seek it unless they are compelled to do so in a prison setting.