When I ran away from home as a kid I was technically homeless. I lived in some abandoned buildings, with friends on and off, at a crackhouse...
I knew most of the other homeless people, we had a pretty high homeless population for a town of 26,000 (had a mental institution close in the late 70's, and many of them were housed FEMA style in trailers in the west end of town, but would just wander off and live in the street).
Maybe just because of the institution, most of the adult homeless had mental issues. Pretty severe issues. Guys dressed in garbage bags who thought they were Jesus and would preach to you, or try to heal you. A guy who thought he was a knight and wore a suit of armor made of downspouts and duct tape. A couple red headed brothers. Many more too dangerous to do anything but get away from, at the age of 13.
It was pretty wild. Me and a couple other kids would walk around smelling, and find people grilling and cooking out during football games they were watching inside. A few minutes watching, and you would be running down the alleys juggling screaming hot burgers and brats. We learned how to shim padlocks and card locks and pop doors, but never pick locks. We ate so many teenage mutant ninja turtle pizzas by popping the door at a distribution center!
Lots of drugs around. Most of the druggies would crash at the crackhouse, and then go home to clean up, then rinse and repeat after stealing money from their family, or whoever. I actually worked, at a farm, and a horse ranch, and at a golf course through high school. I would ride my bike everywhere, and eventually (sophomore year?) my dad bought me a Kawasaki 100 as a gift, and for staying in school, mostly, through all of it. That helped a lot with work and getting around. Man, I could ride a BMX bike 30 miles! Like nothing. I saw some overdoses, and a few deaths. A few police raids, broken doors, busted through a wall once to get into a room they couldn't break the door down on. I went to jail a lot, but never had any drug charges pressed. They would send me home, and I would run away again, until I got emancipated then everyone left me alone.
I never panhandled. I did steal, food, change from cars, shoplifting. Never got caught. A lot of fights, I had a bunch of assault charges but all as a minor and many of them dropped, the Judge was a really good guy, and a lot of the time, if it was with the older homeless guys they wouldn't call the cops.
Very few were just lazy. You have to have a certain amount of determination to stay homeless, when programs are available. Or you have a mental problem, or you are an addict who cant use at the shelter, or you have to be like me and have a disagreement with your folks and be too stubborn to ever back down.
But lazy? Let me tell you, in the Midwest at least, it gets cold. It's hard to find food, it's most of your time is just figuring out where your next meal is coming from. It's a job. Seriously. If you don't want to dumpster dive, or throw yourself on the mercy of the state, you are going to have a job, the job title is "not starving'. I would go 4 or 5 days solid without food. I liked school because of the cafeteria, but the lunch ladies were cruel and wouldn't let you take as much as you wanted to. I honestly think those years stunted my growth!
Still, when I see the guys at the intersection begging, if they can do that? If they are together enough mentally to do that, just to write the sign, they can do something else. There are places in Madison that you show up at 7 am, they will put you on a job somewhere. And the city has bus programs for the disadvantaged.
I got cleaned up in the military, and I was BLESSED that I avoided a serious enough criminal record that they would take me. I would probably be dead long ago otherwise. I was going into Chicago to pick up and move drugs all through High School. People stuck guns in my face, man people are crazy and unpredictable, especially around kids for some reason. Fake tough guys and cowards. I did ok though, you just have to learn to pick out the bad ones.
It isn't anyone's responsibility to "help" most homeless people, IMO. For the ones living in their car, showering at the truck stop, they are already on their way up and out, they have it together. I feel bad if small kids are involved, yeah help them out, food pantries, and maybe some housing help if they want it. But most people wont be helped by help. They will just be "tided over" until the next time they lose it. And they will, I have watched it happen over and over. It's a shame, but you can't help most of them. You can for a little while, but that's it. You can't fix them. I can't think of any way that you could.
I had to decide to clean up my life, and I had to be very careful to keep myself in a situation where I could clean it up when the time was right. If people aren't taking that care, to keep just a bare minimum of concern for rejoining society, then they don't want help anyway, they will refuse it. They will curse you for wanting to help.
