Tired of the performative beggars and alcoholics this time of year

Yes, I’m SO sick and tired of all the inconsiderate homeless people making the streets look untidy-especially at this time of year when our towns should look beautiful and Christmassy.
You’d think they’d have a bit of consideration for the “normal” folks and go and be homeless in secret, somewhere hidden away.

🙄🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

Check your privilege op.
Im sure you put this up for a specific type of action which frankly I find shameful

The big issue has been taken over by organised beggars.
The magazines are offered every morning to people to sell.

but gangs organise minibuses full of people ( often women) and arrive at the big issue office early so they are first in the queue. They then take all the publications.

By the time the chaotic homeless rock up, all the magazines have been taken.

that’s why you rarely see the homeless alcoholics selling it anymore.

Spot on @housethatbuiltme

Some in Swansea do have card readers. I don’t know how that works as to get them you need to be an address, good credit etc 💁‍♂️

You will get ignorant people clutching their pearls but you are right.

I have BEEN homeless and real homeless people hide and don't draw attention to themselves, thats why bodies often aren't found for weeks, months or sometimes even years. Its very vulnerable to have to sleep somewhere protected where any stranger could have access. You don't ever do it in open, high traffic, public areas.

Homeless people sleep in the last places people think to look, for me it was under bushes/hedgerows in cemeteries (closed/walled/gated, shielded from wind and next no traffic fall at night... at worst the odd goth who frankly never hurt anyone). I knew one guy who lived in a dumpster behind a factory (which I always thought was so risky as you could end up in the crusher but no passer by knew he was there). Abandoned buildings are common spots but they are usually far more dangerous, they attract needle using drug addict (so always a risk of getting accidentally pricked) and often develop a build up of unsanitary conditions from people using them as toilets as well as attracting non homeless trouble makers who wants to smash things.

Also homeless people spend all day inside places like shopping centers or libraries, they are warm, dry, have facilities like toilets. We don't sit in the cold all day then sleep rough, we would die very quickly of exposure if we didn't spend the day warming back up.

The people that sit in sleeping bags on streets are alcoholics and addicts (non homeless) and they make a fortune playing on people being privileged enough to not realize its fake. They then go home to their council housing to warm up, sleep, eat when they get too cold/bored. I have known MANY of them in my life time (on the street you get to know everyone) and its a chosen lifestyle where as homelessness is the opposite.

Homelessness is everyone's problem. In the UK, there is no need for anyone to be homeless. The government could resolve it but choose not to.

The vast majority of homeless people are very vulnerable. Many are care leavers, suffer from mental illness, have been victims of childhood abuse, and etc. Not everyone is lucky enough to grow up in a loving family with a good education

Addiction to alcohol and drugs are illnesses and should be treated as such. Have some empathy and check your privilege.

I think people are being disingenuous. Everyone knows that large numbers of people aggressively begging, being drunk and high in the street, and pissing and shitting against walls feels horrible and unsafe. Everyone knows that large numbers of them are intimidating. Everyone knows that giving them money doesn't solve a single thing. Saying that they are all the fault of the Tories doesn't make you a better person.

I doubt they'd welcome them in their own neighbourhood.

I wish people would be a bit more honest.

Ones in our city centre used to go back to hostel in the evening with bags of bottles. Dog was passes about between them during the day.

Beggars are not homeless as in street sleeping and homeless like that are not beggars in majority of cases.

I know people think they help by giving money but they just help the addicts to keep JUST above that rock bottom that they need to hit to get out. At the same breath they condemn drug delaers, but somehow supporting the business by "well if they buy deugs with that money.. I would also want to be out of it of I were on streets" is fine.

Exactly! It’s actually appalling especially on a women focused website like this - so many people are rushing to minimise other women’s real fear of intimidation.

As someone who doesn’t drive and only takes public transport, I run into it a lot since they are often at bus /train stations or on the actual bus or train.

I used to volunteer at a drop in shelter for homeless and most were lovely and I can’t see them behaving aggressively. But there are a LOT on the streets who use intimidation and there’s a reason they approach me less when I’m with a man.

This is potentially just a rage bait post.

If you go out regularly during the year you know who are genuinely homeless and who is shipped in to professionally beg. We have one homeless lady in our posh market town. It's her genuine choice and the community do everything they can for her. She has been taken in, removed and is honestly wanting her life due to her MH

Our big town has four genuine homeless beggers. Who are also high as kites and aggressive. There's a hostel or in town centre. They don't live there. Hostels are both calm with quite people outside.

The random men walking around are shipped in by minibus. You see them getting picked up.

I only give to street beggers if I see them off the high street past 11pm and I know that goes on their addictions. If your genuinely on a side street at 11pm all you have is getting off your face but generally I'd rather give to a charity that prevents this situation. Who carrys cash anyway?

You can be concerned without de-humanising people. These are people and the question we should be asking is ‘why?’ It’s happening and what can we do about it.

My god this is possibly one of the most vile posts I've seen on here in a long time. Op...I have no words. Unpleasant does not cover it.

Ah. I used to buy food for the middle eastern looking lady with a headscarf who mysteriously appeared in our little village selling the Big Issue.

(We were one of the very few families at the primary school and in the village that appeared BAME so I did wonder where she had come from)

Then lockdown happened and I shopped far less at the local supermarket as we got more deliveries.

But there is now almost always one headscarfed lady or another outside the supermarket these days. And I did see one being dropped off in the car park in a big black car that looked far more expensive than mine, which isn't saying much.

I thought, are these people homeless?

So I never give to Big Issue sellers now.

But I do give food and/or a hot drink, if I can conveniently, to people who appear to be homeless (and don't look dangerous or aggressive). I don't give money.

I agree with you OP.

I sometimes think that the people telling you to ‘check your privilege’ are the ones whose lives are so sheltered that they think many of these beggars are nice, lovely people who have just fallen on hard times.

The reasons are complex. While many will have had unhappy lives, others will have alienated all their friends and family through their addiction, actions and behaviour.

of course, no one chooses that lifestyle. But some of them are extremely aggressive. These are often chaotic people who make an area feel threatening and unsafe. But everyone is supposed to tolerate it? The reality is a fair chunk of them will have been provided with accommodation at some point, but have been evicted for not paying rent, anti-social behaviour etc

you can have compassion for them while still recognising they are a nuisance.

I’d like to see what the ‘check your privilege’ crew would say if they moved in next door to them? It’s only because they know that would never happen, they can allow themselves to feel smug.

Your post implies that ‘addicts’ and ‘alcoholics’ are not worthy of help and as though you think this is a choice they actively make.
Is this how you view them?

This thread plays out exactly why we are lurching towards the far right and Farage as PM within five years.

I consider myself firmly left wing but it is incredibly frustrating to see people like the OP being mocked, insulted and dismissed for expressing their real and often legitimate concerns about serious social issues that impact them.

Bloody hell, it’s so rough up north - people begrudge the homeless. Blimey, as we say down south… I think what OP is seeing is poverty, up close and personal.

OP your concerns are completely valid. I witnessed a student bragging in a tutorial that he poses as a beggar every Friday and Saturday night in the city centre. He says he makes hundreds of pounds, and he mocked the other students who are holding down legitimate ways of earning (less) money.

Something can be said a lot and remain meaningful and appropriate. Just because you hear this often, doesn't make it a cliché.

There are some people that beg when they don’t need to BUT there will be a context to that. If you have grown up in a loving, trauma free family, you were supported to reach your potential, you are blessed with good health and you are financially secure, you would not dream of doing that. There will be a context.

Some gangs send people out begging, those people are often vulnerable and exploited.

Some people will be genuinely in need.

Most people that find themselves homeless and desperate have complex, often traumatic histories, mental health problems or are vulnerable in other ways.

We could all end up in the same situation.

Lots of us are protected from that possibility but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. ‘They’ are no different to you, they have just had a different life history and you could conceivably end up there too. You think not?…(TW trauma)

Imagine there is a big celebration and all your nearest and dearest are there. You step out to take a call and the building explodes in a terrorist attack and you are the only survivor. You have life changing injuries. A brain injury (frontal cortex) that makes decision making harder.

The psychological impact, trauma and physical health issues mean you can no longer work and have to survive on benefits. You meet a kind person who is empathy and understanding as they have been through similar. You are alone in the world and they feel like a good connection in your grief. They give you a pill that they find helps them. They say it will make you feel better. Your grief and head injury mean your decision making is compromised.

You take it. It feels good (having had opiates in hospital during a traumatic event I can tell you - they take all the emotional and physical pain away and replace it with a warm fuzzy feeling). You want more. You need more. You get addicted. You start gambling to try and get the money needed to hold on to that blissfully warm fuzzy feeling that replaces the fear, anxiety, shame, huge gaping loss in the pit of your stomach. You lose it all. Your house, your savings. You have no one left. They were all in the attack. Then this someone offers you a home. Gives you gifts. ‘Looks after’ you. They now have a hold over you…

These people on the streets are people. They are people who often don’t have the benefit of a stable loving background. Have experienced multiple traumas as children and adults. This impacts how our physiology and brain function.

Im not suggesting we give them money. (I will offer to buy them a warm drink or sandwich). I think supporting charities like Shelter, buying the big issue etc is much better.

But to de-humanise them like you have is appalling and shows a massive empathy fail. You should see it and ask ‘How is a civilised society allowing this to happen and what needs to change? How can I play a part in that change?’ Not ‘ew that’s gross how can we hide it away so I don’t have to face it!’

"Showing off terrible wounds"? Be grateful that you don't have a terrible wound.

This thread is an eye-opener, not to mention thoroughly depressing. I'm not going to read any more.

"Chants to herself: There are good people in the world, there are good people in the world."

Being an addict or alcoholic is not a cool lifestyle choice. It is an illness FGS

Lots of sanctimonious folk come out on these threads but YANBU, Op.

There was a thread here ages ago about a Chinese woman who was racially harassed by a street beggar in London. An East Asian colleague of mine had something similar on the DLR.

Also a woman I know said she was followed down Oxford street being verbally abused by a “homeless” guy . She is a tall South Londoner and very streetwise and was as cool as a cucumber laughing it off and giving as good as she got but if that were me I’d have been quite upset.

I had a man threaten me in Glasgow when was 17 and a Scottish man in London quite aggressively tell me I should help out a “fellow Scot” - he heard my accent when I said sorry no change.

Also heard other instances of intimidation. A friend of mine intervened when a teen girl was being sworn at in south London.

We don’t always know these men are homeless. There was a man in Twickenham who would be out begging every day on the high street until he sadly died. He clearly had mental health issues but what he wasn’t was homeless or in need of money. I didn’t realise until he died but he lived in his family’s large house on Twickenham green and had a car too.

There's a brilliant scene in "Breeders" where Paul's dad Jim says "Count your blessings"

His mum Jackie then says "Check you privilege".

Jim looks at her and says "Is that the same as 'count your blessing'?"

"Yes, but with more guilt" she replies.

Think that sums up trite comments perfectly.