Foraging and Homelessness

[Ph34r]

The supermarkets have started sealing off their bins with gates topped with menacing spikes, making foraging dangerous if not impossible and this valuable food source.

I have heard that others inject blue ink into their food to stop the homeless.

 

[British Red]

So how many hour did you donate Metatron?

You of course are right, the mentally ill, the abused children, the men who lose their homes through divorce, and the runaways should just "man up and sort it".

I did, I was young, nasty, a bloke and full of attitude. It bloody nearly killed me.

If you spend any time with the homeless as you claim you have, you will see the desparation to leave. Most get onto drugs and booze to block out the cold, the pain and the hopelessness. The effect is not the cause.

Did you know that the largest common factor in being homeless in the UK is being a member of the services? Hardly the helpless people you describe.

Actually, I have an ignore button - feel free to return to your Daily Mail

Red

 

[_mark_]

I did some volunteer work back in my university days, when I thought I could make a difference. People are always ready to blame something or someone else for their problems, instead of taking personal responsibility.

There are more often than not others to blame for the emotional distress that leads to homelessness, it is never kindness and understanding that drives one onto the street.

 

[Tadpole]

Last Thursday I was on the streets, as I have been for the last 18 months, handling out food, clothes , toiletries, and just being someone to listen to them, and frankly each Thursday night as I leave to go home I thank my stars that I’m not homeless, thought it was something I experienced in my late teens. Imagine if you can, sitting on an icy pavement, begging for food, money or just something to blot out the reason that the street is better than a warm comfortable room in a house or hostel. I see a family that lost their whole life, when their home was burnt to the ground by thugs who didn’t like their life style. I see a couple of girls who were abused at home, and when moved to council care were again abused, so they left and moved to Bristol and a hostel and were abused there, they had next to nothing, and that was taken, a long with their childhood, by the people who were meant to love them and care for them.
I see ex-service men who live a life on the street and are constantly on the move, glad to be alive, sad that they lived and their mates, brothers really, died
They survive knowing that their pain and loss has killed the love and hope that their families had when they came back from the war alive. They cannot help but subject their families to the torment and pain of seeing the effects that war has done to them, all the fighting the drinking the drugs is to blot out the nightmares that most are torn apart by.
I can only image what it is like to see the parade of dead friends and enemies in the nightmares that destroy their home life and their minds. For you from the comfort of your house to say this is a life style choice is to miss the point. This life was not chosen by them, it was chosen by the underfunding of care homes, it was put in place by destruction of mental institutions, and the underfunding of national health care system by successive governments.

Next time you see a homeless person, remember that between him/her/them sits only three months pay, or a family death, a car accident that leaves you unable to cope with life, between you and them is a gap so tiny that one action or inaction by some other person, outside of your control, and you could, just be there alongside them, be out there now, cold, hungry, scared, desperate to blot out the pain loneliness the isolation.

Find a local soup-run, a local hostel, a local halfway house and give up one evening a week, or a month, or just give up a few hours a month, and see that they are just like you; they could be again given one helping hand. Or they could and will die unloved unnoticed, unmissed.
Right now in Bristol there are 70 people sleeping rough, no bed, no shelter, nothing but a blanket and if they are lucky a box or plastic bag between them and the weather.

 

[demographic]

Did you know that the largest common factor in being homeless in the UK is being a member of the services? Hardly the helpless people you describe.

I have also have heard that a disproportionally large percentage of Big Issue salesmen (by their very nature homeless) are ex forces.

 

[BunnyMazonas]

Yeah... "lifestyle choice". Like one friend, who was put into care as a child for various reasons only to be sexually assaulted and raped by his foster father. Then moved into a temporary situation with other young lads who, being traumatised similarly themselves, but being bigger and older than him, took out their frustrations and trauma on him. So he ran away. Too young for the government to help him and terrified of being found and sent back into "care". Or the lovely man that faught in the Fauklands, ended up with PTSD and went doolally; completely harmless, gentle, friendly man that talks a constant stream of utter gibberish and sings to me whenever I see him. And then my other half, who over the years has casually imparted info to me about his childhood that would turn your hair white. And who still, bless him, believes that much of it was "his own fault".

That isn't to say everyone on the streets is innocent and blameless. I've seen my other half and his mates have to deal with struggling as homeless and having to deal with theft and issues from the local homeless heroin addicts. Stealing their dogs for money, and such. But then I've see guys on the street desperately trying to cure their addictions, and I've seen the homeless community rally around them like mother hens to support them.

Most of the homeless people I know who drink or take drugs do so BECAUSE they are homeless. Once you've been stuck out there long enough, having been through trauma and loss sufficient to leave you in that situation, any escape is better than facing the sadness and trauma.

 

[BunnyMazonas]

Just read your edit: You should inform child services and the police.

Yeah, because all the police in the world are just lovely people, and foster care is always perfect. Seriously, half the people I know who are homeless have been on the receiving end of abuse from both police and social care. It doesn't always work out the way it should.

 

[British Red]

That isn't to say everyone on the streets is innocent and blameless.

Oh for sure they aren't. A few years back, briefly, my sig line, was "never sleep on your back". A man I have come to respect asked me to change it as he liked reading my posts but couldn't get past the memories that line evoked.

Gods but you have to be pathetically naive (and very young) to think being homeless is a "lifestyle".

Nothing has made me so angry as that pathetic piece of rubbish since I joined here (and lets face it - I am renowned for being the hard core right of this forum)

Red

 

[BunnyMazonas]

It's a lot easier to find food and shelter in a town all year round than it is out in the woods. Without seriously breaking the law, bushcraft can support you temporarily, for a few days or even a few weeks. But thesedays, especially in crowded places like most of the UK, it can't be a way of life unless you're exceptionally good at it and you're prepared and able to keep well ahead of the law. To begin with, if I'm out going out in the wilds one of the most important things on my checklist is a good knife. In most towns, just having one on your person could get you arrested. So I'm not sure that bushcraft as most of us think of it here would be the right thing to teach homeless people.

Now that, I totally see your point with. I guess I would see bushcraft as an alternative for those times when there are no other options; when there is no room at the shelter that night and it's Winter, and you need something hot. Knives are definite;y not good to carry around, but I know my other half kept a multi-tool in his pocket - would one of those be a decent substitute for a knife for bushcraft?

 

[British Red]

Nope, most ,ulit tool knives blades lock. That will get you a five stretch

 

[Retired Member southey]

If you we're going to be homeless now, with the skillset you've got, what would be the kit/clothes you'd want with you?

 

[Robbi]

@ Tadpole, what an amazing post, thank you.

 

[BunnyMazonas]

Nope, most ,ulit tool knives blades lock. That will get you a five stretch

Well, damn. I guess he got bloody lucky he never got caught with that, then!

 

[Laurentius]

I count myself very lucky never to have been homeless, though I have come close. Back in the seventies my dad gave me a week to leave home, and he meant it. Unbeknownst to him, I had already put myself down on the Council housing list, and so when push came to shove, they found me a flat, there were such things as Council flats and vacancies back then, there isn't that security now.

 

[British Red]

Oh thats not the half of it.

You cannot take your bags into a government office now - including a dole office - in case they are bombs. But no lockers are provided for the homeless. So either risk losing your gear or get no dole. Simples

 

[Toddy]

I know that's not the case up here (one of the family members is a civil servant working in one of the main jobcentres in Lanarkshire). They aren't allowed to leave the bags anywhere, but must keep it with them at all times, and the security guards might ask to see the contents.

I've just checked with him, and he says folks bring their bags in all the time.

No idea why it's different down your neck of the woods.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

Might not be now - certainly was recently - due to the "heightened terror alert" <sigh>

 

[Tengu]

Ive never had any trouble.

Ive been told that should I ever need it there is indeed dedicated housing for me; but since I am a home owner I would have to sell the property and put the money into a very secure bond, and live on the interest. (what a joke. My house, I will say, is worth a fair whack but not so much of a whack that the interest of its vale would give me anything near a decent income)

I hope I never need such care

 

[walker]

the reason supermarkets throw the food away is the fact that if by chance anything go's wrong is there left wide open for compensation claims, very sad i know but thats the way of the world now so you carnt realy blaim them.

It does make me very angry that corporations think this is an acceptable way to act, just because they cant sell it doesn't mean it's not of use to someone else, why not just give it to local shelters, I'm sure they would only have to send them a letter saying first come first serve, then the shelter could distribute it as needed, It seems very hard minded by the stores if you ask me. Have you gone to the local council to ask who would be the best groups to approach?

 

[Laurentius]

Oh thats not the half of it.

You cannot take your bags into a government office now - including a dole office - in case they are bombs. But no lockers are provided for the homeless. So either risk losing your gear or get no dole. Simples

Well nobody told the department of health that, when I walked in the other day with a small backpack, they didn't even look in it.