Homeless Man & His Dog--Santa Rosa

[Barbara]

Does anyone know anything about the 30ish man with his brindle dog who stands at the east off ramp of Hearn/Santa Rosa Ave (next to Advanced Auto Detail) looking for handouts? I normally do not contribute to "street people" but there is "something" good about this man and his dog. Yesterday I saw him sitting in a chair, a grocery cart with his belongings, and his faithful dog at his side. My heart was breaking, as where do they sleep/eat in the raining weather?

Any information would be appreciated as I contemplate assisting this man.

Barbara

[Thad]

Have a man friend with you if you attempt to make contact and have it be a nice man friend but, I myself will not beg, I will find work some way somehow...that is always the question. When I go to home depot for materials and find somebody at the exit with a sign asking for help. The same person could be in the parking lot asking people coming out of the store if they need some help. I have done that...

Does anyone know anything about the 30ish man with his brindle dog who stands at the east off ramp of Hearn/Santa Rosa Ave (next to Advanced Auto Detail) looking for handouts? I normally do not contribute to "street people" but there is "something" good about this man and his dog. Yesterday I saw him sitting in a chair, a grocery cart with his belongings, and his faithful dog at his side. My heart was breaking, as where do they sleep/eat in the raining weather?

Any information would be appreciated as I contemplate assisting this man.

Barbara

[caretaker]

Have a man friend with you if you attempt to make contact and have it be a nice man friend but, I myself will not beg, I will find work some way somehow...that is always the question. When I go to home depot for materials and find somebody at the exit with a sign asking for help. The same person could be in the parking lot asking people coming out of the store if they need some help. I have done that...

This is All Aboard Animal Search & Rescue I will drive over and see what I can do. I am also going to help the twin brothers who's dog are in Animal Care and Control. they are good dog owners,, I work with homeless in santa rosa and there dogs, down at railroad square awhile back one of them actually helped me recover a lost dog I had been looking for. I started a program called the street hero program to give them confidence and that they can be productive even though living out on the streets, they will get money for returning dogs to me, they have my phone number..

I havent seen this one , so I will go take a look I offer food and coats for the dogs. but I do not give them money for drugs and booze.
And I have at times taken in there animals when they go to jail otherwise there just out at the shelter and get put down. some dogs I would not help and have them sign the dog over to me or they go to the shelter and I catch them when they are going down out there.

Thanks Barbara for the heads up, and for noticing most people just drive by and dont care.

Mary Quinn

[theindependenteye]

>>>I myself will not beg, I will find work some way somehow...that is always the question. When I go to home depot for materials and find somebody at the exit with a sign asking for help. The same person could be in the parking lot asking people coming out of the store if they need some help. I have done that...

Dear Thad--

I share your philosophy, would find it almost worse than death to beg. My relatives were all German farmers who prided themselves on self-reliance, hated the New Deal because some family down the road got a bushel of oranges on "relief," and would rather have gone to church stark naked than take charity -- though, oddly, they quarreled viciously among themselves over inheritance. And, despite being politically in an entirely different camp, I share a lot of those instincts. I can very rarely bring myself to give something to a beggar on the street, and then only if she's female, and old.

(Though I confess that as director of a non-profit theatre, I beg regularly for donations; but I rationalize this as helping us give something back in return.)

Still, I'm not quite in tune with your premise. You're saying, basically, that if that person out there was you -- someone with your present abilities -- they could do otherwise. Obviously true. But they're not you.

Maybe they're just lazy bums. But not many people would really prefer to live in the street and dumpster-dive and beg if *they* thought they had an option. It's really not the same as lying in a hammock in a Carribean resort. So what makes that difference between them and you?

Maybe it's chemical addiction. Maybe it's war trauma. Maybe it's a life catastrophe -- bankruptcy, divorce, job loss, you name it. Maybe it's clinical depression. Maybe it's just ignorance, stupidity, lack of imagination, lack of anybody, from the time of your birth, helping you toward a sense that there's a reason to be alive. And indeed, for many of these people, no, you and I would be no worse off, maybe better, if they just died.

But to expect that they have your resources of will, emotional muscle, and imagination? I don't think that makes sense. I don't think there are easy answers: no one can be salvaged solely by charity, and yet no one can pull himself up by bootstraps that are rotted out. We can argue that all those swept away by the tsunami deserved it, and that those who fled inland were the smart ones and deserved to live, but that's a pretty self-serving position. The tsunami that's the fusion of our economic/competitive/cultural extremities has swept a whole buncha people in its wake and forced us into extreme rationalizations that the whole problem would vanish if only they were us.

Enough. Thanks for going out on a limb. I'm not in agreement with you, but I'm joining you there.

Peace & joy--
Conrad