Homeless Timmer and Negative Kozol

Talking about poverty and homelessness is not an easy subject to tackle. When I see a homeless person on the streets I do tend to give a buck or two because I feel guilty if I don't. And I know I shouldn't because it is not my fault but I ALWAYS (whatever the situation my be) say to myself, what if that was me. I can't help myself by switching the roles in my head and it seems to break my heart every time I do something like that. However, that does not mean that I don't think that they can use the money for drugs or alcohol. After I give what I can, I'd like to think that they will use it for good and not evil but of course that would be foolish of me to think all the time. As a society we have stereotyped anything that can be stereotyped. Including the misfortunes of others. As a result of those misfortunes, people begin to live life like that. Just like Cliffies mother said "The point is that they put a lot of things into our neighborhood that no one wants". Did it insult her? At first it most certainly did, but after she said, "The truth is, you get used to the offense". So what does this tell you, it tells me at least that people begin to live day to day with such horrible conditions and stop caring and this issue shouldn't be like that. I feel like no article touched based on hope of some sort of relief to such issue. Hope may not be the best term in this case because I do believe hope can be paralyzing at time. However, it may also be all one may have to offer. It was disturbing reading about all this because we don't think about it, it's somewhere in our subconscious. No one solution is going to change these issues but I do believe multiple solutions will help our society improve, it will take time though, lots of time.