How Can We Help the Homeless and Should We? Personal essay, referring to work by Peter Marin, Awalt and Wright

Essay by AvatarCollege, UndergraduateA-, February 1997

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Just a few months ago I was with my friends Mike and Kim and we had been walking around having a great time in the city. We then exited a store and Kim said something under her breath like, 'Oh, no,' when I looked in the same direction to find a middle aged man with a drunken stare to him. She knew this man as 'the town drunk' and he had been homeless for years. He asked us for the time and we replied, but he didn't just stop with that and followed us across the street talking up a storm. He was telling his whole life story in the fifteen minutes we stood there: he talked about how he grew up living poor with his family and how he wanted to be educated and go through college to get a good job so he could live well. But he said his parents just didn't have the money and it was impossible.

I felt threatened as did Mike and Kim from the drunken gestures of this man and thought to myself, if this man wanted to make something of his life, I mean if he really wanted to, he would try harder and somehow do what he wanted. We tried to leave as soon as possible.

But then I began reading these essays about the homeless and it started to change my mind. The essay 'Virginia's Trap' by Peter Marin especially effected me because of the way it portrays the young woman that has nothing going for her and almost everything against her. I though about this and decided I had misunderstood the whole plight of this population and thought there must be a better way to help these unfortunate people. How should we help the homeless and should...