I was in Brighton once with my brother and some homeless guys were sitting around NOT begging, they were just grouped in keeping each other sane, anyways we stopped to shoot the breeze with them and find out a little of what took them to the streets, it was really sad, most had been kicked out of home because they were unruly teens!! A couple of the girls had left home because they were being abused by step dad or being beaten, to them a life on the street was better than that! So we gave them a pack of cigarettes and they said we were about the only people who ever wantyed to know their story, the rest just look at them like their scum, in a selfish way i felt goosd about myself for having just listened to them....
Later on there was this old guy who had clearly been on the bottle, he said he was well hungry and hadn't eaten in days, i went across to McDonlads and bought him virtually everything they sell & took it back to him, he looked at me like I was mental, he didn't want that, he wanted money...i was enraged, so I waked back to the 1st group and gave them the food, they were a litte upset because they didn't want charity, it took some persuading to get them to take it, in the end they did cos I threw the line that it'd make me feel better about myself, I made homeless ppl feel guilty into taking food from me???
Always remember to walk a mile in a man's shoes before judging him.