My homeless tale begins with my son becoming acquainted with a couple who lived across the street from his house. They were renting one side of a duplex from the husbands mother and she lived in the other side. One day he was talking to them and the wife told him her mom, stepdad and brother and sister were moving in with them because they were homeless. Well it wasn’t a few weeks and the mother evicted everyone from the duplex including her son.
My son being the tender heart he is was like mom they have 2 teenagers and they are going to be living in the park can they just stay in my garage for a month until they get into a shelter? My husband was like hell no that is a huge liability and me being the softy said ok. The mom (we will call her Beth) the stepdad and two kids move into my sons garage.
The daughter and son find a new apartment to live in. So at this point I am thinking now why don’t they go live with them now? The mom hangs out on the patio all day not even looking for housing. I arrive one day to visit my son and Beth is making tbone steaks on the grill for breakfast, huh what? I can’t afford steak really…
My son asks and Beth tells him they get 600 in foodstamps, which my son calls and finds out they have put his address as their residence at which time he informs the dept they do not and that they have one week to vacate.
My son and I have a conversation and he gives them a deadline to move out (after 2 months) of no action on their part and no desire to do anything different. They on the day he tells them they have to be out move to a hotel and leave all kinds of crap in his garage thinking this is free storage or a trash dump. My son calls them, yes they have cell phones and tells them you have one week to get your crap out (still very nicely) of the garage with no response, so he donates the usable items to the Goodwill.
* Lesson learned you cannot help those who don’t want to help themselves.
* There are homeless people by choice
* This particular family now posts on every social networking site they can asking for free food and money.
* Be sure to consider who you try to help and from this point forward we will stick with volunteering…..
I know that this post might make some people mad, oh well be mad because I know for certain that if this was my family, my butt would be out everyday doing anything and everything I could do to get out of someone’s garage and I certainly would respect their kindness enough to leave it better than it was before I arrived..
SsGreenBean 