Reply #232: My husband has a wonderful solution to this dilemma [View All]

[shrike]

He offers to buy them coffee or Lunch/dinner/breakfast. Usually he'll walk in with them to a fast food place, buy the burger for them, then be on his way. Once a homeless woman asked him if he had any change, and he offered to buy her coffee. "Make that two coffees and I'll share my pie with you," she said. She had just gotten a pie from the local food pantry, for Thanksgiving. So he sat down in the alley beside the coffee shop and had pie with her. I wouldn't recommend this strategy for a woman, of course. But my husband has been around, he knows how to handle himself, and he says, "Hell, they're just people, like you and me. They may have drug or alcohol problems but that doesn't make them any less human."