Comments on A Craig Walker's Blog: The Poor Among Us

It's great that Craig has this experience and ...

2012-12-03T08:48:25.537-08:00

It's great that Craig has this experience and can share it with others. I was once home taught in jail. No, I wasn't the inmate, my home teacher was and I had gone to visit him.

I am very thankful for smart people who know how to handle money well, like the Walkers! They are good examples for us. Especially in that all-expenses-paid trip to the moon they invited us on.

Another similar situation: a woman called our hous...

2012-11-20T12:57:02.404-08:00

Another similar situation: a woman called our house to say she and her husband were newly homeless and had nowhere to go. I picked them up and brought them home to buy time while we figured it out. She asked to use the phone and in a couple of hours she had lined up all kinds of help for themselves. She had obviously been down this road regularly as she knew just who to call.

She was also lucky to find an entry-level job, but I heard later that "it didn't work out," which is a euphemism for "I got fired because I was habitually late/didn't show up for work/cussed out and flipped off the boss/etc. What a train wreck of a life. I hoped for the best for them, and still do, but the realist in me suspects they continue their pattern.

The questions are many: why are they in this pattern and how did it begin? Have they lost hope of breaking the pattern? Or are they so comfortable with it that they don't want to break it? Do they feel no guilt about a lifestyle of take-take-take?

There are genuinely needy people who should have our help, and the government and church have created ways to provide that. But it's not right for a person or family to take constant advantage of the safety net. They should move on to free up resources for the newly unfortunate.

I remember one young couple who had no resources a...

2012-11-20T12:46:19.061-08:00

I remember one young couple who had no resources and were temporarily living w/ relatives, until the relatives gave them a date to be out. I was asked for help. Using the internet I squirreled out all the possible agencies that could provide aid to tide them over, shelter them, etc. Then I delegated certain ones of those for them to call and plead their case and I did the same with other agencies. Every agency had a long waiting list, although there are groups that provide vouchers for one or two night's immediate lodging. Otherwise it was a bust. I suspect the "lifers," once they get into the system, suck up all available resources, leaving nothing for those who need temp help. What saved these folks was a phone call from a friend down south who had a job for them, and off they went with the church providing bus tickets.

I can't imagine being in that bind and in this case, I don't know how much of their situation was pure bad luck, or how much they contributed to it (drugs? lack of interest in education?, etc.) It would be interesting to see how they are doing now. I hope that their predicament at that time wasn't part of a pattern.