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I give to United Way out of each paycheck and do my best to try to support local work programs.
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The United Way (hq'd right here where I live) has some problems. There was the 1995 ouster of its top 2 people for misuse of funds (we're not talking $5 for a shoe shine, William Aramony funded liaisons to Europe to see his teenage girlfriend) and an ongoing series of complaints of workplace harrassment.
Give that money to a can shaker, and you pretty much know its going towards food or liquor. Spare change will not get a homeless person any decent amount of drugs. $5 will get them enough cheap vodka to settle them in for the night, and if that's they way they want to go, I have no problem helping them with that.
In Seattle, they have a program called Bunks for Drunks. Over a period of two years, it showed that there were considerable savings in securing a building for unrepentant alcoholics to sleep in, rather than bugging them about skills and jobs and how those things absolutely must be preferable to their current lifestyle.
The building is in a high rent area. They get catered food. And yet, it costs the taxpayers less than trying to re-educate them and get them into the mainstream.
Bunks For Drunks