How Can We Help the Homeless and Should We?

Just a few months ago I was with my friends Mike and Kim and we had been walking around having a great time in the city. We then exited a store and Kim said something under her breath like, 'Oh, no,' when I looked in the same direction to find a middle aged man with a drunken stare to him. She knew this man as 'the town drunk' and he had been homeless for years. He asked us for the time and we replied, but he didn't just stop with that and followed us across the street talking up a storm. He was telling his whole life story in the fifteen minutes we stood there: he talked about how he grew up living poor with his family and how he wanted to be educated and go through college to get a good job so he could live well. But he said his parents just didn't have the money and it was impossible. I felt threatened as did Mike and Kim from the drunken gestures of this man and thought to myself, if this man wanted to make something of his life, I mean if he really wanted to, he would try harder and somehow do what he wanted. We tried to leave as soon as possible.…