How helpful is the help that is being offered?

This is the question that I tried to answer as I stood outside of a boba shop in San Bernardino County. A young man approached me, who will remain anonymous throughout this post. He asked me and everybody else going in and out of the establishment for financial help. The young man was hoping to accumulate enough money to be able to put himself up in a motel room for the night. However, I recall when I was being trained to volunteer, to refrain from giving money to the homeless. They suggested I point them in the right direction for them to be able to get the help they needed. This meant letting them know of certain shelters and organizations that have the potential to offer them help.

Stuck between giving him the money that I didn’t have and walking away, I offered that man a cigarette. He denied. He thought, “if people saw me standing out here with a cigarette in my mouth, they would think twice. They would wonder how I would spend it.”

Before I could ask him, he told about the fear he had about going to the nearest shelter not too far from where we were. Instead of feeling used by some of the people at the shelter for drugs, he was willing to spend $82 for one sheltered night in a motel.

This particular experience reveals the presence of flaws in the help that is being offered to those in need of help and are homeless. If individuals are being steered away from one of the only hands available to help due to fear, where do they have left to turn for help?