Comic Strips

I had to learn the hard way that in many cases, people are homeless for a reason. Not ALL cases - I'm not saying they all just need to pull bootstraps - but be careful in sticking your neck out too far for them.

I don’t know this guy, so this is just based off what you wrote and might be wholly unfounded. To be clear, I also don’t think you should set yourself on fire to keep anyone else warm.

I got a little hyper focused while writing this, so tl;dr: I get why he would lash out in that circumstance, which is why we need a social welfare system.

Having a bad reaction to cheese when you don’t have a safe, dependable, and clean bathroom sounds awful. Even if he doesn’t currently have lactose intolerance, he could easily develop it at any time if his dairy intake becomes inconsistent. Or maybe he just hates cheese (or tb cheese). I was a waiter for years and about 20% of people who likely aren’t homeless and who have plenty of options for food are rude when they get food with an ingredient they don’t like. If his ability to feed himself outside of those tacos was small, it could absolutely wear on him to constantly get a strong taste or weird texture he hates.

I also totally understand him getting annoyed and shitty about people skateboarding late where he sleeps. He’ll probably wake with the dawn, so if people are skating at 11pm throughout the summer, that’s going to cause awful sleep (compounding all the other factors that cause people to get worse sleep outside in public). Sure, it’s not his house, but just because he doesn’t have a legal place to live, doesn’t mean that he no longer has the need for quiet and safety. I’m not excusing actively chasing people away from a public area, but I do understand what might have led him to do it.

My sympathy with the rides bit depends on what his access to other transportation is/how far spread out needed services are. If there’s lots of free or very cheap options for getting places or there’s a grocery store, place to get mail, laundromat, bathroom services, and a place for him to register and receive support within walking/skating distance, then yeah, it’s a dick move. If not, he was still being rude, but I can empathize. I empathize when customers at my bakery are rude because they don’t understand the bathroom code, and that’s probably much less of an emergency situation for them.

People are generally rude when they have an unmet need and those around them could easily help with that need. It’s not productive or prosocial, but it’s pretty predictable. Most of the time, it’s directed towards service workers or really close relationships (my dad’s a bear before breakfast, which most of his acquaintances or more casual friends probably don’t know, for example). It only really gets directed at those in our larger acquaintance circles when something catastrophic happens in our lives, like the onset of a terminal/chronic illness, becoming disabled, the loss of a loved one, or losing a home or financial security.

I’m not at all saying that people should subject themselves to abuse because someone else is in an emergency. In fact, I think that tendency is one of the main reasons we should create stable welfare and medical systems(second to the moral imperative I believe we as a social species have to do what we can for others). That way, we don’t have to come to the point of aggression caused by desperation.