This post contains 10 Things you SHOULD DO when serving the poor and the homeless, and 10 Things you SHOULD NOT do.

As there are different things you should or should not do for homeless people versus those who have a home but are poor, some of the items on the list begin with the words “Homeless” or “Poor” for things that are specific to those groups of people.

10 Things to Do for the Poor and Homeless

1. Get to know the poor and homeless. Spend time with them. Ask them their names, and remember them. Tell them yours. Shake their hands. Be open and friendly. Touch them. Hug those who want hugged. Allow them to tell their stories. Listen. Remember.
2. The poor and homeless are our equals. Honor them, respect them and treat them as our brothers and sisters. Feel honored that they are willing to share their lives with you and that you have the opportunity to spend time with them.
3. Find out from them what they most need. Your presence, your touch, your love, may be at the top of the list. If you’re giving them “stuff”, personally hand it out. Remember – You’re “sharing”, be it your time or your stuff.
4. Homeless: Check with your town or city to make sure they do not have an ordinance against distributing food on the street.
5. Homeless: If you distribute food, small items that can be held in the hand and that don’t need plates, silverware, ovens or refrigerators work best. If you plan to give out cooked food, make sure hot food (soup, burritos, pizza, etc.) is kept hot until you hand it out, and that cold food (meat sandwiches, etc.) is kept cold until you hand it out.
6. Homeless: Give them new socks and underwear. Bag them individually in Ziplock bags, marked with the size. The highest quality socks and underwear are usually not necessary. When socks and underwear get really dirty they may be thrown out by those who don’t have access to a laundromat.
7. Homeless: Give hotel size, single use toiletries – soap, lotion, shampoo, razors (bag one or two disposable razors in Ziploc snack size bags) and so on. Find toothbrushes that have covers. 16 oz. bottles of shampoo or lotion often end up in the garbage (They’re too heavy to carry.) You can buy single use items in bulk from hotel supply companies for a few pennies each.
8. Homeless: Many of them have significant dental problems and cannot eat items that require a mouth filled with good teeth, such as apples. They can usually handle bananas, tangerines and oranges.
9. Poor and homeless: Give them clean clothes, blankets, and similar items that are in good condition. Launder and fold them and label them with sizes. Dirty clothes and blankets usually end up in a dumpster.
10. Homeless: Always take bottles of water, regardless of the time of year. Dehydration is a common problem among the homeless.

10 Things Not To Do for the Poor and Homeless

1. Homeless: Never give them money. If they tell you they need it to buy a specific item, buy the item for them.
2. Homeless: Never tell them your address or take them to your home. If you doubt the wisdom of this, let’s communicate privately.
3. Homeless: Don’t go alone. Don’t go in large groups. Groups of three to five work best. Don’t go after dark. Mid morning to mid afternoon works best.
4. Homeless: Don’t take your wallet or purse or wear expensive jewelry or clothing.
5. Homeless: Don’t give them new clothing, with a few exceptions – socks, underwear, and possibly shoes. Why? – Three reasons:
   1. Expensive new jackets, hoodies, shoes and similar items may endanger them in areas with high populations of street people, where it is likely they’ll be mugged (and possibly beaten) and lose that new coat you gave them.
   2. They frequently sell those items to raise cash to fund their habits. We go the day after Christmas, and they try to sell us brand new coats, shoes, blankets and similar items. Swap meet dealers in vans also patrol the homeless during the holidays, offering to pay cash for new items.
   3. Many do not have access to laundromats. When the sweatshirt you gave them gets filthy, if they can lay their hands on another one, they’ll throw the filthy one in the trash, whether it’s the $1 one you bought at a garage sale or the $30 one you purchased at the department store.
6. Poor and homeless, but especially the homeless: Do not clean out your attic or closets, bag up the stuff and drop it off on a street corner in the homeless area. Most or all of it will end up in a dumpster. They do not need gold four-inch heels, bell-bottom pants from the 70’s and broken blenders. If it’s usable, donate it to the thrift shop. Otherwise, throw it in the trash!
7. Homeless: Do not drop off cases of bakery products, such as loaves of bread, packages of rolls, whole cakes and pies, packages of frozen dough, unbaked pizzas, and so on. Most of this will end up in the garbage.
8. Try to avoid giving out “packets” of items, such as a toothbrush, lotion, apple, socks and soap, unless you tell them what is in the packet and ask them which of those items they need. Otherwise, they sort through the packet after you’ve left and throw away the items they don’t want.
9. Avoid giving out major items at Christmas, especially to the homeless. Visit them at Christmas, take along water, tangerines, little bags of crackers, hotel size shampoos and that type of thing. In most urban areas, many of the people who are on the street on the weekend before Christmas and on Christmas day are not homeless. They only pretend to be homeless and are on the street to get free blankets, sleeping bags, coats and similar items which they plan to sell at the swap meet. Hand out the sleeping bags and similar items at least a week on either side of Christmas, when the real homeless people will get them.
10. Avoid giving out large quantities of candy. Many poor and homeless cannot afford dentists and have bad teeth. Also, people who work with drug addicts have advised us against giving out candy. Apparently some addicts will live on drugs and candy if possible.

These are not exhaustive lists. Of course, some of these things may not apply where you live. If you have one homeless guy in your small town who sleeps on the city square, you would probably notice if several other people sat with him on Christmas day, pretending to be homeless so they can receive new blankets and sleeping bags.

We would love to hear additional ideas or questions in the Comments section from those of you who also come alongside your poor and homeless friends.

In addition to finding ways to build relationships with the poor, we are building relationships with the homeless and finding small ways in which we can help them.

We have over ten thousand homeless people in our city. We want to help, not make it attractive to live on the street, if sleeping on a cold sidewalk in a rainstorm might be considered attractive.

San Diego has agencies that work on permanent solutions for getting the homeless off the street. However, for every ten that get off the street at least ten take their place. Some never get off the street. We know some who have been living on the street for over twenty years.

My wife and I do not have the skills or resources to get people off the street. We try to help those who are waiting their turn to get into one of the shelters or programs that provide housing and services, and some who cannot get into shelters or programs because they are unable or unwilling to follow the rules (which usually have to do with drug and alcohol usage and behavior).

There is no template, one-size-fits-all plan that works for what we think of as “giving a cup of cold water” to our friends on the street. If we lived in Chicago or New York City, we would need to adjust some of what we do, especially in the winter.

10 Ideas for How to Help the Homeless

1. We go to where the homeless live on the streets. (We do not go to the homeless scattered in the canyons and backcountry.) We park our car, get out, walk the streets and meet them.
2. We greet them and tell them that we have water and whatever else we have with us that day, and ask if they need some of those things. We usually keep our supplies in a garden wagon that we pull behind us.
3. We ask their names, shake their hands when possible and hug them when they want hugged.
4. We talk to those who want to talk to us. We meet brilliant, unemployed people who have PHDs, people who are mentally ill and make no sense, and lots of people somewhere between those extremes.
5. We ask them what they need that they have difficulty finding. Tarps are the number one request in winter. New, clean underwear is also high on the list. Those who sleep in a shelter at night have fewer needs. Those who sleep outdoors have a greater need for warm clothing, sleeping bags, blankets and that sort of thing when the weather is cold.
6. Since we buy almost everything we give away, we try to find sources for decent quality products at a good price. For example, we have sources for inexpensive, bulk supplies of soap, shampoo, lotion, razors. toothbrushes, toothpaste, Q-tips and so on. (Hotel supply companies and dollar stores)
7. We work with a local food distribution group to acquire inexpensive supplies of fruit, crackers, cookies and similar products that are packed in small packages.
8. We have an inexpensive source for 6 X 8 tarps with corner grommets for wet weather use (Harbor Freight – $1.99).
9. We scour garage sales, thrift shops, and swap meets to find used clothing, backpacks, sleeping bags and similar items that are in good condition. We do not give away new clothing, except socks and underwear. (I’ll explain why in the “Do’s and Don’ts” in the following post). We wash the clothing, fold and label it with the size on a strip of masking tape and put a stack on our wagon.
10. Our friend David, who goes with us each time, always brings a couple of dozen packages of baby wipes (great for cleaning dirty hands), and a few other people give us used clothing. Two other friends give us bags of new socks and occasionally tarps.

Water, food, toiletries, clothes, and similar items are temporary help at best. Some people assume that hundreds of churches and individuals hand out these sorts of things to the homeless. That doesn’t happen. Christmas may be big, but the rest of the year is hit and miss.

We frequently hear comments such as “That’s the first water I’ve had since yesterday,” “I’m wearing the only pair of pants I’ve had for six months and they’re full of holes,” “I haven’t had any clean underwear for months,” “We’ve been under the bridge at night with the addicts and are afraid to go to sleep. With these tarps we can get away from them and sleep at night.”

From time to time we see efforts by Christians and churches to “evangelize” the homeless and tell them about Jesus. We assume something of the message must get through, but have observed that is not always the case.

Do we tell people about Jesus? We’ll talk about that in a future post.

Until then, have you discovered ways to help your homeless friends? Please share your experiences in the comment section below.