Giving money to homeless people

abes

Giving money to homeless people

abes

1 min readJan 9, 2023

Building effective altruism

Community

Community experiences

Personal Blog

I have Schizophrenia. I had a psychotic break where I felt spiritually obligated to give money to homeless people.

I typically give $200 every month. I withdraw that amount in 20s and 50s and distribute the money to people who are bartering for money. I live in a city with a lot of homeless population.

This month I am going to give $300. I know this isn't a ton of money but I was simply wondering how much I should give? I don't know if giving more people smaller amounts or less people larger amounts will be better.

Comments 1

Sorted by

New & upvoted

Julia_Wise🔸

When I used to work with homeless clients, one said that the $500 her parents gave her was "enough rope to hang myself with" - enough for a lot of drugs but not enough for a security deposit on an apartment. So given your wish to give to this population, I'd probably go with smaller amounts to more people.

Comments

Curated and popular this week

166

40 hot takes

LewisBollard·2w ago·Curated 4d ago·8m read

Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes. On factory farming 1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...

Your work at [large AI safety ecosystem org] is not replaceable

brentonmayer·4d ago·6m read

When speaking to candidates who are considering working with us at 80,000 Hours, I often hear people worry about replaceability. The familiar version of the worry is about whether the organisation will hire someone else in your place. If it will, then the difference you make by taking the job is only the difference between you and them. There are a couple of well-known answers to that. The person hired in your place probably cares about the world too, and would go on to do somethi...

Did I rejoin Ambitious Impact at the wrong time?

Aidan Alexander, Ambitious Impact·5d ago·9m read

> TL;DR: No, but you might, if you leave it too late: We’re hiring for seven roles, and the people who join now will shape what a much bigger AIM becomes. The first step is cheap -- an expression of interest form. My worry I rejoined...

Recent opportunities to take action

EA community - Research participants needed!

Kaviya I·2h ago·1m read

Counterfactual 2:1 match for $250k in animal welfare donations on October 22nd

abrahamrowe·16h ago·1m read

Nobody is measuring whether humans can still catch AI’s mistakes

ANTHONIO OLADIMEJI·5h ago·4m read