<p>Has anybody seen these homeless people who dress decent and then asking for money? I get kind of annoyed when I see this. If they ever ask me for anything I would just tell them to get a job. I mean if people keep giving them things for free, they will never feel the need to change their lifestyle.</p>
<p>I saw a homeless guy near Urban Outfitters with a laptop.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I wasn’t convinced.</p>
<p>I’ve seen hobos with ipods</p>
<p>If you’ve tried to get a job recently, you know how few there are available. Now imagine that you have even fewer marketable skills than a college student.</p>
<p>The clothes were most likely stolen.</p>
<p>/thread</p>
<p>I agree with lololol. I see hobos with a lot of stolen ipods, etc. This is why I hate how sympathetic Berkeley is to homeless. The fact that Shattuck reeks of BO is bad enough, but the fact that there are looters willing to steal to fund drug habits is not ok for a university that charges premiums on their students.</p>
<p>Yeah that makes a whole lot of sense…clothes were stolen…</p>
<p>I’m reluctant to damn and deride the homeless. I live in fairly well-to-do Orange County neighborhood, but when I went back for Christmas I saw beggars near shopping centers that were never there before.</p>
<p>I am no social activist, and my heart definitely does not bleed for the drug addict or for the lazy. However, I think many of you are making an unfair assumption when you assume a well dressed homeless person stole his/her clothes. It’s worth remembering that the unemployment rate in California has been in double digits for more than a year. As students, you are pretty well insulated from that fact, but people in the real world have to deal with that. A well-dressed homeless person could be a person who until recently kept a job and lived a normal life like you and me.</p>
<p>Of course there’s really no way to tell. You aren’t obligated to help them (why are you whining?), but if you don’t, it would be best to ignore them altogether instead voicing your prejudice on the Berkeley forums.</p>
<p>omg I saw the same hobo with a laptop :D</p>
<p>Begging is actually a fairly lucrative endeavour. I’ve heard of folks making 6 figures cadging on the streets! Though I hear making that much bank is fairly rare.</p>
<p>There was a guy in San Francisco back in the 90s who used to stand at the first light coming into the City on 19th St./Park Presidio. A investigative news crew staked his position out for a few months. They found that he lived alone in a nice town house nearby, wore decent clothes when he wasn’t out on his post and that he averaged (by their calculations) around $65K- $70K a year without taxes… Needless to say, he wasn’t out there too much longer… Just like in real estate, it’s all about location.</p>
<p>This thread reminds me of this: [snopes.com:</a> Michelle Obama at Soup Kitchen](<a href=“http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/soupkitchen.asp]snopes.com:”>Michelle Obama at Soup Kitchen | Snopes.com)</p>
<hr>
<p>Danny
University of California, Berkeley '09 (B.S.)</p>