When is someone truly deserving of help?
I get that question a lot, in one form or another. Like when:
- Someone with a disability is let into the pantry ahead of other guests. Other shoppers have objected, saying this particular person isn’t disabled, and they should have to wait in line like everybody else. What should I do?
- Likewise, we have delivered food to a family on account of their medical condition and inability to come to the pantry, only to discover that they did indeed have a car, but didn’t want to come for other reasons. Should I have accepted their request and delivered food?
- Or the person who asks for food to be delivered to them but who is, say 40? Should they be given food? Why don’t they get a job?
Our response is, well, it depends.
Your health condition is no one else’s business, not open to group discussion. So when people request early admission because of health, I ask why, but I accept the possibility that they could lie to get this benefit. Some disabilities (say, heart conditions) are quite real, but not visible. Others (say, someone with AIDS) are at special risk during a pandemic and really need to stay away from crowds. And others can’t really explain why they should get assistance. I usually decline to help them.
We are, in point of fact, legally forbidden to seek proof of poverty as a requirement for providing food to our guests. Someone far up the food chain wisely decided that asking for proof of need only serves to make a dehumanizing situation worse.
After working extensively with the homeless, and now with people in need of food, I have learned to act on two beliefs:
- One can make the error of helping someone who really doesn’t need it, and one can make the error of refusing help to someone who really does. We choose to minimize the latter and so accept the risk of the former.
- At the end of the day, debating in whether someone is ‘really needy’ is not so much about them as it is about me, about what kind of person I am, who we are, and what we want our community to be.
At Food for Greater Elgin, we choose to help. We aim to treat people with compassion in a moment of crisis that will not be something that defines them, but will be something that they will transcend.
-Michael