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# Charles Springer: Homeless residents must stop undermining efforts to get off the streets
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/from/
- Published: 2004-01-05T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:26:47.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*THE STREET It’s time for the homeless to end their stereotypical ways*

*By Charles Springer*

I write this column to bring light not to the non-homeless community, but to the homeless community as a whole. I know many of you know me by my column if not by my face. And I have been trying to bring understanding to what we go through living on the streets. I tell them of the feelings and the hardships through my own experiences out here. I hope I have had some success in showing that the stereotyped homelessness is not the whole reality of the streets.

What I am about to say might make some of you angry or hurt, but this is something that needs to be said so our communities can work together to get more of us off the streets.

The stereotypical view of homelessness is that of some person sponging off the community and giving nothing back. That is not the reality of the streets, but there are some of you who make the entire community look bad by acting just as the anti-homeless sentimentalists say we act. You are making it hard for those of us who want to get ahead, even if it is just getting food or a place to sleep.

I was always raised to work for what is mine. Since I’ve been on street, I have not used the social-service agencies — except for receiving my mail. I work so I can eat, and I don’t take from those less fortunate than I am. I use the anger about the reasons I am out here to fuel my resolve to get an education and get the job I want. And that’s the only way I try to keep my own mind and soul from being sucked dry by the hopelessness and despair on the streets. I help those who have less than me — unless it takes too much. Then I decline.

We should all help each other out here. We should try to give a smile to those who need it, and we should work with the community in which we live to show that we care about them and are not living the stereotypical homeless lifestyle. We should, if we have a bad drug or alcohol problem, be man or woman enough to seek help and not keep blaming society for the reason we drink or use. We should, if you see someone who needs help in this area, do interventions and kindly help them to help themselves. I have watched too many of us die from these problems.

We should quit being what the general populous considers us to be and simply be what we are — human beings. The more those of you to whom I am speaking engage in anti-social behavior, the more you feed into the negativity assigned to the homeless population. In essence, you make it very hard for anyone to get their lives together. It also makes the job of trying to bring the surrounding communities together very hard, if not impossible. We should be able to work with the surrounding communities so they will not be afraid of those of us who want to work with them.

This is the only way to get this homeless epidemic solved and the only way to help us to help ourselves. So I am asking the homeless community to come together and become a real community, to show the people who want to blast us all the time that we are not what they consider us to be. We should police each other. We should work with those who aren’t getting help. And to those who continue to make problems for our community, go somewhere else to cause trouble. (Charles Springer is homeless in Santa Monica).

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 5, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/010504.pdf?ref=smdp.com)