I think it’s possibly donating food directly to homeless people might be a viable way to save a life (I’ve not done any fact checking or math so keep that in mind) I was recently speaking to a homeless person and the topic of starvation came up and he alleged that “homeless people don’t die from starvation but a lack of food kills them” basically saying that secondary effects lead to the death such as using more drugs when food is scare, likely having bad immune system due to low quality food/not enough calories—basically not enough food doesn’t kill them but it starts a downward spiral that does—I’m not saying this is a perfect cause but given how much of a bias people have to seeing the people they help and given that most people are becoming cashless i.e homeless people have less money, buying homeless people a bit of food as a habit when you see them might lead to a (higher than expected) number of lives saved in a way most people could probably be convinced of (outside of EA spaces even convincing someone to give is difficult) it also bypasses the “homeless people will just spend it on drugs” issue people often cite as why they don’t give money to the homeless
I think it’s possibly donating food directly to homeless people might be a viable way to save a life (I’ve not done any fact checking or math so keep that in mind) I was recently speaking to a homeless person and the topic of starvation came up and he alleged that “homeless people don’t die from starvation but a lack of food kills them” basically saying that secondary effects lead to the death such as using more drugs when food is scare, likely having bad immune system due to low quality food/not enough calories—basically not enough food doesn’t kill them but it starts a downward spiral that does—I’m not saying this is a perfect cause but given how much of a bias people have to seeing the people they help and given that most people are becoming cashless i.e homeless people have less money, buying homeless people a bit of food as a habit when you see them might lead to a (higher than expected) number of lives saved in a way most people could probably be convinced of (outside of EA spaces even convincing someone to give is difficult) it also bypasses the “homeless people will just spend it on drugs” issue people often cite as why they don’t give money to the homeless