Dear Doreen (hopefully you spot this), thank you for an amazing article -- and also congrats on your recent first pull request, no small feat! :)

I have a question for you; I've been hoping for an opportunity to ask a person who could answer this genuinely (something that I could not guarantee by asking just anyone off the street).

What is the best way for someone like me (a non-homeless person who wants to help), to actually help either a particular homeless person or the homeless community in general, in a way that makes an actual positive difference in their lives?

I am completely disenfranchised with the various charities out there purporting to help homeless people; I think most are shameless money-grabbing schemes. E.g., one of the most popular charities in the UK rakes in a boatload of money due to their catchy name, but once you get to the gist of what they actually do, it's basically "advice over the phone", which could have been done much more effectively as a free subreddit frequented by actual homeless users. My suspicions that they are largely worthless were confirmed by my wife, who said she once called them (before we met) at a time of need, and they were full of generalities and not of much practical use with regard to the actual problem she was facing.

I have now spotted a charity that sounds legit (shelterfromthestorm) and now happily donate to that ... but even then I'm not sure, and it feels odd to be helping out a London-specific charity when I'm not a Londoner and there's homeless people right outside my doorstep.

On the other hand, while I generally try to help out people in the street, that too typically doesn't feel like the best thing I could be doing. I know that at a certain level it's none of my business what people do with the money I give them, and that everyone's got their own demons to fight, but realistically I'd like to have some control in knowing my money was put to good use and actually made a positive difference to someone, rather than what I fear is more likely to happen many times, which is reinforcing negative behaviours/circumstances, and learned helplessness in people who could be helped in more substantial ways.

It also doesn't help that (understandably) there are a lot of scammers embedded in this community -- I've lost count of the number of times someone attempted to shake my hand first, and while still shaking would say they missed their London-Glasgow bus, and could I give them money for another ticket, or some equally frustrating story like that. The most disillusioned I've seen my wife was when she fell for a similar story and gave money for a very expensive ticket to a person -- I made her wait outside the train station for the next five minutes to prove this person would intentionally miss their train, and come out asking for ticket money again (I was right).

I find myself that I volunteer to buy food for people a lot - especially when they're stationed next to supermarkets. Which is nice in terms of ensuring some of the above "guarantees", and the people who want food are generally very grateful for it ... but I have a feeling that food is probably not necessarily the most pressing problem for most homeless people. And now with this pandemic, I haven't been out of my house for a while, so this face-to-face interaction has also gone.

Once in a while one entertains the romanticised thought of befriending a particular local homeless person they see often, or even offering a room, or a place to shower or shave, etc, but realistically this is feel-good fantasy land; as soon as you get even within an inch of a person, both their survival instincts and yours start ringing loud alarm bells, and you realise very quickly that it's not a good idea.

So, (and sorry for the long rant), as someone who's lived all this from the other side, and knows what kind of help they could have used most at the time, and realistically what form this could take in order to work at a practical level ... what would you advise?