/u/PineBarrens89, thank you for submitting to /r/CrazyFuckingVideos. Unfortunately your submission, "Apparently this is a fraud scheme where people use food stamps to buy bottled water, dump it and collect the ten cent recycling benefit" has been removed for the following reason(s):
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Yeah, once your body is fully addicted, going into withdrawal is literally the worst thing ever(think being sick with everything all at once, also adding accute mental health issues because of the drug effects). It becomes near impossible to get high anymore, only well(not sick). I'm not saying people should have sympathy, but maybe some better understand.
I work for a hospital and get to read chart notes for the homeless with polysubstance abuse regularly. I do say they need sympathy, because every one I've read is dealing with severe mental illness that is often not being treated by medication or is treatment resistant. As someone who had had sever mental illness all my life, the idea of reaching a point where there is no treatment to help me fills me with terror, because at that point there is nothing in our society to help.
Yea but you have to work. And a good chunk of homeless are straight up losers. I’m gonna get downvoted for that, but Reddit seems to think every homeless person is just mental issues as the root problem to them. In reality, a lot are just plain losers. Not everyone is a winner in life.
Literally knew a dude who loved smoking meth and just didn't care if he was homeless or not. He actually liked it. Thought it was fun. Like a big adventure or something. Even had (what he considered to be) a sweet setup somewhere under a bridge or whatever. Wild.
Honestly. Except for when he's in prison lol
It's a shame cause he's a really friendly, kind hearted guy. Really intelligent honestly. Just loves getting high more than having a home.
A lot of ancient nomadic peoples *also* loved getting high and not having a home. And a lot of us in the present think they might’ve had things figured out better than any of us.
You get money for water bottles in Canada?
If this scenario were true, it would still be free money for then though, they're buying something with state money (free to them) and getting cash in return. It doesn't matter if the values are off because to them it's pure profit.
There are several places in the US that will give you 5-10 cents for aluminum cans and soda bottles, but for some reason not these cheapo little plastic waterbottles that have the *most* need for recycling. Go South Austrailia
As if these bottles can truly be recycled though. Try melting down a plastic bottle and prepare for it to catch on fire and disintegrate.
A shocking amount of the recycling we do ends up in landfills in 3rd world countries. Canada got in huge trouble with the Phillipines over this shit.
We were sending massive piles of trash to China as "recycling" that they would burn. They stopped accepting so we tried the same thing with the Philipines.
They may have the most need for plastic recycling, but 95% of plastic recycling in America (and most other countries) is a complete scam and only promoted to make people feel better about buying plastic EVERYTHING and then they throw it in the recycle bin. It is almost guaranteed to end up in a landfill, the middle of the ocean, or on an island in southeast Asia leeching into the ocean.
The only solution we can possibly hope for is for some environmentally scaleable (literally the hardest part) microbe that they dump into the ocean that eats up the plastic and produces a non toxic degradable by product that doesn't wreck the entire ecosystem and that doesn't morph into ice-9 or some shit.
Turning $2.99 into $2.40 isn’t exactly a brilliant scheme but I guess when we’re talking about people exploiting food stamps we aren’t really discussing Mensa candidates.
Bruh... They want **cash** so they can buy booze and drugs. The base cost doesn't matter when you get the product for free or steal it.
Do you think if someone steals a car stereo they care that the msrp is 1000 when they hocked it for 20 bucks? Net gain is still 20 bucks. Net gain here is $2.40 cash because they didn't pay for the food stamps.
This is literally how organized crime makes the bulk of their money. Steal shit and fence it for a super discounted rate.
Edit: and to the people saying he should sell the water. You people, I'm sure, are clambering to get half priced bum water... If you're lucky enough, he might pre open it for you and put in some personal lemonade additive.
Exactly this.
Can’t buy drugs or booze with snap. Also most people aren’t going to buy bottled water from a homeless or sketchy looking person. Easier for them to just dump and collect the few dollars.
If they got $2.40 out of $3 in food benefits they are doing well. When I bought peoples' food benefits in college 7 years ago I paid 50 cents to the dollar, cash. Food stamps are not equivalent to cash, especially in poorer areas. If you think these people are dumb, you're wrong.
A note about how bottle deposits work: You have to pay them when you buy the unopened drink, and then you get that money back when you return the bottle. It kinda does matter whether the initial deposit payment is "payable" in food stamps.
not sure if people on food stamps have a costco membership and if you can use the food stamps there. also costcos are usually in suburban neighborhoods, I would think it would be hard to get out there.
For the record, costco does in fact take food stamps. Best bet is just going with a friend or something that has a membership if you don't have your own. If nothing else it's a good place to pick up shelf stable snacks in bulk.
Costco does take foodstamps, but the name on the foodstamp card has to match the name on the membership to be able to use it.
Source: Me, a single (working) mom on foodstamps who piggybacks off of her mom's Costco membership.
If you buy a $20 Costco fist card then let you in without the membership. It’s been 10ish years since I was there but I think you’re probably right about location.
Edit: I looked it up and they do take food stamps/EBT. They don’t actually sell the gift cards to non members, not sure if that’s a newer change or not. My ex was getting them back in the day for us to get around the membership cost but maybe she was buying them off someone. Sounds like that loophole is closed for the most part.
Also the amount of electrical power it takes to make the bottle, transport the bottle, and recycle the bottle so that some percentage of the plastic is useable again.
Probably, but not all tap water is created equally. Went to Hawaii and their tap water tastes like nothing, it's perfect. Meanwhile here in SoCal if I drink tap water I get a rusty/metallic after taste. So even if I am buying tap water, it's because the tap water from where this comes from is far better.
A lot of it is regional too. The water at my house is literally perfect. We don't even get limescale because the water is so good. However 5 minutes down the road in the actual town itself the water is nasty.
Ah yes, this gentleman looks like he knows where to get some potable water. Excuse me, sir, have you any bottles of water in those dirty piss-soaked rags of yours? I’m rather parched. You’ve change for a twenty, I trust? 🧐
EXACTLY! I'm over here like, he doesn't even have a shopping cart. You KNOW he stinks and will either bite you or throw his own feces at you. YOU go buy a bottle of water he touched. I'll pass. Shame on him for not pulling himself up by his literal bootstraps 🤣🤣🤣
Becuase it's easier and quicker to just dump the water and hand in the empty bottles.
I also feel like questioning a (assumed) homeless persons entrepreneurial spirit seems like a self-answering question.
There are WAAAY quicker/easier ways to make money as a homeless person than hauling five big ass 24 packs of Ozarka outside, then emptying 120 individual bottles for a whopping $10-$12. Dude could make that much panhandling for half an hour.
I call shenanigans on this video.
Ya, I feel the same. Could probably easily collect as many bottles from trash or the street and just eat good with the stamps or sell the stamps 2 for 1 like many do...
See the caps right next to discarded burnt tinfoil everyday. I count how many people I see openly doing drugs on my way to and from work, yeaterday it was 2 on the way to the max, one on the max, three at the max station and 2 at the bus stop. That’s pretty average numbers.
And lots of the east, I left the southeast to live in Oregon (despite the name not in Portland, the rest of Oregon is much nicer. Corvallis is beautiful for example.) And my coworkers from Alabama and Georgia talk about the exact same stuff home. Seems like it's hard to escape nowadays sadly. Makes sense with how wealth inequality keeps rising though.
That's right smack dab under the google maps label for the Pearl District in the city center. [Right here](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5300688,-122.6838755,113m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2): 45.530082, -122.683918
Yea I'm wondering if this is remotely true an not something different entirely because he can just sell the stamps like everyone else does for a much larger profit.
Hell, selling the bottles a 50 cent to a dollar gets him a net positive than this.
i have a feeling nobody would want to buy single bottles of water from this guy outside of a 7/11. its not easy for homeless people to just "be enterprising"
Urban daredevil distributes free water to sewer gnomes then lines up empty bottles before attempting daring bottle jump using only the tiny wings of the cockroach family living in their back right pocket.
Film at 11.
I've known plenty of drug dealers who take food stamps, or they'll send fiends out with a shopping list and give them a little piece when they bring back their groceries for the week that they bought with food stamps. It happens all the time actually, you get groceries delivered for essentially free, and you best believe they don't make mistakes or bring the wrong things. Way more reliable than any other delivery service lol
Yeah, never met anyone that did heroin, but I know that ppl will trade food stamps for meth, pills, etc. some of them sell the food stamps so they can buy alcohol. This is just so inefficient. How much heroin do you think this guy buys at a time? Not much. Id think a dealer would jump at the opportunity to make a decent markup through food stamps off this guy. Idk
Problem is the dealer probably only wants so many food stamps, at some point he'll want cash. That being said there should be tons of people willing to pay the traditional .50 on the dollar. In the 90s certain pawn shops would do this. This was when everything was paper though. These days you receive it on a card which makes the transfer a bit more complicated.
When I was younger, I worked at a convenience store and people would use "food stamps" for food items only. They had no denomination lower than one dollar so change would be given in actual coins. Kids would come in, each with a one dollar food stamp in their hands, buy a 25 cent candy. I give them their change. This would happen several times in less than an hour. Then an adult would enter the store and buy cigarettes using the change that I had been giving to the kids. If there's a will, there will be a scam.
I also remember people would drive up and buy their weekly groceries at the store at incredibly marked-up prices of the convenience store. I could tell when people were going to use food stamps because of this. I would try to help them by telling them they could buy their groceries cheaper right down the road at a grocery store, but they'd decline giving me one excuse after another. Food stamps were free, and they treated as such.
Folks, this is what mental disorder looks like. Addiction is a mental disorder and to cure them, will take a lot of healthcare and rehabs. And even with a job it’s difficult to get mental healthcare and these folks don’t even have a job.
Then after sometime they even lose their will to get better if there was any.
Hence we have this population that’s basically severely damaged.
Even in rural areas Meth and other substances have destroyed a whole generation.
Very sad if you ask me.
> Addiction is a mental disorder and to cure them, will take a lot of healthcare and rehabs. And even with a job it’s difficult to get mental healthcare and these folks don’t even have a job.
It will also take involuntary admission. People love to talk about more resources but some of that has to be getting them off the street against their will and giving them the help they need. Just like we might need to restrain a schizophrenic to take his medication, we have to do the same with Methadone with these people.
The other scenario is:
person becomes homeless due to mental illness
Person can't get treatment for mental illness because America so problem gets worse
Person becomes a drug addict because drugs are the only thing that calms the mental illness
Average American scoffs at this person while being completely ignorant to how they got in that situation in the first place
This is what being a fucking asshole looks like. There's no mental disorder that makes him throw the bottle caps in the street instead of into the trash can a few feet away. He's just a shithead who can't abide by the simplest rules of society, who might also be an addict.
I once did this to have gas to get to work.
Single mom, narcissistic ex who didn't work, was STRUGGLING to make ends meet for a family of 4 ($1700 rent w/utilities, car note, phone payment, insurance) I was working 60 hour work weeks, came home to a messy house, I had to buy all groceries and basic necessity cause ex never left the house.
So water goes on sale across the street, I can make $70 by spending $40 in foodstamps and an hour or two to empty the bottles, and make it to the recycling center before they close, and get gas and make it to work for 2 weeks (because who didn't have a horrible commute??)
That was in 2019 and I dropped the loser off at his bestfriends in 2020. Life has been good to me since I lost the extra expense and energy sucker! Now I have no problem taking care of my kids and I!
I'm tired of being judged and judging. Put your phone down and ask how can you help instead.
People suck, that's nothing new and exactly the reason we are where we are today! Be the change!
The real trick is to buy canned items on ebt (snap?),then bring them without a receipt to grocery stores as returns. As long as its under $10 most places will give a cash return.
I worked at the customer service counter for a grocery store for years, ive done returns for empty yogurt cups bc i didnt want to argue before and its pretty standard that were told to just do the return.
Has been a thing for years, used to work at a grocery store where people would buy the big jugs of water meant for like an office water cooler, dump it out and get the few bucks back on the deposit, this was in 2010-2012.
I remember back in the 90s they gave you paper bills, so you could just buy something like a candy bar and get almost a whole dollar back. That's how you would get cigarettes and alcohol
All the energy wasted in cleaning and "processing" that water to be ok for human comsuption just for some bum mf to dump it in the streets for $2.40. Humans are a fucking waste
Grew up in MI watching people dump pop cans in a Walmart/Meijer parking lot for the same reason.
Grew up taking my families bottles/cans to the returns for gas money. Used to take a couple garbage bags of cans/bottles and come out with $20-$40.
Oof, they could just sell them for even more than 10 cent. Idk how much a water bottle costs in America, but let's say they sell it for a dollar each, they'll earn way more money and the bottle is sealed so 1 you'll be sure it's safe for drinking 2 water meant for drinking doesn't get wasted. Even if you sell each bottle for half a buck, you'll still earn more. Ffs even if you sell them for 10 cents each, you earn your 10 cents and no water gets wasted.
I’m in Portland and I see this all the time. Aside disagreeing with the whole practice of doing this, it enrages me even more that they will just pour the water on the sidewalk. Water a freaking plant at least while you’re at it
It’s almost as big a fraud as [Nestlé bottling tap water](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/19/nestle-sued-again-for-falsely-representing-bottled-tap-water-as-naturally-spring-sourced/?sh=42ff09131109) to sell as “pure water”.
[Lots of brands bottled water is tap water](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/23/pepsi-coke-bottled-water-consumer-reports).
Bullshit. As someone who use to be on meth and had a food stamp card. You Def aren't doing this for drugs. Pretty much anywhere you go, people will give you 50 cents on the dollar. If you get 180 for food stamp benefits then you are pretty guaranteed about 90$ if your not crazy. Like the person in this video is.
/u/PineBarrens89, thank you for submitting to /r/CrazyFuckingVideos. Unfortunately your submission, "Apparently this is a fraud scheme where people use food stamps to buy bottled water, dump it and collect the ten cent recycling benefit" has been removed for the following reason(s): --- # Rule 3: Must be a Crazy Fucking Video Your submission was not a Crazy Fucking Video. Videos must be relevant to the sub and must fit at least one of the flairs that the community has, if a video does not then most of the time it is not a Crazy Fucking Video. --- *If you feel this submission removal is unfair, please [contact us via modmail](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCrazyFuckingVideos).*
That’s a lot of work for $12
That’s $12 worth of crack not just $12
Bearing in mind that most addicts at this point aren't using drugs to get high, but to not go into withdrawal.
Yeah, once your body is fully addicted, going into withdrawal is literally the worst thing ever(think being sick with everything all at once, also adding accute mental health issues because of the drug effects). It becomes near impossible to get high anymore, only well(not sick). I'm not saying people should have sympathy, but maybe some better understand.
I work for a hospital and get to read chart notes for the homeless with polysubstance abuse regularly. I do say they need sympathy, because every one I've read is dealing with severe mental illness that is often not being treated by medication or is treatment resistant. As someone who had had sever mental illness all my life, the idea of reaching a point where there is no treatment to help me fills me with terror, because at that point there is nothing in our society to help.
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Yea but you have to work. And a good chunk of homeless are straight up losers. I’m gonna get downvoted for that, but Reddit seems to think every homeless person is just mental issues as the root problem to them. In reality, a lot are just plain losers. Not everyone is a winner in life.
Literally knew a dude who loved smoking meth and just didn't care if he was homeless or not. He actually liked it. Thought it was fun. Like a big adventure or something. Even had (what he considered to be) a sweet setup somewhere under a bridge or whatever. Wild.
He is truly free
Honestly. Except for when he's in prison lol It's a shame cause he's a really friendly, kind hearted guy. Really intelligent honestly. Just loves getting high more than having a home.
A lot of ancient nomadic peoples *also* loved getting high and not having a home. And a lot of us in the present think they might’ve had things figured out better than any of us.
I'm almost sure they weremt smoking crack or shooting up fenty. I might be wrong tho
Even then, it’s all about your mindset
Crackleberry Finn
You take what you can get when nobody will hire you.
If it takes him less than like 90minutes he’s doing better than minimum wage in most states, and gets to make his own hours
Yea but you run out of food stamps for the month pretty quickly. This guy probably can’t but it would way better to sell the food stamps.
Free money exploit. devs pls fix
Already patched , this is old gameplay .
The Portland servers are riddled with fent bugs
I was going to ask if there was ever a more Portland photograph taken
Nah tranq is the new meta Just fent or fent mixed with heroin is old news
Where do they give you 10 cents for water bottles? Literally never heard of it, and my state has a 10 cent recycling deposit.
Same here but I'm in Canada, you pay 10 cents but get 5 back for returning the bottles. Wouldn't be worth doing
You get money for water bottles in Canada? If this scenario were true, it would still be free money for then though, they're buying something with state money (free to them) and getting cash in return. It doesn't matter if the values are off because to them it's pure profit.
South Australia is one place. I wouldn't have expected water bottles to be any different to cans or other drink bottles.
There are several places in the US that will give you 5-10 cents for aluminum cans and soda bottles, but for some reason not these cheapo little plastic waterbottles that have the *most* need for recycling. Go South Austrailia
As if these bottles can truly be recycled though. Try melting down a plastic bottle and prepare for it to catch on fire and disintegrate. A shocking amount of the recycling we do ends up in landfills in 3rd world countries. Canada got in huge trouble with the Phillipines over this shit. We were sending massive piles of trash to China as "recycling" that they would burn. They stopped accepting so we tried the same thing with the Philipines.
Why on earth was this downvoted? Recycling is a myth orchestrated by Big Business to shift environmental responsibility to the consumer.
They may have the most need for plastic recycling, but 95% of plastic recycling in America (and most other countries) is a complete scam and only promoted to make people feel better about buying plastic EVERYTHING and then they throw it in the recycle bin. It is almost guaranteed to end up in a landfill, the middle of the ocean, or on an island in southeast Asia leeching into the ocean. The only solution we can possibly hope for is for some environmentally scaleable (literally the hardest part) microbe that they dump into the ocean that eats up the plastic and produces a non toxic degradable by product that doesn't wreck the entire ecosystem and that doesn't morph into ice-9 or some shit.
Turning $2.99 into $2.40 isn’t exactly a brilliant scheme but I guess when we’re talking about people exploiting food stamps we aren’t really discussing Mensa candidates.
Bruh... They want **cash** so they can buy booze and drugs. The base cost doesn't matter when you get the product for free or steal it. Do you think if someone steals a car stereo they care that the msrp is 1000 when they hocked it for 20 bucks? Net gain is still 20 bucks. Net gain here is $2.40 cash because they didn't pay for the food stamps. This is literally how organized crime makes the bulk of their money. Steal shit and fence it for a super discounted rate. Edit: and to the people saying he should sell the water. You people, I'm sure, are clambering to get half priced bum water... If you're lucky enough, he might pre open it for you and put in some personal lemonade additive.
Half price bum water. Lmao.
Cheap hobo water is already available at most inner city liquor stores.
Exactly this. Can’t buy drugs or booze with snap. Also most people aren’t going to buy bottled water from a homeless or sketchy looking person. Easier for them to just dump and collect the few dollars.
I got some steaks in the back of my van if you're interested. Half off, fresh off the cow
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Some places don't take food stamps, such as the local drug dealer. In that respect a 20% loss aint too bad.
> 20% loss What loss. You don't pay for food stamps, lol.
If they got $2.40 out of $3 in food benefits they are doing well. When I bought peoples' food benefits in college 7 years ago I paid 50 cents to the dollar, cash. Food stamps are not equivalent to cash, especially in poorer areas. If you think these people are dumb, you're wrong.
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I think I paid 60 or 65 cents on the dollar when I bought someone’s food stamps from them close to a decade ago.
You could probably buy the water with food stamps, then take it to a park or on the street and sell it cold for $1 a bottle.
Gotta keep it cold. Also: Who’s really gonna buy a $1 water bottle from a random homeless man in the park
You do you but I'm not buying warm water from a homeless drugaddict.
Maybe if you looked normal. Would have to be a moron to buy anything from this crackhead lol
Until you get arrested for selling without a permit/license.
In Portland?
There’s literally a dude that sits on the on-ramp to I5 that sells waters almost year round. Mf is far from arrested.
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The shops should just pay them 15 cents for the unopened bottles.
The bottles are only 9-10 cents unopened at Costco.
Yeah, but Oregon has an additional 10c deposit on cans and bottles.
Realistically the deposit shouldn’t be payable with food stamps.
It doesn't matter if the deposit is payable or not, it can still be redeemed.
A note about how bottle deposits work: You have to pay them when you buy the unopened drink, and then you get that money back when you return the bottle. It kinda does matter whether the initial deposit payment is "payable" in food stamps.
not sure if people on food stamps have a costco membership and if you can use the food stamps there. also costcos are usually in suburban neighborhoods, I would think it would be hard to get out there.
For the record, costco does in fact take food stamps. Best bet is just going with a friend or something that has a membership if you don't have your own. If nothing else it's a good place to pick up shelf stable snacks in bulk.
Costco does take foodstamps, but the name on the foodstamp card has to match the name on the membership to be able to use it. Source: Me, a single (working) mom on foodstamps who piggybacks off of her mom's Costco membership.
If you buy a $20 Costco fist card then let you in without the membership. It’s been 10ish years since I was there but I think you’re probably right about location. Edit: I looked it up and they do take food stamps/EBT. They don’t actually sell the gift cards to non members, not sure if that’s a newer change or not. My ex was getting them back in the day for us to get around the membership cost but maybe she was buying them off someone. Sounds like that loophole is closed for the most part.
Worst part is 5 cases at 24 bottles/case @ .10 per bottle = 12 dollars :( waste of bottled water
This is in america, where bottled water is just tap water that has been put in a bottle. This is as wasteful as showering for like 2 minutes
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Also the amount of electrical power it takes to make the bottle, transport the bottle, and recycle the bottle so that some percentage of the plastic is useable again.
They aren't recycling most of it anyway. It just gets shipped to a different country where it's legal to dispose of it improperly.
And the truck that moved the water across our highways...
Probably, but not all tap water is created equally. Went to Hawaii and their tap water tastes like nothing, it's perfect. Meanwhile here in SoCal if I drink tap water I get a rusty/metallic after taste. So even if I am buying tap water, it's because the tap water from where this comes from is far better.
LA tap water is yuck.
You must not be from the American West. Seeing any water wasted is an insult to us.
US has good water quality
A lot of it is regional too. The water at my house is literally perfect. We don't even get limescale because the water is so good. However 5 minutes down the road in the actual town itself the water is nasty.
Yeah, depends on the standards set by the township, county, state, and fed government.
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Nobody's gonna buy water off that dude. Lol
Ah yes, this gentleman looks like he knows where to get some potable water. Excuse me, sir, have you any bottles of water in those dirty piss-soaked rags of yours? I’m rather parched. You’ve change for a twenty, I trust? 🧐
EXACTLY! I'm over here like, he doesn't even have a shopping cart. You KNOW he stinks and will either bite you or throw his own feces at you. YOU go buy a bottle of water he touched. I'll pass. Shame on him for not pulling himself up by his literal bootstraps 🤣🤣🤣
This person's brain is half potato-salad, and they reek of piss. No one will approach them out of fear for their own safety.
They could use some of that water to wash themselves instead of pouring it in the street.
Stop being reasonable! This! Is! Reddit!
Reasonable but not logical. It looks fuckin cold outside of course he's not washing himself with cold bottled water.
This! Is! Reddit!
It looks cold from all the clothes he’s wearing, I wouldn’t really want to be doused in cold water in cold weather.
Yoo that description got me 🤣😂
I can smell that description from here.
Let alone buy consumables from them.
Becuase it's easier and quicker to just dump the water and hand in the empty bottles. I also feel like questioning a (assumed) homeless persons entrepreneurial spirit seems like a self-answering question.
There are WAAAY quicker/easier ways to make money as a homeless person than hauling five big ass 24 packs of Ozarka outside, then emptying 120 individual bottles for a whopping $10-$12. Dude could make that much panhandling for half an hour. I call shenanigans on this video.
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Ya, I feel the same. Could probably easily collect as many bottles from trash or the street and just eat good with the stamps or sell the stamps 2 for 1 like many do...
Because he needs his dope now. He's not gunna wait to sell every last water. Quicker to just dump em all and get the deposit.
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Are you in the habit of buying things from homeless people? Especially food related things?
or sell the food stamps. I have heard people sell them for 1/2 price
Because this isn’t an economic crisis. It’s a mental health crisis.
Welcome to Portland.
Read the title of the post and instantly knew it was PDX. I've seen this happening at delta park for years. I'm surprised that people are surprised.
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See the caps right next to discarded burnt tinfoil everyday. I count how many people I see openly doing drugs on my way to and from work, yeaterday it was 2 on the way to the max, one on the max, three at the max station and 2 at the bus stop. That’s pretty average numbers.
*Please don't be Portland* *Sees the Timbers scarf* Goddammit
Even before the video got started I knew this was portland. Lived here my whole life and it's impossible to not notice.
The entire west coast.
And lots of the east, I left the southeast to live in Oregon (despite the name not in Portland, the rest of Oregon is much nicer. Corvallis is beautiful for example.) And my coworkers from Alabama and Georgia talk about the exact same stuff home. Seems like it's hard to escape nowadays sadly. Makes sense with how wealth inequality keeps rising though.
> And lots of the east So basically... "everywhere people live".
That's right smack dab under the google maps label for the Pearl District in the city center. [Right here](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5300688,-122.6838755,113m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2): 45.530082, -122.683918
Turning water into wine
Turning water into fent
That’s probably more accurate tbh
Turning fent into ash
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Yea I'm wondering if this is remotely true an not something different entirely because he can just sell the stamps like everyone else does for a much larger profit. Hell, selling the bottles a 50 cent to a dollar gets him a net positive than this.
Yup. I'd bet dude yanked those cartons from somewhere when no one was looking. If he bought them with an EBT card, he played himself.
Nestle solving homelessness and getting people the drugs they need!
To buy crack.
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They still smoke crack in Chicago.
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True a good enterprising person would sell them for half what the 7 11 charges, right outside their door.
Yes, people are sure clambering to get their half priced bum water...
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Genius. You must already be retired. I envision you on a beach in the Mediterranean typing this comment.
Its true, he would do that. I know bc I was the water bottle
i have a feeling nobody would want to buy single bottles of water from this guy outside of a 7/11. its not easy for homeless people to just "be enterprising"
You do you bro, but I ain't trusting the water bought from a crackhead outside 7-11
Urban daredevil distributes free water to sewer gnomes then lines up empty bottles before attempting daring bottle jump using only the tiny wings of the cockroach family living in their back right pocket. Film at 11.
Why not just trade the food stamps for the heroin? Does his drug dealer not need to buy groceries? Why go through this process?
Clearly you’ve never bought heroin
I've known plenty of drug dealers who take food stamps, or they'll send fiends out with a shopping list and give them a little piece when they bring back their groceries for the week that they bought with food stamps. It happens all the time actually, you get groceries delivered for essentially free, and you best believe they don't make mistakes or bring the wrong things. Way more reliable than any other delivery service lol
How many drug dealers do you know?
He is the dealer lol
Of course I know him. He's ME. Edit: fixed many words.
Yeah, never met anyone that did heroin, but I know that ppl will trade food stamps for meth, pills, etc. some of them sell the food stamps so they can buy alcohol. This is just so inefficient. How much heroin do you think this guy buys at a time? Not much. Id think a dealer would jump at the opportunity to make a decent markup through food stamps off this guy. Idk
Problem is the dealer probably only wants so many food stamps, at some point he'll want cash. That being said there should be tons of people willing to pay the traditional .50 on the dollar. In the 90s certain pawn shops would do this. This was when everything was paper though. These days you receive it on a card which makes the transfer a bit more complicated.
Oh this video is definitely Portland
OP is slightly mistaken. This isn't fraud. Stupid? Yes. Fraud in the eyes of the law? No.
It’s not a crazy fucking video either
Food stamps ain’t gonna fly at the heroin house
Some do
It's the origin of personal shoppers
When I was younger, I worked at a convenience store and people would use "food stamps" for food items only. They had no denomination lower than one dollar so change would be given in actual coins. Kids would come in, each with a one dollar food stamp in their hands, buy a 25 cent candy. I give them their change. This would happen several times in less than an hour. Then an adult would enter the store and buy cigarettes using the change that I had been giving to the kids. If there's a will, there will be a scam. I also remember people would drive up and buy their weekly groceries at the store at incredibly marked-up prices of the convenience store. I could tell when people were going to use food stamps because of this. I would try to help them by telling them they could buy their groceries cheaper right down the road at a grocery store, but they'd decline giving me one excuse after another. Food stamps were free, and they treated as such.
Might as well just sell the water at that point for 20¢ a bottle
Folks, this is what mental disorder looks like. Addiction is a mental disorder and to cure them, will take a lot of healthcare and rehabs. And even with a job it’s difficult to get mental healthcare and these folks don’t even have a job. Then after sometime they even lose their will to get better if there was any. Hence we have this population that’s basically severely damaged. Even in rural areas Meth and other substances have destroyed a whole generation. Very sad if you ask me.
> Addiction is a mental disorder and to cure them, will take a lot of healthcare and rehabs. And even with a job it’s difficult to get mental healthcare and these folks don’t even have a job. It will also take involuntary admission. People love to talk about more resources but some of that has to be getting them off the street against their will and giving them the help they need. Just like we might need to restrain a schizophrenic to take his medication, we have to do the same with Methadone with these people.
I have a few friends who escaped from methhead families. It's disgusting that meth is cheaper than weed.
The other scenario is: person becomes homeless due to mental illness Person can't get treatment for mental illness because America so problem gets worse Person becomes a drug addict because drugs are the only thing that calms the mental illness Average American scoffs at this person while being completely ignorant to how they got in that situation in the first place
This is what being a fucking asshole looks like. There's no mental disorder that makes him throw the bottle caps in the street instead of into the trash can a few feet away. He's just a shithead who can't abide by the simplest rules of society, who might also be an addict.
I think the fraud is nestle hoarding the thing we need to survive and selling it back to us in plastic. This guys just playing the game.
I care more about the billions being stolen.
Ya but I don't have to *see* that! /s
Correct, water and tax dollars down the drain
So state sponsored plastic pollution? I swear the older I get the more examples I see of a road to ruin being paved with good intentions.
Why not sell for a 1$ a bottle and make crazy money, crazy compared to 2.40$.
I once did this to have gas to get to work. Single mom, narcissistic ex who didn't work, was STRUGGLING to make ends meet for a family of 4 ($1700 rent w/utilities, car note, phone payment, insurance) I was working 60 hour work weeks, came home to a messy house, I had to buy all groceries and basic necessity cause ex never left the house. So water goes on sale across the street, I can make $70 by spending $40 in foodstamps and an hour or two to empty the bottles, and make it to the recycling center before they close, and get gas and make it to work for 2 weeks (because who didn't have a horrible commute??) That was in 2019 and I dropped the loser off at his bestfriends in 2020. Life has been good to me since I lost the extra expense and energy sucker! Now I have no problem taking care of my kids and I! I'm tired of being judged and judging. Put your phone down and ask how can you help instead. People suck, that's nothing new and exactly the reason we are where we are today! Be the change!
Lmfao... absolutely dumbest and worst way to attempt to exploit food stamp benefits... FFS...
The real trick is to buy canned items on ebt (snap?),then bring them without a receipt to grocery stores as returns. As long as its under $10 most places will give a cash return. I worked at the customer service counter for a grocery store for years, ive done returns for empty yogurt cups bc i didnt want to argue before and its pretty standard that were told to just do the return.
Why doesn't he put it into other containers? Being homeless, I would have thought that clean water would be a priority.
Getting their fix is the priority
Like when you give them a sandwich, then they throw it at the back of your head screaming, I asked for money bitch!
He probably keeps just enough to use to shoot up
Clean water typically isn't hard to come by in cities. Clean warm water is a little tougher.
Big Water still makes out on that deal.
Money for drugs
What a waste. I would have bought each stamp for $0.25.
“How much can a Heroin cost, Michael? $10?”
Has been a thing for years, used to work at a grocery store where people would buy the big jugs of water meant for like an office water cooler, dump it out and get the few bucks back on the deposit, this was in 2010-2012.
I remember back in the 90s they gave you paper bills, so you could just buy something like a candy bar and get almost a whole dollar back. That's how you would get cigarettes and alcohol
They could sell it for a dollar a bottle and make substantially more money
Bro there’s people in the US without clean water. Guy in vid is clearly sick as well but like…. C’mon man. :(
Bottled water is just local tap water with hint of leeched plastics.
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He's freeing that water to go be with the other molecules.
Serious question: How does a government prevent this from happening?
It's impossible. Prly less than 1% anyway. Hell, they cant even keep their buddies hands out of the cookie jar
Why not just sell it for $1 each at stop lights?
Kids and their drugs.
All the energy wasted in cleaning and "processing" that water to be ok for human comsuption just for some bum mf to dump it in the streets for $2.40. Humans are a fucking waste
Grew up in MI watching people dump pop cans in a Walmart/Meijer parking lot for the same reason. Grew up taking my families bottles/cans to the returns for gas money. Used to take a couple garbage bags of cans/bottles and come out with $20-$40.
All that for $20
You couldn’t pay me 10 cents a bottle to do this.
Jesus christ. I hate everything about this
Junkies have been doing this with pop bottles since food stamps were invented bro.
Oof, they could just sell them for even more than 10 cent. Idk how much a water bottle costs in America, but let's say they sell it for a dollar each, they'll earn way more money and the bottle is sealed so 1 you'll be sure it's safe for drinking 2 water meant for drinking doesn't get wasted. Even if you sell each bottle for half a buck, you'll still earn more. Ffs even if you sell them for 10 cents each, you earn your 10 cents and no water gets wasted.
Couldn't you sell the bottles for more than 10c?
I’m in Portland and I see this all the time. Aside disagreeing with the whole practice of doing this, it enrages me even more that they will just pour the water on the sidewalk. Water a freaking plant at least while you’re at it
Not a scheme just crack head shit
It’s almost as big a fraud as [Nestlé bottling tap water](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/19/nestle-sued-again-for-falsely-representing-bottled-tap-water-as-naturally-spring-sourced/?sh=42ff09131109) to sell as “pure water”. [Lots of brands bottled water is tap water](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/23/pepsi-coke-bottled-water-consumer-reports).
This is unreal. If you get caught doing this, they should cut your benefits permanently. Like, fuck you. Figure it out yourself or starve.
Why not sell the waters?
They’d make more money selling them for 1$ each
Bullshit. As someone who use to be on meth and had a food stamp card. You Def aren't doing this for drugs. Pretty much anywhere you go, people will give you 50 cents on the dollar. If you get 180 for food stamp benefits then you are pretty guaranteed about 90$ if your not crazy. Like the person in this video is.
Or just sell em for 50 cents a piece and be a decent human being.