hexbear

You could argue that what this community is usually doing isn't actually mutual aid. Mutual aid in most socialist theory says that help should never be a one way street, you should help e.g. house a homeless person but the homeless person should also help the organization keep afloat by helping cut costs or operate in whatever way is within their means. Our loose housing group obviously practices mutual aid, for example, some of the homeless people help cook homemade meals for the houses they're in to help reduce food costs or they help maintain a garden.

I personally think that a homeless person having direct access to donors is better than a traditional charity. In some cases, this does not make sense (e.g. someone needs a very secure way of receiving funds due to threats to their life, many refugee organizations fall into this category and require security people on the payroll to safely help people). Charities are often middlemen that means test applicants for aid and pay out their board members with hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash, in many cases its a racket that uses donations to fund propaganda about how good these sorts of organizations are. Imagine if those hundreds of thousands of dollars were going to people that desperately needed it.