My mom would be 100 years old if she was still alive today.
She was a young girl during the depression.
She told me that her mom, my grandma, would feed the bums who would show up at their door asking for food. My grandma barely had enough food to feed her own 4 kids, but she would always try to find something to give the bums. She would tell them to sit on the back porch and she would bring them something like a sandwich. She would tell my mom to stay away from the bums and not allow her to talk to them.
My mom told me that a lot of those bums had a wife and kids somewhere but they just up and left them. The men left the women to take care of the kids.