A Woman Caught A Homeless Man Trying To Break Into An Empty Apartment — So She Made Him A Burrito
Where most would have called the cops, she decided to just be a friendly neighbor. It made all the difference.
@wherestayo / TikTok Homelessness is an intractable problem all over the country, and it's only getting worse.
When one Texas woman had an up-close-and-personal encounter with an unhoused man near her home, she decided to do something about it, in a way that has become all too rare nowadays — by simply being friendly, neighborly, and compassionate.
She helped a homeless man when she caught him breaking into an apartment instead of calling the police.
Taylor, a Texas TikToker known as @wherestayo on the app, was relaxing at home one night when her cat starting acting strangely. "My cat runs in the door and, like, gives me this look that I've never seen her give me," she said, "so I, like, knew something was up outside."
When she went to investigate, sure enough, something definitely was up outside — a man trying to get into an adjacent apartment. "I opened the door, and I kid you not, I'm watching a man look through the windows of my neighbor's apartment, walk down, try to open the door," she said. "I was like... what do I do? He's clearly breaking in."
Instead of confronting the homeless man, she decided to simply ask him, 'What do you need?'
Granted, she asked it in her "biggest man voice" to make sure the unhoused man didn't try anything. But her instinct was to ask if he needed help rather than berate him. Accordingly, the man approached her, which set her heart racing. But when he got close, all he had was a simple request: something to drink.
"I had a cold coconut water in my fridge," Taylor said. "I was like, 'wait right here.' Shut the door... Universe was telling me to do something." After taking a deep breath, she went back outside. "He's just sitting on my patio chairs, enjoying himself," she said, so she decided, "[eff] it. Sit down next to him." So she did, and engaged him in conversation.
When she asked if he was trying to break in, he said he thought the apartment was abandoned. "He had crazy intuition or something," she said, because the occupants had just moved out of the place.
When Taylor again asked the homeless man if he needing anything, he said he was hungry. So she made him a burrito.
"Are you hungry? 'Yes, ma'am,'" Taylor said, so she went back into her apartment and grabbed a burrito from her fridge. But the man seemed uninterested. "I could tell something was off," she said.
So she headed back into her house to make the burrito ever better. "The way I came back in here, heated up this man's burrito, not microwave, man — toaster oven to make that [stuff] crispy!" she said.
The man "devoured" the burrito, and Taylor thought of the next way she could help the man. "I was like, if you can go anywhere in the city right now, where would you go?" she asked him.
He told her, so she pulled out her Uber app and booked him a ride and he was soon on his way. "I don't think [he was] breaking in to rob," she said in her follow-up video. "I think he's just breaking in to have somewhere to sleep."
Taylor's understanding approach to the man is unfortunately all too rare nowadays when it comes to the unhoused population. Crimes against homeless people have become a "hidden epidemic", according to a recent study at the University of California San Francisco.
And when it comes to helping the homeless, police forces — often the first resource most people call when dealing with an unhoused person in their community, despite most interactions not involving crimes — frequently become aggressors rather than helpers. This has led to some cities working to remove police from the equation by replacing them with professionals like social workers qualified to deal with the unique challenges they face, which often include severe mental health problems.
It's not hard to imagine what may have happened to the man Taylor interacted with if she had reflexively called the police like so many would. Instead, she simply helped the homeless man by treating him like a person.
Here's hoping we can all learned to have more compassion for unhoused people — whether in burrito form or otherwise.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.