Panhandlers

[hyphenate]

The usual bunch of "homeless--will work for food" types standing at the end of ramps, and probably earning more money than many of us. I was once told that some of them make over $100 a day--that's a pretty good amount for not doing much.

Do you give them money? Or do you ignore them? Change is no longer good enough for a lot of them--some prefer $5 bills or more.

And if they're homeless, they qualify for health care, and if they have no income, the state (at least here in Mass) gives them an allocation if they are in any way disabled (mentally or physically) and often times they give them hotel allotments as well.

I'm not begrudging any one who is really needy, but those I've seen in many places are wearing new designer sneakers, stylish hairdos, good jeans with no tears, and other such items which make it difficult for me to think of them as needing the little bit of money I have. I have lived most of my own life one paycheck away from being homeless myself, and healthwise, I couldn't ever stand around a street corner panhandling for even an hour without severe pain. Now that I'm on a fixed income, I certainly am not able to delve into my funds for giving away to people who are in better health than I am, and who probably have a lot more money than I do.

I guess I just don't like the scam that some people have going. There might be really needy people out there who aren't getting the help they need because these others are taking advantage of people's good natures. I know there isn't a way to tell, but one choice is to give donations to shelters, food pantries and other such places and not to those on the ramps with signs.

I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but this is how I ultimately handle it. There are a lot of con artists out there, though, and some of them could win Oscars for their performances.

What say you? Do you give money just to get rid of them? Or what is your reaction?

[fun n serious]

1. I give up a dollar or two when I see them.

nt

[ugarte]

2. I give them a little money

I can't look into their souls and judge them, but I am responsible for my own actions toward others. I think giving to shelters and oragnizations is also wonderful, but, personally speaking, when I see a homeless person, I think it could easily be myself. "There, but for the grace of God..."

[AlienGirl]

3. If I am duped, the shame is on them for scamming, not on me for giving

I give if I've got anything to give.

I am not convinced at all that panhandlers are making $100/day, though. Try it sometime, as a sociology experiment, and let us know if you get a lot of money. I'd expect the "take" to be far less than $100.

On edit: Also, many state services are a joke, especially for the mentally ill.

Tucker

[fleabert]

4. I sometimes give money, sometimes food, sometimes nothing.

it depends on the moment.

I found these links interesting...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/78558_homeless15.shtml

http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/archive/news_releases/homeless.html
"We want people to understand the hardships of being homeless. We’re trying to dispel any myths people have that the homeless are lazy. Most are kids, the average age of a homeless person is nine," said Rachel Giese, Tech student and chair of the Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.

http://www.geocities.com/clydehen2003/
Every day homeless are victims of crime. Unless there is something exceptional about a particular incident, it doesn’t get into the news. Since beatings and killings of homeless are so commonplace anymore it isn’t considered newsworthy. If you check news articles from across the country (I like to use topix.net) there are continual articles. These, however, are only a fraction of what is really happening. I’ve met a number of people who had been beaten severely but the newspaper never made note of it.

Out of hundreds of articles I haven’t seen any that point out a homeless person paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxes before becoming homeless. You would think, from the media, that if a person is homeless they have always been that way. In over 20 years of full time work plus odd jobs I’ve paid a lot of income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and endless other hidden taxes. Even so people will still ridicule me for just receiving some food stamp money. If I could have 5% back on what I already paid, I’d be off the street and back to work.

While the stereotypical homeless panhandler gets the media spotlight, I doubt that more than two percent of the homeless across the country panhandle on a regular basis. I see a lot of panhandlers who aren’t homeless at all, using crutches and torn clothes as props. After a day of pan-handling they go home and change out of the rag outfit. Anyone who has ever used crutches (I have) can easily spot the pretenders whose crutches barely even touch the ground.


Some homeless, unable to get enough work, do turn to pan-handling. While I don’t panhandle, I can understand why others will. After all, a back-breaking eight hours of day-labor work results in only about $35 after deductions while a person pan-handling may do the same, or better.

[hyphenate]

6. In the areas I've seen them

it's usually obvious that the ones I see are not the real homeless ones. The real homeless ones can be usually spotted. There was this one woman I met who was truly homeless, and I felt so bad for her. She had a small cat with her, and she was sitting on a box, while the shopping cart she had was filled with her belongings. This woman was quite different from the ones I've seen on corners. I wished there was something more I could do for her, but there wasn't--she was too proud to ask for help, and she was somewhat combatant, and she wasn't asking for anything. There was evidence that she might have been mentally disabled (she was talking to herself and behavior was somewhat strange) and like I said, I felt very sorry for her. But that's the point I thought I'd made--seeing someone sleeping on a bench in a park, or the homeless in the center of downtown L.A., or other such places is different than those who put their signs in front of themselves at the end of highway ramps and look for cash handouts. The real homeless ones need our help, and right now so many of us are in similar straits. If I didn't have a friend who owned this house and let me live rent-free in his second floor apartment, I would be homeless too. It's pretty pitiful when rents are so high you can't afford to find a place to live, but that's just the way it is, I guess. Until we can get rid of this cabal, we're all only a short distance from the streets ourselves.

[davekriss]

5. I always give something, including a kind word conveying respect

I recall years ago when working in Manhattan. I was in Penn Station after a particularly hard day. A very tall black man, somehat discheveled in jacket and pants too short for his frame. He said he hadn't eaten in days and if I could spare a dollar it would mean so much to him. I felt intimidated, fearful, so I said no. I later saw him walk by not having much better luck; he walked by, not noticing me, and I overhead him saying to himself "what am I going to do? What. Am. I. Going. To do?" He was in real pain, feeling he had no-one to turn to. I followed him across the busy Penn Station platform and handed him a $20 bill. He griped my hand and thanked me and said God bless you sir. I looked him in the eye and said my pleasure, just someday, when you're off the streets, be sure to return the favor.

My wife (Kriss) volunteers to do food runs with her church. She makes 100 bologna sandwiches and tons of hot chocolate, grabs a bunch of blankets, and hits the road on the coldest winter nights. They crawl down train trestles, enter rusting buildings about to collapse, and give away the food, drink, and blankets. They sit and talk and when the homeless person is open to it they make plans to get him or her help. I stay home with our young kids a nervous wreck, of course -- it's dangerous work! (But that's just one of the many things my beautiful wife does to lessen the burden of less fortunate people -- she is a saint, Kriss!)

[RB TexLa]

7. against the law here

They will have Laura Miller screaming at them out of her window, that is after she is finished screaming at people who allow others to smoke on their property.

[histohoney]

8. The local

Salvation Army came to the hospital I worked at for one of our lectureship series. She suggested buying those prepaid food cards (Sonic, McDonald's, etc or at most larger food store chains.), to hand out instead of money.
I try to keep a few in my purse. This way I know that it will be used for food.

[AlienGirl]

9. The problem is, people need more than food to live

Will those cards buy, for instance, aspirin for a fever? Tampons? Shampoo and a comb? A hotel room for a night?

People have a lot of needs that aren't related to the gastrointestinal tract. Especially if they are trying to look respectable enough to get a job to afford to rent a place...

Tucker

[histohoney]

11. aspirin, shampoo etc

yes at the larger food stores. This is what I carry, If you wish to hand out money do it. There is nothing wrong with feeding people. No one I have given them to has been anything but nice, never a snotty or rude comment about them.
I am so sorry if what I can give is not up to your standards.

[rustydog]

10. I haven't seen true homeless in stylish new anything...

I give loose change. But not to the "Honest" ones that have signs claiming to want change for beer.

I've seen street performers at sports stadiums (musicians, drummers, jugglers) who have their cases open for donations...
The people with signs I see have worn, dirty clothing...If they are making 100.00 dollars a day I'd like the claimant to prove it.

It is so easy to have someone stand at a street corner with a sign begging for money then you conveniently have a video camera and you follow the beggar to his/her Mercedes and conveniently film him/her driving off in their 60,000.00 car. Yea, riggghhht.

There are prople who are so needy thanks to George bush and his anti-christian followers that it is scary.

[Der Blaue Engel]

12. I've never seen a panhandler who looked like they were making a decent

living. Every one of them I've given to seem grateful for the smallest change I have. (I don't, however, give money to every one I see, and never on ramps, because I don't feel safe doing so.) But I would never assume any of them are raking in the cash. I've seen the people in my well-to-do neighborhood walk by the panhandlers day after day; I once stopped to give a man money who was standing huddled under an awning in icy pouring rain, and he was deeply grateful for my small change because no one had stopped for him all night.

If you don't want to give, don't. You don't have to rationalize it.

[OneBlueSky]

13. I give when I can . . . if someone is scamming me . . .

that's okay . . . doesn't affect me one iota . . .

because it's the spirit in which something is given that counts . . .

not how it's received . . .

[Raine]

14. Sometimes

I will give to them if they have an animal with them or are older but many of them are scary and I try to avoid them.

[rucky]

15. Nice strawman. n/t

[meganmonkey]

19. Ding ding ding!

:popcorn:

[Tesha]

16. "Homeless"? Not likely.

Near my husband's job, the same "homeless" folks have been
pan-handling for nearly a decade. Each one has their own
corner staked out, and they tend that corner every day,
collecting "spare change for the homeless".

Later on many days, when they've had their chance to buy
a few quarts of beer or a bottle fo something stronger,
they start fighting, the police come along and roust or
bust the most eggregiously drunk of them and later in
the day, they're back on post. This process repeats daily.

These people are addicts, mostly to alcohol. They are there
because society has choosen to officially ignore them, leaving
them to wallow in their addiction and depend on your individual
charity to fill in where society, speaking as a whole, has
told them to go away.

But make no mistake: They're not "homeless" in the sense that
they could be poor wandering waifs who, if only they had a job,
could become hard-working, taxpaying, Lexus-driving citizens.

They will be there for as long as sciety chooses to ignore
them and you help prop them staggeringly up.

Tesha

[Turtlebah]

17. I gave $5 to one a few weeks ago

in Flagstaff. He was at the freeway offramp. He had no designer shoes, or haircut.. he really looked down and out, and I felt for him.

[bleedingheart]

18. let me tell you a little story...

I was visting Atlanta with my mother in law...we had my kids and we had parked in a garage and were preparing to do some sight seeing.

So just as we get out of the car, a man walks up with a baby that looked no older than 1 month old...it was very very hot that day and here he is outside with a baby that needed to be under shelter.

He starts asking for money and I haven't even gotten fully out of the car. He tells me that it is for him and the baby.

My mother in law does a lot of work in homeless shelters and she basically comes around to my side of the car and tells him..."there is a church over there, let me walk over there with you so that we can do something about your situation...." and she goes into this long explanation of how she works with the homeless and with relief agencies and that she would like to see him and his child in a better situation...she also remarks that it is very hot out and that the baby can't be doing so well under these conditions....

This guy basically apologizes and walks off with the baby. Later as we are walking we see him again with a group of folks including what I suppose was the mother....


Now generally I give money if I have it to someone in need...but that situation made me think...

[SOS]

20. Old advice

"Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect
to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby
some have entertained angels unawares."

[Squeech]

21. No

I work near a subway station called Downtown Crossing, which as the name implies is a major nexus of offices/shopping/fine dining/etc. And there are always panhandlers about, and many of them are winos (there's also a church nearby that does some sheltering and street level health services). Some of them are street people I see every day, reeking of Listerine.

Then I'm so irritated I don't give money to anybody.

My other excuse is, my wife and I took in a friend who was just on the point of becoming homeless-- her unemployment had run out, but her health is too shaky for her to get a job that would actually support her. So she's been living with us for a year, and trying to get on state disability, with results so far that call into question the idea that the genuine homeless could get any of the state funding mentioned in the OP... but anyway, I figure that supporting this one person (who admittedly is a friend) gets me off the karmic hook for never giving money to panhandlers.