Hey everyone. This is my first post here. I haven’t seen a specific thread dedicated to aggressive panhandlers (or if there was, I couldn’t find one in my search), so decided to start one. Mods, I hope this is OK.
I live & work in a large urban environment, and on a regular basis (usually in a downtown area or on public transportation) aggressive panhandlers will ask me for money. I never give them any & very bluntly say “I don’t have any” or just shake my head - and in some (not all, or most) cases, they will get aggressive and ask me “why not?” or cuss me out. I have noticed that this type of thing has definitely gotten worse in the past 5-7 years.
I have also tried ignoring them completely, and that enrages them sometimes too.
Note if need be will defend myself if attacked by one of these people.
I honestly don’t know of any solution to the problem. Obviously, a good number of homeless are alcoholics, drug addicts, and mentally ill who are in many cases a danger to others & in some cases themselves. To believe these people can act reasonably is obviously too much to ask. And, obviously, there will always be people like this around.
I do believe that the homeless problem wouldn’t be as as much of an issue if people stopped giving panhandlers $ - this is just enabling them. Obviously some panhandlers live off of money they get from begging, which means they don’t see any reason to work.
One of the worst places I’ve seen re: panhandlers was in Portland, Oregon. I went there on vacation there a couple of summers ago and did notice an extremely big problem with homeless panhandlers & mentally ill drug addicts. They were EVERYWHERE. I did notice a lot of them screaming/yelling at others for no reason. I myself was verbally berated by one of them, even though I was just minding my own business. Very irritating.
I went to Seattle right after Portland, and there were also a lot of entitled panhandlers there as well. I couldn’t believe how many times these freeloaders asked me for $.
Based on what I’ve read & some research that I’ve done, both Portland/Seattle have an extremely liberal view of the homeless - i.e., they’re allowed to run rampant in many cases; and, it was obvious that they were literally taking over certain streets/street corners (I primarily noticed this in Portland).
Conversely, I was in NYC for a week last summer (vacation). I went everywhere via the train & walking (no car). And, the homeless panhandlers were never aggressive - they had signs & barely said anything to you. You could easily ignore them. Other cities need to institute whatever NYC has put in place, because whatever they’re doing re: clamping down on aggressive panhandlers - it works!