1 and 3 together is also a possibility.
- Give money to a charity that you know helps the homeless instead of giving money to someone directly that may or may not be a scammer.
Winners, winner!
Volunteering is good too.
- Vote for providing better safety nets.
Which could be in combination with any combination of 1, 2, 3, 4.
I’d been performing a long time when I started doing it, so no stage fright. But it was valuable for me because I could practice obscure, old (sometimes original) music for as long as I wanted. Venues that pay money require Jimmy Skynyrd, Lynyrd Buffet, etc.
On street corners, I could gauge people’s reactions to this material to my heart’s content.
Thank you for supporting buskers. I apologize for starting this hijack.
I know a woman who’s held top level Silicon Valley jobs, owns a four-bedroom home, has three cars (one’s a Mercedes), has millions of dollars in stocks, etc.
For the short time she was between jobs, she’d panhandle at freeway entrances wearing a wig so her colleagues wouldn’t recognize her. 
My impression with the Greyhound Station guy was - like the Lazyboy song - he just wanted drug money, he wasn’t really hungry. He didn’t look too badly off, had decent clothes etc.
I remember the guy who used to hang out ast the St. Geroge subway station in Toronto back when I was in college - he would be there all the time, “can you spare a token?”
One day I went to the Spadina station instead, i was running a little late. There he was, with “wanna buy a token?”
I do admire the guys with a clever line or gimmick, as long as it’s not too deceptive. (But coming across as the guy who needs $20 for gas seems a bit greedy). But as I said, someone gets one good idea, and then 100 people copy the same idea - and that’s how you get an Elmo infestation in Times Square.
Toronto had Margita Bangova a.k.a. “the shaky lady” who feigned or exaggerated palsy-like symptoms while panhandling. She was “exposed” by the Toronto Sun (although she continued to claim she was unhealthy and not rich by any means).
In my experience, the people who are actually in need are willing to take food or whatever they say they need the money for. This is the best way to distinguish between the scammers and the legitimate needs.
I think the percentage of people begging for change who live or have lived an enviable life is pretty small.
Lots of people never give change (or even respect) to those they do not see as part of their sphere. Many believe they possess special skills or abilities that have uniquely allowed them to succeed and ignore the fact we only essentially control ourselves, not all that well. So they are placing all of the “blame” of a bad situation on its victims. This is part of the reason it is important to raise your children with every type of empathy - affective, behavioural and cognitive.
There are stories of beggars who work in teams. One is a well-dressed, smug dude in fancy dress carrying a sign “Need Dollar$ For Cocaine”. No one gives him money, plenty offer unhelpful suggestions. A short distance away, someone who looks in desperate need with a humble sign allegedly gets much more than average donations given the contrast. The two men change roles and divide moneys. But it may not be true, and if fictitious may be damaging for the reasons stated above.
In today’s increasingly cashless society, stories of rich “beggars” seem even more incredulous.
I’ve heard of beggars or buskers with QR codes so you can give money via Venmo or Square.
Yeah, in China. Not really a thing in the U.S.A., and I can imagine the right wing uproar if someone tried it here.
They’re still begging on the street, so is it really a “scam”?
Whatever her reason for doing that, it’s not money.
I guess if they’re holding a sign that says “Homeless and Disabled” or something like that you could call it a scam.
It’s not illegal to beg, and it’s become so common that people give out insignificant amounts of money to anyone asking for it without much thought. It has to be pretty rare for someone to choose that lifestyle when they options. I routinely give out change I’ve dumped in the console, and stuff I might have they can use like when the pandemic started and there was a paper goods shortage I’d give them the box of tissues or roll of paper towel usually flying around my car. Why? Aside from the possible rare exceptions their life must be pretty freakin’ hard and we ought to do better for our fellow Americans.
I think it is. She’s shown a lot of pathological behaviors
around money.
If she’s a millionaire with a Silicon Valley executive job, it’s not about needing the money to survive while “between jobs”. With that level of income, she would be able to survive being out of work a very long time unless her spending was way out of control. In which case, pan-handling for change along the highway wouldn’t cover her expenses anyway.
On my local Nextdoor group occasionally people will complain about “fake” panhandlers, although their only evidence seems to be that they are dressed “too nice.”
Apparently some people were reporting “fake” panhandlers to the police as well, because local police department actually put out a statement saying that panhandling isn’t illegal, and for that matter there’s no law saying one has to be needy to panhandle. If Jeff Bezos wants to stand on a corner and ask people for money, there no law saying he can’t (They didn’t actually say that part, but it follows from the first part).
You can just open a bank account and deposit the cash.
Or do you mean people don’t carry any cash today? I do not know a single person who doesn’t carry a little cash.
“Dressed too nice”, “Too grubby to get near”, “I once gave someone some money and they didn’t do what I wanted them to do with it, so now I don’t give anything to anyone”, etc. These aren’t reasons-These are just excuses.