These are all good points.
Unless you’re foregoing having an iPhone because the money ends up supporting slave like working conditions in Chinese factories, maybe you should consider climbing down from that high horse.
When you buy gas, some of the money could be ending up with Saudi terror supporters- better stop driving that car!
Give me a break! At least those who give freely, in the face of suffering, can own it. Maybe, if you need to give only to those you deem ‘worthy’ then you should just own that, instead of seeing fault in others, where there is none.
The fault, if any, lies in blindly giving money to addicts who risk killing themselves with it rather than giving it to organizations who provide for the poor and can circumvent this process.
It isn’t about deeming a junkie worthy or not. Giving a junkie money to go get high, is doing harm to the junkie.
By extension, it does fuel problems with drug gangs and the associated misery those gangs bring to neighborhoods.
If a person wants to buy a bottle of water and a sandwich for a junkie, fine.
Giving them money for their next fix isn’t easing anyone’s suffering.
I’ve stated it before, there are homeless, there are street people, and there are panhandlers. There is definite overlap between the groups but here are the individual categories:
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Homeless - odds are you won’t see most of the homeless as they are working or staying in shelters. Most often they are trying to turn their lives around in some way. They realize that hanging out on the street with their hand out isn’t really the way to go about it.
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Street People - These folks are most often dealing with a mental illness. They can get treatment drugs sometimes but some refuse to take them due to the nasty side effects. These are the one who you see standing on a steam grate wearing multiple layers of clothing in the dead of summer. Many street people have addictions as a result of self-medicating. Sometimes they beg, and often they are the ‘chronic’ homeless who can’t function well enough to be allowed to stay in a shelter (shelters have very strict rules). You see more of them in the city due to population density and because suburbs love to practice ‘Greyhound Therapy’
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Panhandlers - Some of them are street people, most of them are begging for drug and booze money. They often play off the sympathy for people in the above categories. Rarely does any money you give go for food and shelter.
Yes and no. I emptied my pocket to a homeless vet with no legs in a wheelchair who was parked outside Costco a couple of times last winter (it was brutally cold). Done the same fora young woman holding up a sign one Christmas Eve who was there so her kids could have something that year. Generally don’t give to the people walking down the street asking everyone who they pass by for change, but then sometimes I do. Sat down next to a guy on a park bench once who told me his woeful story but didn’t ask for money, gave him what I had in my pocket and wished him well for the night; he broke down in tears. People pulling a con? Maybe. Down on their luck or desperate? Definitely, but at least they aren’t pulling a knife or a gun on people.
As a rule I don’t give money to panhandlers, but will offer to buy them a meal or give them food. Most of the time the offer is not acccepted.
Around here we don’t get a lot of typical panhandlers. Mostly we get folks with signs about their car breaking down, or being stuck in town, but somehow they all seem to find the same couple well-trafficked intersections in the better shopping areas in town. I don’t just not give to them, I straight up call the cops. I figure if they really are in need the cops can tell them where to find assistance, if not the cops can move them along.
We have a number of support organizations in town for people who actually need help. I’ve done pro-bono work on their websites and even helped my cousin landscape the front planters at a women and children’s shelter for his Eagle Scout project. It’s not that I don’t have feelings for people in need, it’s that I can’t stand to see scammers taking money from the soft-hearted.
Our town is small enough that we know a lot of the chronic homeless by name, and the local free newspaper identifies offenders by name from the police report. Those never get money from me. Once in a great while, in winter, I will give cash to the people whose names don’t appear with alcohol or drug related arrests.
That said, our homeless population has dropped dramatically in the last year or two.
This right here is exactly why I am conflicted about who and when to hand a buck or spare change to. (And it’s rare that I do- maybe 3-4 times per year.) If your homeless population has dropped dramatically, it’s because they’ve simply shifted to a more charitable locale. As an aside, most of the people I see at intersections here are pretty grotty and very likely homeless. The city just shut down a functional tent city that housed dozens of indigents.
So a “chronic homeless” person (presumably in greatest need) never gets anything from you? And addicts or mentally ill people (which comprise the greatest number of homeless folks), you will also ignore. Because…why? But someone who you magically determine deserving gets a buck from you because, you feel like it.
Who are you (collectively, not just you, umlaut) to determine someone’s worthiness for your spare change? I’m thinking Christians here are either performing frantic mental gymnastics and word games to interpret the teaching of Jesus to your benefit, or are conspicuously silent. As a good little atheist, I will probably continue to throw a buck or two at panhandlers. I’ve yet to read anything that convinces me otherwise.
Also giving to individual persons does not preclude giving to charities. Some of us can do both, you do understand this, right? Right?
We’re the collective unwashed who don’t want to harm drug addicts or waste money that will assuredly do more for the needy if given to people who specialize in that effort.
Common sense is the opposite of mental gymnastics. The first order of charity is do no harm.
If I were to flip your remarks back on you I’d say I’m thinking you don’t really care about the lives you risk and want to wear your disdain of religion on your sleeve.
I remember reading a book about saints when I was little and how one guy, when asked if he wasn’t afraid of being taken advantage of by scammers pretending to poor, said something along the lines of “I’d rather be fooled a hundred times than bypass one person in need.” To me, that was the true Christian spirit, and it fit right in with Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” philosophy.
I purchase The Big Issue whenever I see people selling it. What really gets me are the older people in our neighborhood who collect cardboard for a living. I wish I could offer them more help but they are too proud to accept cash handouts.
So you think Christians or people in general are financially incapable of making sound decisions involving the poor? Are you sure you’re not quoting a member of Congress? Because it sure sounds like something they’d suggest.
I don’t see that at all.
I also don’t criticize people who give directly to panhandlers - I’m sure they have a reward in Heaven.
But what would say to me if I went around handing out shots of liquor and baggies of crack? You’d say that was wrong of me, right? That I wasn’t really helping them by feeding their addiction? Well… where do you think your buck or two will wind up? Liquor and crack, that’s where!
I would much rather put my money where I think it will help. For myself and my wife, that’s mainly a shelter near us that has a particular emphasis on helping women with children, and includes more than a meal and a bed. For example, they will help women put together a resume, fill out job applications, practice interview skills, and find clothes to wear to the interview. See, that’s the kind of help that isn’t turning into booze tonight, and might actually put an entire family on the right road for life.
Crack is illegal. I’m not interested in breaking the law.
However, I’ve bought liquor for panhandlers outside a liquor store more than once, and handed them something from my own shopping bag more times than that. Within the last month, easily. Having been at rock bottom myself, I can’t take it upon me to judge them or tell them what’s best for them.
I donate to the food bank. I try to carry water in the summer because the heat here in Texas is awful.
And it’s not just that. Some of these people will never get up from where they are. If another sip of alcohol gets them through their miserable existence, I’m okay with that. Like the doctor telling my grandfather, when he was 82 years old and starting on his slide into death, that he should completely cut out sweets to better control his diabetes, we all thought it was insane. The man’s life was a mess, he didn’t have that much longer to live, why intentionally make things worse for him before the end? Especially if it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of prolonging how much he was here. So, I agree. Sometimes that’s all they got.
I buy food for homeless people fairly often. A few of us got together and bought a bunch of food for a guy and he cried he was so touched. If I offer to buy food for someone and they turn it down, too bad.
On a trip back to Honolulu, while waiting for a bus at Ala Moana shopping mall a homeless man approached us with a pile of newspapers. He explained that this was a newspaper put out completely by homeless people, and they sold it for whatever they could get. I think I gave him a buck for one. Still have it squirreled away somewhere. Forget what it’s called but I think it’s something like the Homeless Times, something like that.
Same thing happened to us once at Penn Station in NYC. I like this idea.
My city is absolutely full of panhandlers. They vary in age and problems, but most are trying to support their various levels of drug addictions. So no, I don’t give money to any of them.