I don’t think it’s always about the long run. I don’t feel particularly well qualified to know how close this person may or may not be to peril when I encounter him/her/them, so I often err to one side rather than the other.
Beyond that, I think we’re at the point of “agree to disagree,” up to and including whether or not direct giving is detrimental in the long run.
Cheers !
Shelters aren’t always there. Take for example Tacoma, Washington, which is a decent-sized city that should be able to provide a decent support system for the homeless. Tacoma has a total of four overnight shelters capable of taking in 312 adults and 163 families a day. This isn’t nearly enough because approximately 100 to 150 individuals and 100 families are turned away because the shelters are full. This isn’t a matter of people refusing to go in. Info from official city website, btw- Shelters and Resources - City of Tacoma
One of the shelters that fill up fast is The Tacoma Rescue Mission. The doors open for sign-up at 3:30 pm, but if you want a decent chance of getting a mat it would be wise to get in line mid to late morning…which sort of cuts into looking for work and/or food time quite a bit, wouldn’t you say?
Oops, the links to Salvation Army Shelter and the Comprehensive Life Resource Center in the cite don’t seem to work any more, so the number turned away may be a bit higher.
Again, I’m teaching my kids lessons on how they can get through life. Not setting economic policy.
You are using complete strangers as examples of what can happen if they don’t make the right voluntary choices, when you have no idea whatsoever if these strangers had control over what has happened to them. You are teaching them that sympathy and empathy and compassion need not be extended as much to these strangers because they supposedly were the cause of their own misfortune.
And in a few months add “…and so you can make enough to be able to give to others less fortunate”. And then model the behavior for them, stuff a dollar bill or two into donation buckets occasionally in front of them or, better yet, let them stuff the dollar bills in when the opportunity presents itself.
It always makes me pause when one make a moral argument that aligns perfectly with one’s own economic good.
Generally, but yeah, it could range from a quarter to a fiver.
Sad but true.
Maybe Philly just generally has better buskers. The ones I’ve seen here range from pretty good to breath taking. When I was doing a street performance Street Preaching For Cthulhu* as an unofficial part of the Philly Fringe Festival, I heard what sounded like a good drum band around a corner. When I finally went to look at them, I found one man playing with sticks on plastc buckets and metal scraps taken from the trash. It was awe inspiring. I went to put money in his bucket. He angrilly stopped me. He said something like “I don’t need money from somebody evil like you.” His music had been so good that he was the only one I broke character for. After I explained, he took my money.
I don’t usually give money to beggars. Partly, a lot of beggars make me uncomfortable, and I don’t really want to be showing my wallet to them. Partly I suppose I’m not as generous as I ought to be. And partly I know that in addition to people who actually need help, there are a lot of scam artists who beg. And there’s an unfortunate overlap between the people who need help the most and the ones who scare me.
I do give generously to the local soup kitchens and food pantries. Places that give food away with no questions asked.
When I lived in Manhattan and regularly was asked for assistance, I did always offer food if I happened to have it on me, unless the beggar was obviously unhinged. (It’s not that uncommon. A lot of people with mental health problems end up on the streets.) And I often did have food on me – leftovers I was taking home from supper, or a bag of bagels I was taking home, or a sack of clementines I was bringing to the office… And the response was bimodal. About half the beggars were delighted that I offered them a bagel, and about half were really pissed that I was making it obvious they weren’t hungry for food.
I wish we had a dole – a universal basic income – guaranteed for everyone, including the mentally ill and the unlucky and yes, the lazy. Most competent people get satisfaction from accomplishing stuff that other people want done. Most people want some discretionary income. I’m convinced that plenty of people would choose to work to have more than the basics, and our economy would produce enough food for everyone without compulsion. I’d happily vote for that and pay my taxes. I’d really like basic food, housing, and clothing to be a right, and not something that people have to beg for.
I think of buskers as unrelated to beggars. They are performing as a job. Giving to a busker is like supporting an artist on patreon, or paying for “free software”, or clicking the “buy me a coffee” button on a musician’s web page.
I’m pretty sure we’d still have buskers if everyone had a basic income, too.
I don’t normally give money to people on the street, mainly for safety reasons involved with being distracted, pulling out my wallet, etc. I decided I would try another way, and see what would help.
When the kids reached driving age, I decided to volunteer at a local shelter. I spent 5 years working 1-2 evenings per week with a long-term* support and reintegration group. We provided food, child-care, job training, financial training, job interview simulations, and even free legal advice to our “classes”. Each class was 20 people, with (usually) a pair of teachers, and ran for about 3 months. At the end were graduations, often with local companies with whom we’d developed relationships attending (with applications). Unfortunately only around 25% made it to the end of the training, but their success rate after that was pretty good. According to the director, our long term (5 year) success rate was out of the park (for this type of intervention). When I started it was run out of a small church, when I left they had some large digs provided by the city, had gotten the police to locate a station inside, and were negotiating to bring a courtroom (family court) into their building.
The thing that stood out mostly for me, was how incredibly hard it is to bring someone (or a family) from the street all the way back to apartment, job, checking account, etc. I’m no expert but most of the problems revolve around getting all these things coordinated and in place at the same time. It’s like a self-referencing cluster-fuck where every element depends on every other element. Need an address to get a job, need a checking account to get paid, need a job to get an address. Add in parole requirements and it was insanely hard for us to help them get all the parts in place – but we did our best.
The other massive barrier was the geographic separation of all the city/state offices which they must visit. Add children, school and (sometimes) a parole officer and it seemed almost impossible sometimes.
It was a huge eye-opener for me. I thought at the beginning “how hard can this be?” But by the end I had received my comeuppance. It was a learning experience, that’s for sure. I was correct in my original assumptions that some of their problems are self-inflicted, but I’d had no idea how difficult the path back was for them.
*Started mainly for domestic violence victims, then added homeless and parolees attempting to return to “regular” life after their problems. By the last year DV was the minority and the program was branching to include more men.
I thank you, and I thank your family.
When I was younger, I believed that you should NEVER give cash. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to believe that part of what I am giving, is connection and dignity. My measly $10 is not going to get them off drugs, or off the street. It’s not even going to really meet today’s meal needs. But I can give them a moment of being treated as if they are worthy of dignity. And I think that goes a long ways to helping them believe they deserve better, so they can get help.
If you can’t afford to give, you don’t have to. If you feel they are a scourge, you can just move on. Whether you give or not says more about you than it does them.
Sure. It may say that you (a hypothetical you, I’m obviously not intending to be personal here) have not bothered to figure out whether there is a more effective way to help the homeless than casusal ad hoc giving to people you happen to encounter, and this is a way to salve your conscience without putting in any real effort.
Whatever. I’m not sure you have any way to know what effort I put in to helping people just based off of what I said here. But I guess you get to judge without any real effort.
That’s ironic, when you’re the one who said
I was responding to this pious sideswipe at people who choose not to casually give to beggars, and pointing out exactly what you are now saying - that it is wrong to make judgments like this.
If that was your point, it was not at all clear. Or in the neighborhood of clear.