A fair number of homeless actually choose that lifestyle. :eek:
Must be something in the air in Calgary. I had a mega-large pizza left over from a company function that I was ferrying back to the lunch room. I gave it to a young guy sitting along the sidewalk downtown. The ‘WOW’ look on his face was priceless. I’d never give money, though.
In college, I was broke, of course; lived on my own, worked two base-pay jobs, but had cheap rent and loved seeing movies shown at the campus for very cheap.
This was in Oregon, and it seemed everyone was vegetarian or vegan or hippies; people payed a LOT of attention to what they ate.
On my way to watch movies one night, I stopped at a 7-11 to blow 4 bucks on snacks for the movie, and on the way in there was a guy under a blanket, really unkept, just kind of smiling, not bugging anyone or asking for anything, so…
I tried to find whatever ‘nutritious’ stuff I could get for 4 bucks at 7-11. (This was 20 years ago, so it went a little further than now) Got a couple of apples, a cheeseburger, and some milk.
As I was giving him the food, the horrible thought struck me: What if he’s vegetarian? Or vegan? What about the pesticides and wax that are surely on this apple? I was horrified, and asked him if he was vegetarian <I figured maybe I could return it all and get something more organically friendly> and he just smiled and said “ma’am, I’ll eat anything at all right now”
It didn’t occur to me later that maybe he’d thought I was trying to GIVE him a veggie burger or something. 
The only time I gave money there, I saw the guy using it for video games.
But Eugene has a great homeless shelter that gives out cards good for free meals, and I started giving those out instead after that.
There was a smack addict who used to regularly beg on a corner near my work. I never gave her money, but I’d quite often get an extra piece of fruit or a chocolate bar when I did my lunch run and gave it to her. I knew damn well she was a druggie, but she was always polite and always, always thanked me for what I gave her.
The most I’ve ever given was $5 to a girl about my own age pan handling outside the post office. I was prompted to give a note rather than the usual small coins because a few minutes earlier I’d seen a homeless man (on the other side of the street, which is why I didn’t give money to him) eating chicken scraps out of a fast food box he’d scavenged from the bin.
There’s also a man who washes windscreens at an intersection near me. He’s not always there, but usually when he is there’s also a woman with a pram on a bench nearby. Seeing them interact, I assume it’s his wife/girlfriend and their kid. I often give him change to clean my windscreen and a few months ago I bought a stuffed bear for the kid as well.
When I was first living in London I gave two guys 5 quid. At the time I was renting a flat 200 yards from Portobello Rd for 16 quid a week. So it was a pretty fair gift. I was in a great mood. I had just bought tickets to see Alan Price (ex Animals) live, was living in one of the great cities of the world and these two guys, though down and out, seemed cheery.
A few times I have given buskers $20 because they have been really good and I have stood around watching for a while and I know I have paid more to see crap acts.
Once I gave $50 to a girl busking playing violin. She was absolutely awful but I had a very large cheque in my pocket and she was lucky.
I give street musicians money whenever I can. Once close to an Oakland BART station, there was an old guy playing guitar, more to himself than busking, really. He played an interesting bit that I didn’t know, so I approached him and asked him to teach it to me for good money - I think I gave him $20. Good riff.
$20, and a bicycle. There was a guy I used to see daily near the subway exit I used in downtown LA. His name was Ray. Homeless, and had some drug issues, but an intelligent guy. He was a voracious newspaper reader and very engaging in conversation. Sometimes I’d sit with him for 15 minutes and talk sports or whatever (he was a huge Dodger and Laker fan, which made for fun conversations). I really believed him when he said that he was working hard to get his life together. I’d give him change here and there when I had it, and he was always appreciative, and never upset when I didn’t have any. So I believe there were a couple of holidays when I actually did give him a $20. And when he had once complained about having a hard time getting around to job interviews sometimes, I gave him a bicycle I had at home that wasn’t being used.
I remember witnessing other downtown folks giving him as much as $100 during the holidays. Everyone who encountered him found him to be an extraordinarily likable guy.
The last time I saw him, which was several months ago, he had landed a security guard job downtown, had an apartment of his own to live in, and was looking like he was much better fed under the circumstances. When I say I’ll be happy if I never see him again, I mean that in a very positive way.
Maybe $2 in change plus a few subway tokens. I gave him all the coins in my pocket because he gave me the hot tip that the red car parked on 53rd Street was waiting to pick up David Letterman. He was right.
Oh, and once in downtown LA, I gave a guy 5 bucks, but that was less than voluntary. Not exactly a hold-up, but he told me a lovely story about how he spits on people who don’t give him money. All I had was a $5.
I gave a panhandler outside of Trader Joes $20 last month.
I found the $20 on the ground in the parking lot. Briefly considered turning it in to TJ’s staff. Briefly considered keeping it. But instead gave it to the old guy sitting by the entrance.
I dont believe in karma exactly, but the next day we found out that my husband got a raise and the bank would pay all the closing costs on our new house - both things made a difference in our finances. So maybe what goes around really does come around.
While on holiday in the US I gave a guy $20. Him and his 2 pals used to sleep under a walkway flyover not far from my hotel on Charles Street,Boston.
Each day I used to take cardboard cups of coffee and bread rolls to them.
There but for the grace of God…
Probably about fifteen dollars. Some older man at a gas station asking for money. I just won some money on a sctatch off, so it wasn’t a big loss to me.
I gave a $10 grocery store gift card to a woman outside of a post office in November. She wasn’t a panhandler, per se, but she was a stranger down on her luck. It was cold and drizzling and as I was going in, she was coming out, opening an envelope. She pulled out the content, looked at it and sat right down, flat on the sidewalk. I went in and did my postal business and came out and she was still there so I asked what was wrong. She showed me what was in the envelope, a check made out from a man, presumably to her, the check writer and the payee shared a last name. The check was for $18.
She said it was a check from her ex-husband and represented 1/20 of his monthly child support payment, and it was all he sent and he was already several months in arrears. She was concerned about making the hard choices of keeping the utilities on and paying rent and knew she couldn’t give her kids a Thanksgiving meal. A grocery gift card couldn’t be used for booze or cigarettes here, she didn’t look like she had substance abuse issues, so even if it was used to buy 3 bags of Oreos, that’s something. It made my heart ache that I couldn’t give her more because she looked like she was at the end of her rope.
Yes, as far as you can call it a “choice” when one is chronically mentally ill or an active alcoholic or drug addict. (Which in themselves are often efforts at self-medicating for mental problems.)
$10
I parked my car in a bad neighborhood. This guy hinted that he “watches over” the cars in the neighborhood for a fee of $10. I didn’t feel like re-parking or going away only to find later that he had busted up my car.
Uhm, last I checked no one went out and decided to have paranoid schizophrenia, but alcoholics and drug addicts did choose to drink/smoke/shoot up/whatever. That’s a pretty big difference.
I guess I’ve probably given a beggar a couple dollars at some point, just because they were harassing me and I wanted it to end ASAP. Generally I give zero, because a lot of them are liars/scam artists/drug addicts (I especially like the ones who apparently can’t afford food but can afford cigarettes). There are programs in place to help them and if they really, really wanted to change their lifestyle, chances are they could without having to stand on a corner and beg me for my money which I’ve actually earned.
No, it encourages them to continue begging rather than actively trying to improve upon their situation themselves. If someone gave you money for doing nothing, what would be your incentive to get a job?
If you’re ever outside and wondering where all the homeless people went, they’re in downtown LA.
I used to go there once a year for an industry expo (E3), and there is absolutely nothing going on in downtown LA. Had to walk three blocks from my hotel just to find someplace to eat. Hollywood is out in the hills somewhere, LA is just nothing. Nothing but homeless people, that is.
They’re everywhere. Take a stroll after dusk and you’ll see them start to come out like vampires. They set up beds over subway exhaust vents and in parking garage alcoves. In general, they seem to leave you alone, as they probably assume you must be homeless too if you’re walking around downtown LA. During the day, some of them will try to panhandle, but not as much as elsewhere. There’s probably not as dire a need as in, say, Detroit, where it can get down to minus a million in the fall/spring/winter. LA is perpetually perfect, so for them it’s probably like a permanent vacation.
Once while there I went to an italian restaurant with some friends, and one guy ordered a chicken vesuvio not knowing he would be getting the equivalent of about 19 chickens on his plate. He ate what he could, but I told him to box up the remainder and on the way back to our hotel we left it on a waist-high concrete barrier behind which there were 2 or 3 homeless chaps snoozing. I saw one of them inspecting it as we were turning a corner a few blocks down.
One year I actually gave a panhandler dude $20 during the day when I was walking to a mall. I was 20 or so and was making a ridiculous amount of money online, so my head was a little screwy with money. A guy approached me and told me he was in the army, showed me his military ID card, and said he served somewhereorother, and wanted money for food (naturally). I thought I had a fiver in my pocket, but when I pulled the bill from my pocket it turned out to be a twenty, and since I’d already pulled it out and it was in plain view, I felt I couldn’t retreat. The guy started crying and hugged me. He didn’t go inside the mall, where you could get twenty pounds of hot chinese food for $4, so who knows what his real intentions were. I think I remember trying to check his arms for trackmarks before giving him any money. Cuz, y’know… heroin.
Later, I thought that instead of giving such a person money, you should (if anything) get them a decent looking shirt or something they could wear to a job interview. I’m not an expert on homelessness, but I think you aren’t going to remedy that situation at all without getting a job.
When I was younger, I was in Florida with my brother and his girlfriend at the time, driving around for some reason. There was a guy on a median with a sign about something, my brother’s girlfriend got all upset and said we should get him some food from the Arby’s we just passed, and made my brother turn around, drive through Arby’s, pay for a bunch of sandwiches, and then drive back to where the homeless guy was, only to find he wasn’t there anymore. We went on a bum-hunt for a while, then gave up. Stupid girlfriends.
Like I said, many homeless people have underlying mental illness that prevents them from being able to get themselves together. According to that link, 30%, and 60% if you combine substance abuse with mental illness. You’ve seen that crazy guy walking around talking to himself, right? Do you think that the reason he doesn’t stop acting crazy is because he just keeps getting cash, so why clean up and get a job?
I’m not a huge advocate here, I just think the portrayal of homeless as people who are 100% normal and just blew all their money on coke is not even close to accurate. Sometimes it’s just people who literally lost everything. Sometimes it’s assholes who are scamming people. Sometimes it’s a drunk who pissed his life away. But there are differences there.
No, but because he just keeps getting cash, he doesn’t seek out services and treatments. We have programs, shelters and ect for the homeless, but many prefer “the freedom of the street”. No more cash, they come in off the street were they could get treated, cleaned up, trained, etc. You’re not doing them any favors by giving them cash.
I don’t give them cash, I usually give them food. I just object to this idea that they’re out there because they just didn’t try hard enough. I don’t think it’s true very often.