I am asking because I know people from both sides:
- People who discourage it: usually talk about how the beggars might spend their money on, how they might be lying, How donating to them will encourage them to keep begging and how they should be looking for a job instead (My commentary: finding a job is impossible for them this days, matter of fact there is literally hundreds, if not thousands of articles online talking about how hard and impossible it had become).
- People who encourage it: to be honest here, they usually talk only about religious reasons.
(Note: I know that the overview about both sides are highly unbalanced, but I preferred to keep it limited to my personal experiences rather than expanding it from myself, as I intentionally not looking for theories and objective logic, rather I am looking at people reasons and opinions as this is highly subjective matter.)
Anyone got any thoughts about this?
If someone asks, I’ll offer to buy them food or other supplies. My wife hands out handwarmers during the winter. We used to put together care packages for people, but lost the habit. I don’t give out money because I don’t want to enable addictions. When you offer something other than money, you are able to more easily separate people who want a fix over people who want to improve their situation. Your resources go farther when you help the latter.
edit: One thing that helps people out a lot is buying them public transit passes. It gives them mobility to get to shelter/services they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
Worth pointing out that most people who help will offer food, but you can only eat so many times a day. Food is plentiful in developed nations. Most restaurants/grocery stores are throwing away and donating tons of food a day, these people will know where to get it.
You can’t buy shelter with food. Supplies are great, but they also wont help someone off of the street.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, but when I’m helping someone I don’t think it’s my place to be the morality police. In a perfect world, we would have systems in place to help these people overcome, or prevent it in the first place . But we don’t live in a perfect world.
They likely can’t buy shelter with a fiver or whatever you decide to give them either. The truth is that charities, food banks, and churches are much better equipped to supply the homeless with what they need because it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, which is why I donate to those organizations instead of trying to hand out money.
Let’s also be real: not wanting to enable addictions is not about policing morality. It’s about harm prevention. The drugs and alcohol they may buy with your money is likely to do more harm than good in a very practical sense and has nothing to do with my personal beliefs.
At the end of the day, your money won’t help them a majority of the time. Offering food or supplies gives them the opportunity to tell me what they need short term rather than me guessing or leaving things up to chance. Long term solutions are provided by other organizations, and your money is better spent there.
What world do you live in that a fiver can buy someone a substantive quantity of hard, addictive drugs? You’re being completely disengenious here and asserting more moral policing. The absolute worst case scenario is that they use my fiver to get just enough of a hit to stave off withdrawal symptoms, and even if that’s the only relief I give them, it’s still better than offering more food to someone who isn’t hungry.
The solutions you are suggesting are turning away the addicts, the ones who need help the most. I’ll happily put it directly in their hands over giving it to a church with an ulterior motive to push their religious views onto the most vulnerable class of people, thanks.
Offering food is fine, if they are hungry and they want it. But if they decline food when that is not the type of help they need is not some admission of guilt, as it is so often portrayed to be. Often, they’re rightly skeptical of food from a stranger. Some will accept it to be polite but throw it out for their own safety. It only takes me and ~9 or so other people offering them that fiver to pay for a night’s stay in a cheap motel. Offering supplies if they refuse your food is also great to help them with urban camping, but too many supplies is also a liability where they now need to be concerned about theft. Packing light is just as much a survival tactic.
So yes, let’s be real here and help people with what they need not what you think they need. If that’s relief from withdrawal for a night, so be it. If it’s saving for a motel, even better. But services contingent on passing drug tests is not helping any drug addicts, it’s just putting them back onto the street.
Nobody has ever gotten a home from food and supplies, but they sure as hell do with money.
I never claimed this. The accumulation of multiple fivers from different people can eventually get you drugs. You’re also neglecting cheaper substances like alcohol. Basically the money you accumulate from asking for money will get you alcohol/drugs faster than it will get you shelter.
Where have I inserted my morals here? I do not think people don’t deserve help because they are addicts. I merely acknowledge that they need a different kind of assistance than my pocket change will provide.
What a tangent dude. Everything I offer is always based on what they request. I do not ever give them anything they didn’t ask for. If they got something that’s a burden to them, it’s because they asked for it. I’m not shoving food down their throat or forcing socks on their feet.
Show me the story of the homeless person who accumulated enough fivers to afford rent.
My philosophy only acknowledges my help in passing as what it is: a short term relief for a complicated issue. If they use it for food, it will only last them a few meals at best. The food, however will not harm them. If they use it for socks, they will eventually wear out. Again, the socks will not harm them. If they use it for drugs/alcohol, sure it might give them relief for a while, but it might also just allow their addiction to persist. I just choose not to gamble on the last point by sending my money to nonprofits instead of leaving it up to people who are probably not in the right headspace for responsible decisions. If you want to give them money, fine. But don’t chastise me having conversations with people and need and trying to help them in a way I’m comfortable with.
And that’s fine. A severe drug dependence is a need, not a bad habit. You can’t expect someone to stop a drug they have a physiological dependance on overnight, because you don’t want to ‘enable’ them. Yes, that includes alcohol. Severe alcohol withdrawal can kill someone.
A drug addict chasing a fix without the means becomes a violent threat to society, and themselves. This is not the ‘harm reduction’ you are claiming.
I’m sorry to inform you, but in a capitalist society, a lack of money is how someone ends up on the street, and it’s how they stay on the street. I can agree that in a perfect world there would be better solutions. The fact that people are still homeless in a society only proves that the solutions we have are currently inadequate, and those who slip through the cracks of our systems wont be helped by those systems as they are.
You can choose to help them in this reality they are in, or you can wax philosophical about what their reality should be. That’s up to you, of course
Great. Good for you. The whole start of this conversation was simply to point out that offering exclusively food is not always the most useful way to help. I’m emphasizing this point for anyone who comes along to this thread with that viewpoint.
So this is another disengenous oversimplification. You will take the position that a homeless person can sustain a hard drug addiction from panhandling, yet they would not be able to afford a motel room for the night, or an extended stay, and begin their climb back into society. This is purely a moral judgement on your part.
I wont bother trying to convince you, there is plenty of homeless reporting available online that shows these struggles, you’ve just made up your mind and refuse to look.
I am not responding to all this but I cannot let this slide:
You acknowledge that dependence is a need (which I agree with!) but you think that an addict will magically overcome their addiction when handed the money they could use to sustain the addiction? The justification you’re using for handing them money (i.e. relieving withdrawal) is the same reason I don’t expect an addict to buy a night at the motel over their drugs. The reasons are biological not moral. You must be operating on another definition of moral or something.
You’ve twisted what I’ve said yet again.
You’re starting from the assumption that they’re an addict, because that is your moral judgement of them. Not mine.
Take this for the uninformed opinion it is.
But, does panhandling ever lead to someone getting off the street? I thought of panhandling as pure survival resources.
I am unable to provide shelter, I could donate to one of the charities dedicated to temporary shelter to provide that. Arguably a better donation than panhandling, as those charities offer pathways off the street.
Jobs, permanent shelter, etc aren’t achieved via panhandling, but through other means (local charities, what not).
But, food/water/entertainment I can provide, like right now. So on my way into the fast food place/shop I’ll offer to grab something.
It only takes ~10 people a day offering $5 to pay for a cheap motel for the night. And yes, survival is the number one priority. A motel room provides a locked door, a shower, a bed, and peace of mind for a whole day.
Shelters are chronically over-capacity and prioritize women and children. Ask yourself, what demographic do you typically see panhandling in your area? I know who they are near me, and those people deserve survival too.
Also shelters often require things like drug/sobriety tests and restrictive curfews that would prevent homeless from holding down evening jobs, which are some of the most common types of jobs available in that situation.
I don’t know where you live, but there is not a single place in my city where I can’t find water to drink, a cheap or free bite to eat, or even a dumpster full of edible, contained food, and of course, a steady stream of people thinking that their 1 of 5 meal offers in a day will somehow solve the ‘roof’ problem.
I’m not telling you not to offer food. But if they are not hungry and you would have spent $5 on a burger, but not 1/10th of a motel, you are judging, not helping.
I’m also not telling you not to donate to shelters. If we all did, things might be better systemically. Personally, I am highly in favor of a far greater tax contribution to housing people. But that struggling person on the street corner today won’t get the help they need from wishful thinking or even a spare $5 to the shelter. But they could have a bed to sleep in tonight instead of a piece of cardboard if you give to them directly today.
I didn’t mean to give the impression I thought the food/coffee/magazine I offer solves the root of a problem. Merely that it’s a thing I can do to solve an immediate need.
The root of the problem won’t be solved by donations to either an individual or a charity. The root of the problem, imo, is political and requires a change in politics. I think we agree on this point.
I hear you. But 10 people donating £5 a day also pays for a shelter to hire a motel room no?
I’m also not judging people on the street, well I probably have some internal biases to work through (more likely to ask a woman than a man, that sorta thing) but I don’t consciously care much about the “what” they are. Also, those internal biases would present themselves no matter what I offered. A service that measured their biases would be better able to give equally than I would as an individual.
Here are the problems I, personally, have with cash donations:
Firstly, I don’t carry it, but adding one more coffee to the one I’m buying anyway is no issue.
Secondly, it doesn’t support panhandling as a career, shitty career choice probably a minority. So minor that if you want to argue that “The rate of professional panhandlers is zero (it isn’t) and this point is invalid” I won’t push back
Thirdly, it doesn’t get to the root of the issue, I’m not judging if they’re on the street for mental health, addiction, ex-convicts, bad luck, whatever, as in no-one deserves to live in the streets barring their own personal choice. But, I think solving the issue is beyond an instance of a donation. I also agree that charities don’t get to the root of the issue either, but I do think they’re better equipped than individuals. Individuals working with these services experience greater success than if they were to go it alone.
Not telling you you’re wrong, just trying to justify my decisions (maybe to myself).
No worries, I actually didn’t get that impression of you but I see that sort of sentiment a lot, so I suppose I was just trying to get ahead of it. I’m sorry if I was accusatory in my wording.
I agree it’s absolutely a great thing to address a need, even if it’s a simple comfort item. My concern just comes in with the “I’ll give you this but not money because you’ll just buy drugs” mentality that is so prevalent.
In a perfect world, maybe. I’d like to believe this, but I don’t. Do you really trust a shelter to solve this problem for that specific person? I don’t, but I can trust the $5 will go to whatever immediate need that person has. At some level, it’s also a sort of marketing problem. Not many people are doing that donation to the shelter, because they don’t see it. But you can plainly see the homeless person on the street corner in obvious need, and you can affect them specifically and immediately.
I have to say, at least where I’m at in America, this is a non-issue. We are a digital society, homeless included. I’ve rarely encountered someone who can’t take a digital donation. Everyone has cash app, even if they have to take their phone to a McDonald’s Wi-Fi to access it. Barring that, I could likely get cash back anywhere I could get a coffee. And we all know how inefficient a coffee purchase can be.
Sure, use your judgement. I do make a distinction between panhandling and busking, or worst of all, common street scams.
But do you really think someone would be panhandling if they had access to a better option? If you’re able to inch them closer to the more comfortable life that you enjoy, why does anything else even matter?
Giving money is much more beneficial than buying meals etc.
OK, what do you think they can do with the $50 that they manage to accumulate that will seriously benefit them?
That’s kind of an impossible question to answer because the “they” is unknowable in your question.
But maybe they buy alcohol and drugs with it
Maybe they buy some medication they need to survive
Maybe they have a dog they want to buy food for
Maybe they have a family that could use the $50
Maybe they go to a thrift store and get newer shoes and socks for the winter
Who knows what they do with it but really $50 can help a great deal and unless you know the person well it’s difficult to know what they need it for. This isn’t to take away from what you and your wife have done, that is admirable and needed help too
Exactly. The easiest thing to do is ask them what they want. Personally when they ask for money, I tell them I don’t hand out money and ask them if there’s something else they need. It is a good way to actually have a conversation with them and get them something they need.
I also want to be clear, I’m not going to judge anyone for giving money to someone in need. It is better than not trying to help at all. I just personally believe it is better not to give homeless persons money.