I visited China in 2000 and remember one night in Beijing I very poor sad little came up to me asking for help for food and I handed her 5 dollars. As I recall at the time the little ones always were asking for “one dollar” so i felt it very nice to give 5... after an hour or so eating in the restaurant when I came out a literal sea of children were gathered all around me begging for the same gift... I had given the little girl the only cash on me at the time so when a little boy very angry dropped the f bomb at me multiple times for not giving him the same - I stopped and asked, “do you know what you just said?”... he was thankfully much smaller then me but definitely didn’t seem to phased fortunately he gave up after a few blocks of walking... I’ll never forget this... both sad how desperate they were but also the effect of being generous... as they say you can’t win
> very poor sad little came up to me asking for help
Never give to beggars. Ever. For any reason.
If you just feel you must give, give food--something that can't be converted to cash. Nothing pisses off "beggars" faster than giving them a sandwich.
1) Most of the time it's a scam.
Often the individual isn't really that badly off or, if they're children, the money is being skimmed by adults.
2) A lot of the time it's criminal.
Many of these encounters are used to snag your attention while you become the victim of a crime.
3) You are not solving the fundamental problem but you are making the area worse for the people who have to live there and deal with the beggars on a daily basis.
I probably should have chosen my words a touch better. Beggars are certainly never in a good place in life irrespective of whether they homeless or not. I don't subscribe to the "welfare queens" rhetoric.
However, giving a small amount of money to that particular person right now does nothing to improve the situation. And, in fact, it makes the surrounding area slightly worse for the people who live there by creating an attractive nuisance.
Comforting? Not particularly. My mother had quite bad dementia. Without me around, I could have easily seen a path for her to becoming homeless. This is a huge indictment of our current government and economic system that having a mental health crisis can consign you to homelessness.
> if they're children, the money is being skimmed by adults
This one may vary by country, but I'll stick by it.
Once I saw kids begging and I wanted to give them money. But they pointed at the packed leftover food from the restaurant. Then I knew it was not a scam and it taught me about the living conditions in that place. Thank you for the chance to remember this incident.
Yeah, if someone actually asks for food, I'll probably help them out--certainly if I'm holding it in my hand. That's only happened once in all my years of walking around cities (and I generally walk a lot wherever I live--which is why I recognize all the habitual beggars).
For almost a half-dozen of my too sympathetic friends, I have introduced them to the local beggar population that they wanted to help by saying: "All right. I'll split it with you. Go there (whatever close food source), buy some form of sandwich and drink--no mayo, and come back and give it to him. He'll still be here; trust me on this."
They have quite the reaction when the cursing starts and the food gets thrown back in their face. It's been sadly invariant.
Supposing someone didn't want food, I don't see that it changes the fundamental reality that they are homeless and begging. In fact it's hard to blame them for wanting a drink in that situation.
The issue is that someone genuinely homeless will happily take the drink and sandwich and consume them later (thus the "no mayo") if they happen to not be hungry right now.
Someone who is panhandling wants money and they get very angry when you interrupt that process. At least in the US, the panhandlers tend not to be the genuinely homeless--they mostly tend to be scummy people. It's a semi-regular news occurrence for someone to follow a panhandler with a camera to find out they really aren't homeless.
It really makes the political discussion about how to help the "homeless" a lot harder because now you have to deal with "How do we make sure that we help the "homeless" instead of these scummy jerks?" And it's impossible to make the separation--the scummy jerks will always work your system better than the genuinely homeless. It's one of the reasons why I'm generally for the basic income kind of approaches--the scummy jerks can't work your system to the detriment of those who genuinely need it.
In the US at least, the "genuinely homeless" that you could actually help tend to be nearly invisible because they don't want to be seen--getting seen gets you noticed and harrassed.
> Someone who is panhandling wants money and they get very angry when you interrupt that process. At least in the US, the panhandlers tend not to be the genuinely homeless--they mostly tend to be scummy people. It's a semi-regular news occurrence for someone to follow a panhandler with a camera to find out they really aren't homeless.
My belief is that this is a very small percentage of beggars and the videos are so widely shared not because they reflect a common situation but because they make the people share them feel better about walking on by. I don’t actually think that you can determine that someone isn’t homeless just because they don’t want to accept food from you.
Maybe it's different for where you are, but I used to see several beggars park their car and unpack before lunch and repack and drive away once past dinner. One would bring a woman and 2 children to help panhandle. These aren't the exceptions--they're the norm.
Should we be helping these people? Yes.
Is panhandling money really helping these people? Not really.
Is their having a car meant to be proof they aren't homeless? And I would encounter several panhandlers just on a short walk to work in Boston; should this one anecdote from an unknown place be enough to completely change my perspective?
