Homeless people / panhandlers

[Marnixvdb]

here in the netherlands, a postdoc did research to what the true beggars (people asking for money without giving anything in return like music, homeless-newspaper, etc) on the street of Brussels earn. On this link you can find a short newsstory on it in English.

<u>Her Conclusions:</u>

there were app. 260 'real' beggars in the centre of the town.

2/3 were Gypsy women (Roma) from Romania, nearly all with some kind of home (mobile, cramped appartment), usually completely uneducated and without many, if any alternatives to earn money

The rest were homeless Belgians, with the odd exception from Marokka or Portugal - nearly all had suffered some kind of personal trauma.

the population wsa different than a few years back when there were more alchoholic men on the streets.

Average gift that was received:
Roma - € 0,89
Belgian bum - € 0,84

Average monthly earn:
Roma - € 350
Belgian bum - € 900

- No sign of organised crime profiting from sending people on te street to beg (earn is too low), with the exception of one 6 year old case of a gang forcing disabled romanians to beg for them
- Bringing along their childern didn't significantly increase the earn of Roma women
- Most novice beggars initially start drinking to find the courage to withstand the humiliation of begging

[IronUnkind]

[ QUOTE ]
i was at a red light and there was a panhandler on the corner with a sign that said

"why lie it's for beer"

so i threw him a buck and drove off.


[/ QUOTE ]

I stopped falling for this one when I caught a guy I gave beer money to buying a can of chunky soup.

[Lurker.]

so i was sitting in my car in a downtown area in Quebec. This street kid comes up to my window and taps on it till i roll it down. This conversation follows:
Street Kid (SK): you got any spare change bro?
Me:yeah! you got change for a hundred?
SK: uhhh...can you give me five mins?
ME: Yeah sure. I'll put my hazards on and wait on the side of the road for you.
SK: for real?
Me: nah, get the [censored] outta here bud.

[LuckyDevil]

I've never given money to beggars. It is my belief that almost all of these people are where they are because they continually make poor decisions in life. I also believe that most of them are capable of finding some type of work, but are unwilling to do so. Who can blame them for not wanting to work when they are making better then minimum wage, tax free, doing nothing but sitting there. If no one gave them money they would be forced to do something else to survive.

[elus2]

Many of the homeless that I've seen suffer from at least one form of mental illness. It's basically a revolving door program here where we'll admit some of these guys into the psychiatric hospital then let them go once the provincial government cuts off some funding. Lots are caught in a catch-22 since if they did want to get off their ass and work, who would hire them?

I'll toss a couple bucks some guy's way and hope he'll use it in some way to make his existence happier/less abysmal for a short period of time.

[registrar]

[ QUOTE ]
reg,

"I was reduced to begging on the streets of Dehli for about a week once. It's a revelation how much you can make as a foreigner in India but it really feels bad doing it."

Please elaborate!

[/ QUOTE ]

I was travelling in Asia for ten months. It was 1991 I think or whenever Black Wednesday wiped 25% of the value of sterling so what was already a fairly unrealistic budget was blown out of the water. So I arranged for my mum to send me some more funds by something called an international money order. This didn't arrive in Bangkok before my flight to Dehli so I left instructions for it to be forwarded. On arrival in Dehli, with a few hundred quid in cash, I met some very persuasive Kashmiris, who got me very stoned and suggested that I rent one of their houseboats in Srinigar rather than await funds in Dehli which seemed like an excellent idea. Well, to cut a long story short, you could get into Kashmir, which was a fairly heavy warzone, through backsheesh, but you couldn't get out, not to the south anyway. You had to go East. So I travelled on through Ladakh and down through Manali, did bits of business and sold stuff and I arrived back in Dehli a couple of months later almost broke fully expecting to be able to receive and cash the cheque. This being India, that was not the case. In the end, the [censored] thing was cancelled and the money was transferred through my brother's firm at the time, British Aerospace.

In the meantime, I was completely broke and initially approached the western travellers with my hard luck stories which was somewhat successful but utterly degrading.

Someone had told me in Manali that begging on the streets as a white man was fantastically profitable. I had found this repellent at the time. It seemed a disgusting idea for a British man to beg for drug money in India. But, when push comes to shove, it beats asking your 'own kind' for favours. I don't know why really. So I gave it a go.

I was a bit of a mess after six months on the road, quite gaunt with very shabby clothes and dirty in my pores. The begging itself was easy. I guess it was some kind of affront to rich Dehli Indians to see an Englishman begging, I don't know, but I made good money. I needed 40 rupees for my dorm, and 60, I reckoned, for food and sundries, and you'd make this within a couple of hours, sometimes virtually immediately, then I'd quit, partly because I felt bad but mainly because it's made pretty clear to you that you're stepping on other people's turf.

I ran out of funds again, this time pretty permanently, a month or so later in Calcutta after being robbed by an Australian junky, but Calcutta is altogether groovier place and so I never had to resort to this again because there were easier ways to make money and life was much cheaper there anyway. Begging is hard work in many ways. In Asia, it's generally a career and a public service, enabling to donor to earn merit.

[niss]

As a lifelong New Yorker, I pretty much never gave money to the homeless and generally avoided eye contact.

When I worked downtown, there was an older black woman who used to sit outside Trinity Church in the evenings, when I would be heading to the train.

It seemed pretty clear that she was not a drug addict or a thief, or at least I had decided that based on her appearance. I gave her a dollar or two pretty much every time I saw her, and she never failed to say "thank you". I would tell myself that she was actually something like an angel, who in this case would make good things happen to those who were generous to her. I probably did this to justify giving her money almost every night, which was so antithetical to my view of the homeless.

One night I had a blind date. I had been on a few dates, none of which had gone anywhere. It had been very depressing. So walking by her that night, I gave her $20, so that maybe this date would be a little different.

I've been married to that blind date for 10 years.

[Jon34]

My girlfriend had this happen to her recently:

She was on the subway (NYC), and a very goth looking guy with only one leg was asking everyone for money. About a week later, she sees the same guy, this time with a prothstetic leg, at *Starbucks*, drinking a $4 coffee.

[RR]

[ QUOTE ]
My favorite panhandler con is probably the "car ran out of gas" and now I'm stranded, just need a few bucks for gas one. I have a few good stories to tell about that one. That's one of the few I've heard in multiple cities.

[/ QUOTE ]

When I used to live in Vegas and would drive to LA to play poker I often stopped in Barstow. There is a McDonald's and convenience store I often stoppped at and on two differnt trips the same guy gave me the same story.

When I lived in Ohio and would travel to Rising Sun from time to time to play poker we speculated that someone could do well if they parked their car near the turnoff to the casino and held a sign that said "went broke, need some money to get home."

[Enrico Pallazzo]

[ QUOTE ]
One thing that bothered me while reading through this thread is the following admittedly nitpicky point: everyone seems to assume that a bum claiming to want something that's not in his best interest (alcohol, pot, hooker, whatever) means that he is being honest.

This point is nitpicky because in the vast majority of cases (probably greater than 95%), the bum probably IS being honest.

At the same time, though, it's disturbing to me because it is assumes that bums are degenerates who certainly wouldn't do anything good for themselves. The only way we believe them is if they say they are doing something bad. If they say they are doing something good, then they must not be honest. That kind of thinking. As I said, this probably is a good assumption to make. But the whole lack of benefit of doubt still bothered me a bit.

-bigbootch

[/ QUOTE ]

One time when I was on my way to the 24 hr food market at 2am (I hate grocery lines) a standard homeless bum is asking me for money so he can buy food. I tell him that he is in luck because I'm going to the market to buy food, he just has to wait in front and I will bring him fresh food, which he can watch me buy for him. So I buy my groceries, and also buy him a large peach and a hot, freshly made bagel. I bring the bagel and peach outside to give to the man and he looks at my angrily. He tosses the food in the trashcan and says, "Man! I ain't no F'n Bird! BUY ME SOME CHICKEN!" and that was the last time I was stupid enough to buy anything for those degenerates.

I know that 99.99% are mentally ill or addicts. Large cities have a plethora of food pantries and soup kitchens. The bums only ask for cash to buy the drugs and booze they crave. There are enough charities to take care of their food and clothes.

The best gift to give them would be euthanasia. On one hand, we put animals down to end their supposedly miserable existances, and on the other hand, these utter wastes of life get to live off our taxes and burden us with guilt, all the while they have zero accountability for themselves and enjoy drugs paid for by the saps that fund them.