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?

  • tehmics@lemmy.world
    3·
    21 hours ago

    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.

    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.

    10 people donating £5 a day also pays for a shelter to hire a motel room no?

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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

    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?