(First, a note on language. I use the term “beggar” in this post, rather than the more modern and commonly used “panhandler,” with specific intention. “Panhandler” is regarded as more value-neutral than “beggar,” which supposedly carries with it a degree of moralism and judgment. In my view, however, “panhandler” minimizes and thus devalues the actual desperation of these people who live in such drastically reduced circumstances, which calls out for a fully human response not reflected in a word that more suggests a job title than it does the pathos we all know is the actual case. I feel the same way about the technocratic euphemism of “unhoused” to describe “homeless” people. “Home” conjures deep human feeling that is terrible to be without, so we should call that absence, that terribleness, for exactly what it is in our quest for compassion and search for remedies, rather than bury it in a term suited more for an academic sociological tract than everyday human language.)
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Well, the easy reasons in response to my headline above are two-fold:
1) Judging from the sheer number of beggars one sees on the streets of virtually every city across America every day of the year, the evidence seems overwhelming that the need is very great, and 2) because I have enough money to share some of it with those in need without it leaving me hungry or concerned for my future solvency at the end of any given day.
Now: let me also set aside for the moment the arguments about why it is better to give to charities who spend your money on useful services for the hungry and homeless rather than seeing it go to support what we often assume is their hopelessly entangling drug or alcohol addiction (more on that below).
What I want to say instead at the outset simply reflects what I see on the streets, at the all-too-human and abject level where often extremely disheveled human beings dressed in virtual rags stand on corners or sit in threadbare beach chairs at intersections or off-ramps, holding crude and weathered cardboard signs, imploring.
It’s a simple thing, really. There’s a person with a plaintive sign and an open hand, into which I can put something to help them along a little bit in sustaining another day of life. No need to get all complicated and conditional about it.
Last week I came upon one such figure not for the first time, perched at a median strip under a stoplight, a spot he has occupied for quite a few months now pretty much every day (though his hours seem to vary). It was early afternoon, 92 degrees and humid as all hell here in height-of-summer Durham, and this man, estimated age 35 but difficult to tell, was wearing filthy long pants and battered shoes, shirtless under the full sun.
The scene was miserable as could be as I rolled down my car window extending some cash and inquiring whether he had enough water to drink. He grinned slightly, exposing multiple missing teeth, said thanks and yes, he was O.K. as we said our good-byes.
I couldn’t help thinking the whole while that I’d last about 10 minutes out there before I fled for the nearest shade on this unbearably hot and humid day. And that I’d also seen him layered up and hunkered down in his chair when I slipped him a few bills through winter and spring, sometimes in the rain.
I thought another thing, too: We’re going to tell this fellow he should give up that median strip and just go get himself a job?
“Because it is nearly impossible to tell the difference on the street, if you want to help, local experts and advocates consistently recommend donating directly to established, rated charities and homeless service organizations rather than giving cash to street solicitors.”
That sensible-sounding, widely shared perspective among human service agencies and advocates is from a 2019 “Pensacola News Journal” guest editorial, which also cited research that only a small minority (6%-8%) of homeless people in America engage in begging. Conversely, some 81%-90% of beggars are homeless, according to a report from the Urban Institute, which makes for a snappy aphorism: Very few homeless people beg, but the vast majority of beggars are homeless.
As fodder for those disinclined to give either directly to beggars or even to charities who serve them, another article from CBS News in 2023 cites “the world’s richest beggar,” who has parlayed his 10-12 hour daily grind of begging at “prime locations” in Mumbai, India into a $1 million fortune, private school education for his children, home ownership and two rental properties.
Other reports circulate that some panhandling is run by small syndicates who send their “employees” out on their daily rounds as a lucrative business model.
While all such reports make it easy to rationalize passing right by beggars without a moment’s thought, there is little doubt that such anecdotes are the exception rather than the rule. Most beggars’ lives look much more like this, according to a landmark 2013 study commissioned by the Union Square Business Improvement District in downtown San Francisco:
“The typical panhandler is a disabled middle-aged single male who is a racial minority and makes less than $25 per day despite panhandling seven days a week for more than five years….62 percent are disabled…25 percent are alcoholics…32 percent are addicted to drugs…94 percent used the meager funds they raised for food.”
Those numbers held up quite well in a much larger meta-analysis (a comprehensive study of studies) by the scientific journal “PLOS Medicine,” a publication of Public Library of Science, in 2021.
So: knowing that most beggars are truly in need and leading severely constrained lives of physical and psychological vulnerability, why should we consider giving them cash in hand rather than contributing directly to charities willing and able to serve them?
An answer from me forms the basis of a new question:
Why not do both?
“Because they’ll just spend it on booze and drugs!” goes a familiar rejoinder.
A perhaps even more familiar and emphatic response: “Because they should just get a job like the rest of us!”
The first of those is belied by the data above, showing a clear minority of beggars addicted to alcohol or drugs. But the addiction issue aside, the question also compels me to ask: “So what?”
So what if they decide to take my money and buy the tallest can or bottle of mood-altering liquid or smoking material they can find? I know addiction specialists would cringe at the very thought, and while I understand their case and share at least some of their concern, it’s a complex issue, with many dynamics in play.
Human agency—having some degree of choice and control over what you do, when you do it, how you spend, who you’re with—is among the most powerful motivations in life. And having money in your pocket is one key component of such agency.
I also can’t say with any confidence, if I were in the typical beggar’s’s position, I would not also be pulled to enjoy a favorite mood enhancer at any given time, something to keep my cares at bay for a few precious hours.
I was glad to find a nice anecdote from “Christianity Today” about the devout Christian writer C.S. Lewis that aligns with this point:
“One day, Lewis and a friend were walking down the road and came upon a street person who reached out to them for help. While his friend kept walking, Lewis stopped and proceeded to empty his wallet. When they resumed their journey, his friend asked, ‘What are you doing giving him your money like that? Don’t you know he’s just going to go squander all that on ale?’ Lewis paused and replied, ‘That’s all I was going to do with it.’”
Most people have some to great amounts of latitude in how they spend money in their lives.
Homeless beggars, not so much, since they have so little of it.
Hence my question to myself: Should I withhold some minimal level of financial support I’m perfectly capable of providing for them based on my moral judgment that they might put it to what I consider ill use?
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The second complaint—that beggars are just a job away from becoming independent so they should just get on it—is simply not tenable in a large percentage of cases. This is where genetic endowments, a person’s home environment and upbringing, and the plain dumb bad luck of lived life have such dramatic impacts.
The notion of the “self-made man” is, with but precious few exceptions, a mirage. Human success and self-sufficiency is clearly and historically tied to genetics and social class, with all the privileges and opportunities that cascade and multiply from those two factors throughout the life cycle.
Does anyone really think most (or all?) homeless beggars have serious options in the job force, given what in the vast majority of cases is their combination of genetic anomalies, disabilities, illness, troubled upbringing from inept or absent parents, meager or no income, poor education, and the spiraling down of the life force resulting from one or more of those insufficiencies?
One of those downward spirals includes mental disorders. A 2024 PubMed review of 85 studies covering nearly 50,000 homeless people found a then-current prevalence of such disorders among them of 67%, and a lifetime prevalence of 77%.
Even if people are born with favorable genetic profiles, familial dislocation and poverty can swamp and suppress that potential in all but the most unusual cases. The hero who rises from nothing in wretched circumstances to become a CEO and community beacon is not a model that just anyone can attain with “enough hard work.” More power and hosannas to such people, but they are not and never will be the norm.
Humans are much more the product of the inputs in their lives, and when those inputs are wanting, they will tend to struggle through a world of want.
In a slightly different but applicable context, the best-selling memoirist Tara Westover reflects on her efforts to forge a life amidst severe financial duress. Working three jobs and getting about that same number hours of sleep early in her college years, she was floundering and on her way out until an adult adviser told her she’d very likely qualify for a Pell grant to help pay for her studies.
This was news to her, she applied, and a short while later a check for $4,000 landed in her mailbox. It could have been a million dollars for all the difference it would have made in her utter astonishment at such an unprecedented amount of money in her bank account. She writes:
“Every decision I made from that moment on was a function of that check. In those desperate years a few thousand dollars was enough to alter the whole course of my life. It contained a universe. It allowed me to experience for the first time what I now know to be the most powerful advantage of money, which is the ability to think of things besides money. That’s what money does. It frees your mind for living.
“It’s tempting to tell my story in the way people want me to. I would love to be the hero, and say that it’s all about hard work and determination, the white-knuckled triumph of the human will. But if I put my ego aside, I know that’s not the case.”
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I’m under no illusions that most of the beggars I give much less than $4,000 to will rise up and get their college degrees a few years hence. Some fortunate few of them may eventually find a program—or more likely, a program or person will find them—that could help get them off the streets for a spell.
Maybe a long spell if they’re fortunate, supported, and equipped somehow for the long haul.
In the meantime, if my meager donations help them score a meal or a drink that can give them some measure of ease, or allow them to squirrel away some extra change to later help open another door of opportunity, that’s all to the good.
It’s a simple thing, really. There’s a person with a plaintive sign and an open hand, into which I can put something to help them along a little bit in sustaining another day of life. No need to get all complicated and conditional about it.
Also: there’s something about cash-in-hand (Now! Today!), that is not the same as a voucher for shelter, comforting as that might be.
“Show me the money!” shouted Tom Cruise in a very different context again in the movie, “Jerry McGuire.” No, money’s not everything, but it is most certainly something, and when it is missing altogether, it can be a very big thing indeed.
And in the end, doing a small thing in the service of that big thing feels like the right thing to me, most of the time.
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Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I’m down ‘n’ out
And I am lonely
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Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for library books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Panhandler top of page by Vishal Rt, India https://unsplash.com/@vshalrt
Female panhandler with dog by conceptphoto.info, Frankfurt am Main, Germany https://www.flickr.com/photos/7c0/
Street child by Sri Widayanto, Indonesia https://unsplash.com/@thisisgeipenko
You are a GREAT writer!
Thanks very much, Eileen. I originally thought about this as a brief and simple 700-words-or-so piece describing my evolving practice on this matter and leaving it at that. But then the writing started and I realized there’s nothing brief & simple about it. Thanks for making it through!
Yes, Eileen. He’s a great writer.
You know you have a well deserved cheering section from the Moonwagoneers!
Thanks for the moral compass and the empathy and altruism missing today, but so important when we were young guys!
Andrew, this puts me in mind of a book I read several years ago now, The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty by Michael Katz, which examines our complex attitudes about who “deserves’ help and the social and political responses which have often been dysfunctional, never more so than in this time of ridiculous wealth disparities. Worth a re-visit.
I also am reflecting here on the book “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt, which some say romanticizes the deep and grinding poverty of Ireland in the 1930’s. Reading it closely you can see he confronts and takes to task the charitable Society of St. Vincent de Paul, organized of course to help needy individuals and families and accompanied with severe judgement and shaming, meant to motivate persons to “do better.” McCourt has some choice phrases that describe what that felt like, and the damage that lingered all his life.
Finally, here are the lyrics to that poignant Nanci Griffith song, which never fails to push me toward soul searching…and that is never a bad thing:
I once was a lot like you
We share a dream I couldn’t make come true
I was a child who wrote my name
Across a frosted window pane
And there are jobs that I might hold
If they’d just let me through the door
Without a shower and new clothes
That I can ill afford
Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I’m down ‘n’ out and I am lonely
Do you ever think of me on Sunday?
No I don’t live across the water
Hey, I live right here on this corner
I’m just a bank account away from America
I won’t hurt your family
I don’t want a house there on your street
And I know you think that I’m
As lazy as a Hobo’s sigh
Now, you call me down ‘n’ outer
If there’s a way out
I’ve not found ‘er
I only want to earn my piece of America
Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I’m down ‘n’ out and I am lonely
Do you ever think of me on Sunday?
No I don’t live across the water
Hey, I live right here on this corner
I’m just a bank account away from America
I’m just a bank account away from America
I’ve struggled with this issue for a long time now, going back and forth on whether to toss an occasional buck into a beggar’s cup. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, and I’m not even sure what determines that. Gut feeling, maybe. I’m still not sure how to manage it in the future, but you’ve given me lots to think about.
I pass out a couple bills to those less fortunate much less often than I would like. Your musing on a difficult subject will, I hereby resolve, encourage me to do more. For no rationally good reason other than it’s a Mitzvah. Reason enough, I reckon. Everyday is a struggle to break through the walls between myself and humanity at large. This can at least break through one wall.
A few years ago I was in San Francisco and walked out of a Walgreen’s on Market. Sitting on the street was a figure whose face was hidden by a hoodie. He held a sign which said, “Nothing Helps.” I regret I had no pocket change to give him. Sartre of the Streets, I imagined him. It sort of made my day.
Mary, you’ve reminded me of what a difficult read “Angela’s Ashes” was, and how I put it down more than once because I just needed a break. I think I may not even have finished it, so it baffles me how anyone can accuse Mr. McCourt of “romanticizing” poverty! And your brief point about wealth disparity piling on to the findings in the Katz book is but one of the matters I had to pass by in order not to make this post any longer than it was, so thanks for that, too.. Correlation may not be causation, but I have a hard time thinking that the absolute flood of indigents on our streets the past 30-40 years isn’t to a great extent attributable to the ever more “radical” wealth disparity growing from this era of upper class-favored tax policy and the proven fallacy of “trickle-down economics.”
Jonathan, interesting point about gut instinct maybe determining your “give or not to give” question. I didn’t even deal with the religious issues attending this matter, which are substantial AND substantive, but I might direct you to a minister’s blog that dealt well, I think, with the very question you pose, albeit from a religiously inspired frame. Thanks for wrestling along with this matter with me! https://pastorchriskennedy.com/2019/11/21/should-we-give-to-street-beggars/
Oh Andrew thank you for taking the time to share such, in my humble opinion, such obvious truths, and yet, and yet.
Brits refer to homelessness as “rough sleeping” which I find far more to the point than beggar or even panhandler. There’s Dickensian quality to it.
The plight of homelessness is one of the most taxing and complicated social issues facing our nation today. I don’t know the answer. I feel so limited. It seems my only option is to do the little things like your kind gesture toward the panhandler on that hot Durham afternoon.
Last year, when Claire and I traveled to Southern California to see our grandchildren (we’re at the age that our children have taken the back seat), a Starbuck’s barista who took our coffee and cappuccino order made an unprompted comment about a beggar sitting just outside her establishment. I’m paraphrasing now: “That homeless guy hurts our business. I wish we could just throw him out of here.” Claire looked at her and said, “Add a vente coffee and croissant to my order.” When we left, she hoped the barista would see him downing the coffee and devouring the croissant.
I truly appreciate your story regarding C.S. Lewis’s reasoning in emptying his pockets to enhance a beggar’s coffer. Our sacrifice in giving the beggar about eight dollars’ worth of subsistence? A slice of cheesecake at lunch!
Andrew, thank you so much for this thoughtful consideration of such a difficult issue. Your article will encourage me to feel more comfortable, giving money to people who are so less fortunate than I am.
The perfect sermon for this beautiful sabbath morning. My father taught me this principle of love thy neighbor at our dinner table recounting the “why” he gave money to beggars as he walked to lunch that day or another in downtown LA. My son has taught his children this principle by keeping ziplock bags in his car containg a bottle of water, cash, a gift card to a close by restaurant and cleansing wipes. Shell Silverstein encapsulated the beauty of a heart like yours in The Giving Tree. Be the Giving Tree. Be the loving neighbor. Lift another and you lift yourself.
Amen brother. I do the same.
Dennis, giving is such a complicated thing in general, especially when it comes to broad-based societal issues like how to deal with poverty, hunger, disease, our country’s place in the world. I think what most draws me to giving to beggars is its directness and simplicity—and none of my money going to credit card companies or the printing of 4-color mailers asking for money…Am also quite struck by your line, “Every day is a struggle to break through the walls between myself and humanity at large.” There’s a lot packed in there, which I will be thinking about for a while, thanks pal. (I think…).
Barbara, so glad you dropped in here, and yes, “such obvious truths, and yet, and yet” stands for far too many things we are not accomplishing on most every level of society. But then I remember: We are young yet, this consciousness thing is a heavy load, and most folk are doing the best we can. Inch by inch is probably the most we can expect, so: Onwards!
Robert, your mention of being relegated (along with 8 billion of your fellow humans) to doing only little things to heal the world brought to mind a quote that’s attributed to Mother Teresa but turns out to be fake, which is too bad because it’s a beautiful sentiment, no matter who concocted it: “In this life we cannot always do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” So carry on there, Brother…
Henry, glad to be of that kind of service! Like a lot of things, giving in this way gets easier the more you do it. Thanks for dropping in here to let me know.
Sydney, I love hearing how practices of generosity percolate down through the generations, of which I count four in your anecdote (and counting…). Mazel tov! And the idea of carrying food goodies for dispersal is a fine addition or alternative to giving money—I have friends who carry granola bars in their glove compartment to hand out on demand, so to speak.
Miryam, I’m glad (and not surprised) to hear you do the same—yours is among the noblest traditions of helping those in need, and one thing we know for certain is that the need is great in all times and places.
What a beautiful way of explaining your point of view Andrew. Have you considered giving away food, coffee or beverages or blankets to the beggars. I know people (including us) who give new sleeping bags, fresh fruit from their trees, granola bars, a cup of hot chocolate or coffee, or a cold bottle of juice. I also give little soaps and shampoos. In some ways it feels human — like a gift among peers/neighbors.
Hi Joan, have considered doing most all of those, have done some but only sporadically, focusing more on just small cash outlays and annual gifts to relief orgs. A combination of time efficiency and laziness on my part, I suspect. They’re all fine variations on a fine theme, and I like the thought of millions of different people pursuing all these different avenues, not even to mention the huge role played by charities—how dire would our situation be without them?
Just took a late night walk here and listening in on Washington Week in Review I heard the number “$4 million” for EACH of the hundreds of Patriot missiles we have fired off in the Iran War. And that’s just the defensive end of things, shooting down incoming Iranian missiles. Our offensive ballistic missiles are a whole other story—and other line item, too. Utter madness…