Can Your Spare A Dollar? I Need Some Gas Cuz I'm Driving To Indiana And My Car Broke Down On The Freeway And My Wife And Kids Are Still Back In The Car; How Bout Fifty Cents? Come On! A Quarter?
By Sam Bakken in News on Apr 27, 2005 8:46PM
We admit it, we give money to panhandlers. But we like to think of it as "tipping" the homeless. They're usually colorful characters and put on quite a show.
City officials, police and business owners in Evanston, however, are taking a different approach to panhandling. They're not going after the panhandlers themselves but passing out posters to store owners and flyers to shoppers encouraging them to donate to or volunteer at social service agencies dedicated to the homeless instead of giving them change. In Evanston panhandling is not illegal, but, like in Chicago, you can't do it aggressively (shouting, blocking a walkway or touching) or at outdoor cafes, near bus and train stops or ATMs.
It seems like a good idea overall, because you'd hate to think what you thought was a helpful donation to a vagrant is actually keeping them where they are. But the thing about giving money to a panhandler is that they're right there, you've got change and, misguided or not, you feel like you've helped someone out when you do it. It's a bit of no-effort philanthropy. The process of volunteering or writing a check and putting it in the mail takes too long. We think that along with the posters, officials should have passed out jars labeled, "Spare Change?". Then people can throw their pocket change in, and businesses could hand those donations over to the proper agencies.
We like the Tribune's poll about the issue:
POLL
What do you do when you see a panhandler?
-Give some money
-Give only advice
-Just walk by
-Cross the street
-Give to charity later
At press time, out of 5025 responses only 59 were for "Give only advice". What knowledge are these people dropping on our vagrant brethren? It must be, "Stop being homeless," or more like, "Get ahold of yourself," or maybe, "You should stop drinking, have a shower, get a job and rent an apartment." Do you ever give advice to the panhandlers? What do you say?