Spare A Dime?
A new study says panhandlers make as much as $40/hr., have substance abuse problems and are not homeless. Who knew?
Do you give money to panhandlers? Squeegee kids?
Use this bonus code to pad your Jack Nation account: panhandle
Cheers,
Mike
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
NO - NO - NO
Mike, your comment reminds me of the story of the woman who panhandled on Bay near Front street. It was brought to light that she had a nice apartment and drove a Cadillac or some other expensive car.
I donate to Sally Ann (Salvation Army), The Food Bank and many other worthwhile foundations. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound cruel, but if they want a free handout, it won’t be from me.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 am
I’ve given money to those playing pleasing music (congas, bagpipes…) but my eye-opening experience was in the seventies when a guy wanted “money for food.”
He didn’t say “homeless” - I asked him to join me for a sandwich and talked to him about his life. I bought an extra sandwich to go after half an hour and we stepped out to see his life and his wife in a squalid run-down motel.
Yeah, he supported his favourite heroine addict. I felt the pain - he wasn’t an addict, they could do better. She was way out of control. He showed her his take from the morning rush hour - the morning was enough to pay for the room for another night. Looking at it he probably collected more than I made in a day at the time… but the problems were way out of scale with anything I faced.
I did leave them with some money, and left feeling conflicted and hoping to this day it wasn’t so much that she OD’d…
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Years ago, my sister used to know some ‘kids’ who panhandled. They lived in nice middle class homes. The reason they pan handled? They told her they could make more money than with a real job. Sad eh? It makes me mad when I go downtown and someone is hounding me for money when they have a pair of Docs on that cost more than my shoes or their hair is coloured bright pink, or purple, or whatever. If you have no money, how can you afford to colour your hair?!
October 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
40 bucks an hour? let’s hit the road…
October 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I used to but I don’t anymore. When I moved to Toronto there was this one lady that I used to drop change to in particular and then one day when I was in the store across the street from her usual panhandling spot she walked in; so I watched. She pulled out a couple $20. bills and bought a poop load of scratch tickets; yet here I am doing my best to budget just to get by and couldn’t/can’t afford to waste money like that and I was giving her change because I thought she “needed” it. After she left I got into a conversation with the guy behind the counter and he told me that she does this three or four times a day and most of the other panhandlers in the area are exactly the same. So I stopped giving them money.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
If someone comes up to me and asks for money for whatever reason I do not give it to them. Why? Because they can easily get a job. Even a low paying one, they don’t do anything all day anyway. I like to have fun sometimes, like when a person came up to me and said “hey can I have some money, I am saving up for a sandwich” I reply with “I can’t because I am saving up for a new car.” Or another time some poor person asked me for money and I told him “I will give you a thousand bucks when I get back from Boston. He asks “when are you coming back from Boston?” to which I replied “I never plan on going.”
However, if the person works for the money (like wash my window) then he deserves it, even though he may do a mediocre job he is at least trying.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Yes I do.
As a matter of fact I gave a bunch of change to this guy on the Buffalo side of the border and had no change for the toll going back to Canada !!! LOL