[Apologies to Dire Straits]

I see a homeless person [mostly the same two men and one woman] at a freeway off-ramp almost every day. They don’t get a donation from every single group of cars waiting for the stoplight, but they occasionally get a $5, and I have seen a $20 on at least one occasion. If I assume $1 per group of cars, that could easily be $20-$30 an hour.

I have seen two of these “regulars” at our civic library, ‘reading’ a magazine, usually fast asleep. I have also seen them walking around the downtown area, as much as two miles away from my usual freeway exit. Frankly, they appear to be in awful health, with posture, gait, and facial expressions that suggest significant mental disease in addition to significant physical problems.

I understand that these people, the chronically homeless, make up less than 10% of the homeless population, and that the other 90% of America’s homeless remain homeless for two months, the vast majority of those less than three weeks. This tells me that people, even when given extreme circumstances, generally get back on their feet, and seek better lives for themselves. This article is not about those people, but about the 10% that remain homeless for extended periods.

This article is also about the seemingly noble, but downright awful behavior of those who actually give cash, food, or other assistance to these people. This thoughtless act is one of those rare occasions where assisting a stranger is actually harmful to them and society.

We make economic ‘votes’ with our money, whether buying milk instead of orange juice at the market, or platinum instead of gold at the jewelry store. When we do this, we support that industry, and the business owners, investors, and workers. Your donation to a homeless person ’supports the homeless’. That is, enables someone to remain homeless for a longer period of time.

In the city where I regularly see panhandling, I myself know of at least three places withing walking distance, where the homeless can get food, shelter, and even assistance to rebuild their lives.  However, I believe that they all forbid alcohol and drugs, and so many refuse their services.  And these are merely charitable, private organizations – I haven’t even counted the government resources.

While working on this article, I caught a Drudge Report link on a professional panhandler. But I didn’t save the link, so I had to relocate it. The amazing thing was that it wasn’t an isolated incident.  I saw another report on the same topic, from another area of the country.  And this didn’t count my faint recall of an L.A. Times story on the same subject, where a reporter posed as a homeless man, collecting over $200 a day (and when I was substitute teaching for $70 a day, I actually considered it!)

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/84523.html (Salt Lake City)

http://www.wlwt.com/target5/4449617/detail.html (Cinncinati)

Before calling me an evil person, consider your alternative to flipping a vagrant a $5 bill. I will maintain to you that a donation to a homelessness relief organization will do far more to helping a homeless person get off the street, compared to your giving money to someone who may actually be functional, but most likely will use that dollar to purchase alcohol or drugs before using it on food or shelter. You are harming them by allowing that to continue.  Rather than giving somewhere that ‘fights homelessness’, you are helping someone stay homeless.

This is not about ‘opportunity’, or ‘jobs’.  Your government or public officials can’t make that, anyways.  This is about dealing with a class of people that is either unable or unwilling to properly care for themselves.  This isn’t about ‘appearances’, or expressing one’s right to live as they choose.  On a daily basis, these people intrude on the lives of others.  Again, this assumes they are not frauds.

I talked with a fellow who worked as a limousine driver. At night, he would give the half-full bottles of alcohol to a local group of homeless, not considering the consequences. In his words, the police approached him once, and told him to stop giving it away, especially the ‘hard stuff’. They were used to drinking wine and beer, and an extra fifth of scotch on top of that might have killed one, and sent others to the hospital.

While in Santa Monica, one of my friends wanted to pay a homeless man money because he had a (well groomed and friendly) dog. I asked her – you want to give money to someone who would require such an animal to live without proper food and shelter? You support a guy who chooses for that dog to live like that?  He’s a cruel and mean person.  He could ask at any pet store, and get in contact with a half dozen no-kill dog shelters, and could give that dog a good life.

So what to do about these folks?  Assuming that they are not frauds, like the references above indicate, I believe that they should be considered a public danger (at least to themselves, if not others) and detained.  Whether you believe this should be governmental or charitable,  society should be able to lock these people up until such time that they can care for themselves.  In this case, civil libertarians be damned.

If you are one of those who believe that people have the right to be homeless, and also the right to live by panhandling, then consider the consequences, so apparent in “Skid Row” areas.  The residents there have to deal with streets lined with vomit and excrement, and cannot travel freely without fear of being assaulted, or at least interrupted, by vagrants.  Parks are unusable by children.  Business activity is crippled.  I am a libertarian, but only to the extant that personal rights end at someone else’s personal rights.  The existence of homeless is simply not acceptable in a free society, even at the expense of the homeless themselves.