Should we donate to charities instead of panhandlers?
The dog sat still for so long that I initially thought it was not a live creature. A blanket covered its head from a pelting rain and biting wind.
The dog’s owner stood near a stop sign at an intersection just off U.S. 30 in Valparaiso, bundled from the cold while surrounded by a pile of his belongings. He held up a handwritten cardboard sign to passing motorists asking for money for “dog food.”
My immediate thought: using a dog is a clever gimmick. People will drive by street corner panhandlers without a second thought while sipping a pricey latte or gobbling down an overpriced chicken sandwich. But panhandling with a sad-looking dog in a rainstorm? I parked my car for a few minutes to watch the responses.
Full confession: not once did I consider giving money to either the man or his dog. My attitude may sound overly harsh or smartly suspicious, depending on your experiences. Most of us are not sure if we should give money to people asking for money or if we should give up trying to figure out if the person is legitimate or not. And all in a matter of seconds.
Either you take it at face value and make a decision to give or not give your money to a stranger in this situation. Or you start dissecting their appearance, their needs, their motives and their sign’s plausibility. At this point of our inner dialogue, it says more about us than about them. Maybe this is why I’ve long been intrigued by people in these humbling circumstances. My fascination isn’t about them, but about the rest of us.
“If your purpose is to assuage your feelings of guilt for having comforts they do not, and you don’t care about being part of a codependent system, I could understand giving cash on the street,” said a former executive director of homeless shelters in our area. “If your purpose is doing good for others, your money would go a lot further, and buy more meals or bed-nights if given to a good charity.”
His professional perspective comes from three decades in the field of homelessness and its related problems in our society. It’s a tough industry to work in. I’ve written about homeless
shelter directors with similar viewpoints about offering financial assistance to this population of people. It’s impossible to miss them, in most every community, if you don’t allow them to become invisible.
It’s easier to ignore this social problem in cities like Valparaiso, where I live. It’s not as easy in bigger cities, such as Gary or Chicago, where homelessness is more conspicuous, more in your face. You can’t visit Chicago without being confronted with someone asking or begging for your spare cash, whether it’s through verbal chatter, an empty cup or a hand-scrawled poster.
“I’D GIVE ME MONEY IF I WERE IN YOUR POSITION,” sighed a sign propped up next to an older man on Michigan Avenue in Chicago when I visited the city last month.
It made me stop to pause for a second. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Was it just another gimmick by a slick panhandler or a lofty philosophical quandary to society?
A few years ago I was in Chicago at Christmastime with $100 in my pocket earmarked for someone in need. I had no idea who that someone would be until I got there. I found myself studying those people on the street who were asking for money. How they looked. How they acted. How they responded to receiving anything from passersby.
My judgmental thought process was no way to show a charitable spirit at Christmastime or any other time. It made me only more skeptical with more scrutiny of people in less fortunate situations. Either you give instinctively or you don’t. It should be from the heart, not the head.
On Christmas Eve 2015, I spoke with a woman standing in a blustery wind with a handmade sign: SINGLE MOTHER OF TWO LOST JOB, STRUG GLING, NEED HELP WITH RENT AND XMASS, PLEASE AND THANK YOU, GOD BLESS. She stood outside a grocery store in Chesterton as hundreds of vehicles passed.
Most motorists slowed down to read her sign or sped up to avoid any eye contact. This is what we often do in such situations.
Only a few people gave her money or gifted her with kind words, she said. With Thanksgiving this week, and the “season for giving ” holidays soon upon us, we’ll be confronted with similar dilemmas. What should we do?
“I believe giving is between me and my maker, and what they do with it is between them and their maker,” said Jeanette Hamilton, a reader who commented on my Facebook post about this topic.
This is likely the way to go. Otherwise, our nature is as conspicuous as that guy with his dog in Valparaiso. Within 10 minutes, I watched four motorists stop to give him money. One of them got out of their car to pet the pooch.
What would happen if no one gave to panhandlers but gave the same amount to reputable charities serving those people experiencing homelessness or related problems? This premise is contrary to how most people interpret these situations.
Those panhandlers might turn to agencies to get their needs met and those agencies will offer permanent solutions that could help people change their lives, according to the former homeless shelter director.
“They might stop doing this psychologically unhealthy behavior,” he said. “I want my donations to contribute to the health and wholeness of the recipients. It should have a positive impact on the recipient and encouraging a panhandling way of life is not a positive impact. Donating to a good charity or giving food and a kind word, is a better way to go.”