GD, you could always put your regulars on auto-pay.

Or just transfer funds to their PayPal account on your cell phone, which they can verify on their cell phone.

I've begun a non-profit to distribute Square dongles (I happen to know their payments processor) to the homeless.

As soon as they all get iPads they'll be good to go.

From what I understand, the combination of an increasingly cashless society and, ya know, global financial collapse, has really hit panhandlers hard.

Even before that, problems arose just from the propensity of all cash to be in the form of (ATM-dispensed) twenty dollar bills. In fact, one local beach town (Redondo or Hermosa i believe) installed change machines on the streets just so people could exchange their 20's for smaller bills to give to beggars.


Personally, something has to hit me about a particular beggar. It's not whether they have a cool sign, or an entertaining bit, or even whether they look particularly pathetic. It's really indefinable. And I'd say it rarely happens.

When I'm out of town, however, I tend to give more freely. I guess since I'm pumping up the local economy in ways I never do at home, I feel it's only fair to spread it around to the lower rungs as well. (If there's bad weather where I find myself, and beggars abound *cough*sanfrancisco*cough*, I am pretty damn generous with my cash).


But at home, not only am I more stingy - I rarely carry more than a few dollars in cash at all.


Oh, and it will never leave me that - back in the day - my panhandler friends in Hollywood took home more money than I did from my full-time record store job. So my default position on beggars is NO.

I don't carry cash on me when I'm walking dogs and that's when I mostly get hit up. However, I seem to carry around a lot of cash in general since I get paid cash often or get cash tips and don't make it to the CU very often.

I used to only give when traveling on the premise that it would keep the homeless abroad. I hate being approached in drive throughs & store fronts so never give in those situations. The long stories bore me, and I never believe them. If someone were honest and said they wanted to spend the money on beer and pussy, I'd probably support their cause - any reference to God and I shut down though.

Street musicians and entertainers are a different sort to me, I see busking as a job and support it accordingly.

Word of the day: busking
I have heard of all of the other terms for such activity, except buskers. Cool.

Yeah, I only give to street musicians. If they are adding pleasantly to the atmosphere, I think they earned it. There's a rotating cast of guitar, steel drum, and keyboard players at our farmer's market, and I nearly always pay them. It just wouldn't be as fun there without live music.

I don't give to panhandlers simply because I don't think it helps them at all. As you guys say, sometimes one will appeal to me for some unknown reason, but that's very rare. Sure, they would be happy for a minute or an evening, but I think it's enabling. Giving money to causes that work on homelessness itself is ten times as useful. Better yet, support public policies that help provide mental health services for everyone!

On the macro scale - I tend to not give to organizations that help the homeless, rather I tend to donate to those charitable organizations that my friends belong to or support. Most of my charitable giving is directed to arts & culture non-profits.