Misadventures in the city
By Beth Connors-Manke
Recently, a friend sat on a panel about homelessness and was dismayed by the audience’s questions. While he and the other panelists discussed the structural issues related to homelessness, it seemed the audience mainly wanted to know if they should give 50 cents when panhandled on the street. Having seen individuals fixate on the “50 cents question” before, I’d like to give my own blunt response to that query.
First, panhandling and homelessness are not synonymous. Many people ask for money on the street, and not all of them are without homes. A case in point: one night as I and friends were making our way out of a local watering hole, a man approached us asking for money. We said “no”; he then talked to us at length about the political threat Japan poses. We listened, one friend debated him for a moment (the argument about Japan didn’t hold water), and we eventually motioned to leave by saying, “See ya. Stay warm, man.” This was a very cold day last winter, and everyone had been telling each other to stay warm ad nauseam. But he felt affronted. Our anti-Japan interlocutor thought we were implying that he was homeless. “Hey,” he said, “I got a home, don’t you say that I ain’t got a home, man. I’m not homeless.”
Second, you might be having a moral dilemma about it, but it probably doesn’t matter whether you give the panhandler those 50 cents. You should just get over your guilt or discomfort and move on with your day.
But let’s say your angst about the 50 cents is really getting to you; let’s say you think it matters whether you pull the change out of your pocket. Ok then, try this: every morning put 50 cents into your pocket with the intention of giving it away to the first person who asks for it. When you get approached, if the situation is safe for you, give the money away without a thought and move on. Guilt absolved.
After you do this for a while, I bet (if you’re a thinking person) that you start to wonder: why are so many people asking me for money?
Since you were willing to try this experiment in generosity, I’ll assume your first answer won’t be “they’re lazy, and they should go get a job right after they take a bath”—which is what Newt Gingrich would say. You might start to pay more attention to the faces of the people who ask for money, their tone of voice when they speak to you, the clothes they’re wearing. In other words, you might start to notice them. You’ll probably begin to see that they’re down on their luck.
Continuing with your experiment, you keep shelling out the coins until one day you wonder: why are there so many people so down on their luck?
This isn’t a question you’ll be able to answer by looking more closely at Joe or Sandra when they ask for bus fare. Or by Clark when he asks for money for a burger. Or Reggie when he needs his next 40 to make it through the day. Now, you’ve got to look at the bigger picture, a picture certainly bigger than your 50 cents.
There are systemic causes for poverty and its worst manifestation, homelessness. Those causes have to do with generational poverty, lack of access to good education, health care, and healthy food, and economic inequities (which are being exacerbated by austerity measures and Tea Party ideology)—all of which take a psychic toll and can push a person into addiction and mental health disorders. I’m not going to belabor this point because I think you really already know this and really aren’t that concerned. If you were, you wouldn’t have been trifling over 50 cents.
But let’s say your experiment in generosity did change you a bit. Maybe you’d rather see poverty addressed in a way that can change the system or at least change some families’ lives for the better. Here are some things you can do:
First, support the work of the Salvation Army, Lexington Rescue Mission, Lighthouse Ministries, the Catholic Action Center, and other organizations that directly serve those experiencing poverty and homelessness. Support with time, support with money.
Second, advocate for an Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) to help ensure that everyone has safe, decent, and affordable housing. You can do this by telling your councilmembers that you’d be willing to pay an estimated average of $15 a year to support an AHTF. (You’ve already given away that much on the street in your 50-cent experiment.)
Finally, oppose city ordinances that criminalize homelessness and target groups that serve those experiencing homelessness, like the proposed nuisance ordinance being used to address tensions around the Catholic Action Center.
So it’s not always true that giving a panhandler 50 cents doesn’t matter—maybe the 50 cents you give to Sandra allows her to catch the bus for a job interview; maybe the day she asks for money, you really need to connect with another human being. Those things matter, but the bigger things—the advocacy, the service—make the bigger difference.
Leave a Reply