Whats sad to me is, if we knew that homeless people could get help and be taken care of, we'd know not to give things to people like this. But since society has decided to not put resources towards it, we can't make assumptions like that.
> we know that a normal citizen would never
That took a dark turn quickly.
> we know that a normal citizen would never need
In other words, when you can trust your society to take care of its residents, you can be almost certain the beggars are scam artists.
The stipulations for receiving aid are fairly light, so I think the viewpoint may be that if you aren't receiving assistance, you aren't willing to play by the simple rules they have.
Of course, this is someone from the US speaking, and basing this on my conversations with people from Finland from 10-20 years ago...
One dude pretending to be crippled is much less socially destructive than an asset-stripping hedge fund which loads up multiple viable businesses with debt and then kills them.
The difference is the former is still relatively powerless, while the latter can be responsible for multiple instances of homelessness.
So it's not a question of "help" - it's about making sure that homelessness is an absolutely exceptional situation, not the systemic default for anyone who finds themselves on the wrong end of the value creation process. As well as the mentally ill.