Giving $50 pre-paid cards to the homeless and tracking purchases | Hacker News Reader

Giving $50 pre-paid cards to the homeless and tracking purchases

thestar.com

23 pointschrisacky10 comments

What a lovely idea, just goes to show that homelessness is not all down to drink and drugs as people believe. I know as had some wonderful conversations with homless people myself and very easy thru no fault of your own to get into such a situation.

Two out of the five cards did have a substantial percentage of the balance spent on alcohol. LCBO stands for "Liquor Control Board of Ontario". According to Wikipedia, "LCBO stores are generally the only stores allowed to sell distilled spirits in Ontario." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor_Control_Board_of_Ontari...

    300.00  initial total
     50.00  card unreturned, unused 
     66.26  returned unspent
     55.28  food
     74.61  food, phone minutes ($15) and cigarettes
     53.85  LCBO: Liquor Control Board of Ontario

Finding out what that unexplained acronym meant made a big difference to my understanding of the story.

Agree that it's a really nice idea. It's amazing to see how each person reacted. It's so sad to see that not everyone is on the streets cos of drink and drugs.

Last time I checked, drug dealers only accept cash or valuable goods. Drug dealer would definitely get a good life though.

This is a great way to test the assumptions many people make about the homeless. I can imagine this being the start of an awesome non-profit. Donate to the homeless with transparency with what they do with your money. The service could also report on the population as a whole and segment by interesting factors to look for ways to maximize the impact of the money given.

Since money is fungible, I see it fairly easy to game the system. (Spend actual cash on drugs, buy necessities to trade for cash or drugs, etc )

There was recently an article on HN [1] that explained how Tide laundry detergent had become a form of money in some U.S. cities. It can be bought with welfare checks and exchanged for drugs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5023204

In Vancouver a restaurant has a token program that seems to be working well.

http://saveonmeats.ca/sandwich-token-program/

(2010)

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