Thanks for saying this. The homeless and the poor are human beings and should not be demonized for having the niceties that make anyone's life more joyful. (Kansas, I'm not so sure you're doing it right [1].)
I once read about and have since admired a very enlightened approach to this, in the UK: when measuring the average cost of living in addition to things like food and shelter they will also include the money that a household would need to take a one-week vacation.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/06/ka...
Pretty standard (Western) Europe welfare model afaik. Here in the Netherlands it's called 'vacation money', and if you don't have a job and can show you're applying for one, you'll get a minimum wage income and vacation money is indeed included in that as a bonus once a year.
> the poor are human beings and should not be demonized for having the niceties
Absolutely, but you mentioned the UK. I visited the Emmaus centre in Cambridge a few years ago, all the lads there (ex homeless often for more than a decade) told me to never give money because buying alcohol isn't just 'nice', it's a disease that destroys people and there are alternative solutions. They all lived that life.
I'm not going to say 'don't give', but if you somehow know for certain it's spent on alcohol, I definitely would say don't give. At least, taking it from ex homeless guys who still struggle with alcoholism and the life they live now at Emmaus.
Perhaps it's different in various shitholes in the world where there is nothing to rely on, I can imagine alcohol being a sensible temporary relief, but in cities with capacity for homelessness issues, it's not a good choice. And if you look at Europe for example, you'll find that e.g. the Council of Europe has ruled various times now that not just citizens, but also refugees, all of them, without fail, are to be provided a minimum of shelter, food and clothes.
Not saying it's a perfect situation, far from it, and sadly professional homelessness relief still relies way too heavily on charity and voluntarism, but in many cities giving money for alcohol is simple not the best thing to do at best, and harmful at worst.
Then again, I just moved to New York, and I'm naturally biased towards interpretations that match my recent personal experience.
Although I hate that term, because it's bad enough that we're already divided by class in this country, and now we have to impose our own classes on the homeless?
Panhandlers in major cities are at low risk of not having food available to them. The idea of the 'starving homeless' is another counterfactual myth, just as much as the 'deserving homeless'--but if it really concerns you, there are far more directly expedient ways of helping them than giving away money. Services and shelters for the homeless are pretty terrible, but I've never heard anyone credible say that these services are worse than the shortsighted, feel-good solution of giving people money they are fundamentally incapable of spending correctly.
By contrast, it is common for the homeless to die of exposure--not because they had no shelter available, but because they are mentally ill and fell into a pattern of denying it to themselves, even on the coldest days.
By all means, give money to shelters etc. But why not also give money to homeless people? The two are not mutually exclusive. You are repeating the usual mean-spirited argument that we shouldn't give homeless people money because they might spend it on things we don't approve of. But so what? It's their life, not ours. Charity with strings attached isn't charity.
I find it a useful exercise to imagine applying the same logic in dealing with comfortably well-off middle class people. If such a person has an alcohol problem, the usual reaction amongst reasonably enlightened people is to try to find that person help. We don't try to cut off all of their sources of income on the grounds that they'll just spend it all on booze. Now, perhaps some of them will spend all of their income on booze, but since we aren't so much in the habit of completely dehumanizing them, we recognize that this is still their choice to make.
The bottom line here is that drug and alcohol habits don't cost infinite amounts of money. You can perfectly well spend some of your money on drugs and the rest on food, etc. Unless you have some kind of moral objection to people using drugs, why should you care if a homeless person is spending some of their money that way? It's judgmental and mean to refuse them money because you suspect that they might be going to do this.
If you are absolutely sure that you know what's best for homeless people, and that they don't, then don't give them your money. Personally, I am not so sure.
Where you lose people is telling other people that they're wrong to give cash to homeless people.
What's worse is, this thread kicked off with someone laying out in very simple terms --- terms you didn't really address --- the logic behind giving money on the street despite not knowing the purposes to which the money would be put.
You can argue however you want, including that people are wrong to give money on the street, and that it's not OK for them to give to homeless people or buy ferrets or whatever. But you shouldn't act hurt when people argue back at you.
Why not? We encourage other people to do things all the time. I certainly encourage people to vaccinate their kids. Donating money to people who will immediately spend it on substance abuse is harmful to them. You're making yourself feel better about how you're SUCH a compassionate person at their long-term expense.
I laugh at people going, "b-b-but they're still human!!!" Like, do you donate cash on the street to non-homeless/non-panhandlers too? Yeah they're still human, why does that mean it's bad if I think about what they'll use my money for before >>donating<< it? Now if they want to earn money by working for me in some capacity, sure, they can spend it however they want. That's a completely different type of transaction.
We're not talking about Pareto-optimal market transactions here; the externalities are the point of giving money away or not giving money away. So it's an interesting position, telling me I am "wrong" for being concerned about whether one is purposefully helping or harming others. It's probably a good thing that most of the world does not share your interesting perspective.
Something my wife and I have been mulling lately is the concept of "grace." She has concluded that means being able to be generous to people who don't necessarily deserve it. I'm not quite there yet but I'm trying to get there.
Even the parking meters here have stickers with numbers on them and you use an app (Hotspot) to add money to that meters, although you can still use change of course.
Elderly people are the only people I know of who use coins and cash.
i don't judge them at all because i (we all) have the same vices just in less debilitating incarnations, but at the end of the day... well, i don't hand out cash to non-homeless strangers either.