What to Do When a Homeless Person Approaches
The holidays are “that time of year” for a good many things — family time, pumpkin spice lattes, and ridding yourself of all that pesky money, for example. But there is another phenomenon associated with the holiday season that we don’t seem to talk about much (if at all).
Homeless people.
Now, there is a bit of nuance here. Technically, those people asking you for money don’t have to be homeless. It would be more accurate to call them panhandlers, regardless of where they live. As in holding out a pan by its handle so people can drop their loose change into it.
Panhandling v. Homeless
Panhandlers can have a home, a car (or cars), shoes, clothes, and all the rest of it. A homeless person’s possessions, however, would generally be limited to what they can carry. This is why shopping carts are seen so often, as they provide a durable and effective means of easily transporting one’s net worth around.
In my experience, the homeless tend to be more grateful and humble than the panhandler, assuming you treat them like a human being. Panhandlers are usually dealing with some shit, whereas homeless people have generally dealt with some shit.
Understand that there are no hard rules here, and each person is in fact their own person, and…
