Homeless

There are pan handlers here. Lots of them. Now that it is warmer it seems like there are more and more at the major light intersections. Some signs are simple with an, "Anything Helps". Others go into more detail, "Need money for groceries, hungry kids". I rarely have change, but when I do, I always give. Always. The woman with the sign for groceries, I have given every dollar and cent I had in my purse and wished I had more or had just come from the grocery store.

It seems like people here are pretty generous. I almost always see at least one car roll down their window and pass something out. This warms my heart more than I can tell you. I like to imagine the people in the other cars just don't have anything today. That they still offer eye contact and a smile. Some compassionate act that acknowledges that the person on the street is there. Is human.

But. I admit that when we moved here I was torn as to what was the appropriate thing to do. I was always of the mindset to support shelters, not pan handlers. In the happy valley of Utah, I don't think I once saw someone asking for change. In those years, I rarely had money to give, so I would send blankets and coats, spend my time when I could find someone to watch the girls.

Being here, it quickly became a moral dilemma for me. To give or not to give? Does giving just contribute to the cyclic nature of homelessness? A friend on FB posted this article and these paragraphs at the end have pretty much given voice to my inner dilemma:

While we are on this subject – everyone is always concerned about what people will do with the money we give them. Yet we don’t do this in any other part of our life. If you give me a sweater for Christmas and I take it back to the store and get a toaster instead, you don’t get mad – it was a gift and is mine to do with as I please. And yet…

Give a homeless man a dollar and we worry about what he will do with it. Will he use it wisely? Buy drugs? Spend it on cigarettes? A gift is a gift – period. If I gave you a Target gift card for Christmas and said “Don’t buy any sweets with it, because you need to lose weight”, you wouldn’t feel loved, or respected or even very human. And could we really call that a gift? Once restrictions are placed on a gift, it becomes less than a gift – it becomes a means by which you control the other person.

It shouldn't and doesn't matter to me what they do with the change I give them. What matters to me is that I am giving what I can. So I'm going to give. Right now with the temps rising, it's bottles of water and a smile if I don't have change.


I hope my girls grow up with this and see that you don't have to have money to do something. You give what you have to give, be it time, money, talent, or a smile and wave. I don't know if they will remember the hats for haiti or the pillowcase dresses. If seeing me knit the hats and scarves for the homeless here will be a memory they recall...and I don't mind if it's not. I want them to grow up with a sense of selflessness and community.


What I want them to know and understand is that we are charitable not because we are expected to or accountable to someone to be, but that we give what we have because we can. Because we have more than enough. We give because it is the right thing to do.