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Your best bet - and investment - is to visit homeless shelters until you find one that is run well and does a good job. Then support that shelter financially.
I live in a city (Portland Oregon) with the highest homeless rate in the country (per the paper yesterday), a massive meth problem, and one of the most generous options for the destitute in the country. It's a major civic problem, from crime (thefts), reduction in spending (no one wants to get hassled by bums so they go elsewhere), and drains on tax revenue. I think there are a great numbers of other external problems associated with it, but just the type of people are variable.
I think panhandlers really fall into 3 sorts of people. You have the addicts and mentally ill who refuse to take meds, the next set are the lazy jerks, and the last set (usually the smallest) are the people who really are destitute but have no one to fall back on. The first two groups I would never hand a dollar too, if you get yourself in that kind of trouble and want to stay there it's your own option. These people don't want food, my wife has tried to give them food and been screamed at...they want money for substance abuse. I personally think the world would be better off if thier lives led to the inevitable conclusion as fast as possible. I've known more then a dozen people in my life, including people who were close friends and family, this catagory would include.
The last group I wish the money for the homeless would go to and get them up and out of the streets and back into real lives.
There will always be people who will be disinclined to carry whatever you define as their own weight. There will always be people who will be reliant on whatever substance is in vogue.
As always, society is faced with a choice: Simply enduring them as a part of our social scenery, or paying the cost of ameliorating their circumstances, or just killing or incarcerating them in dungeons of indignity.
There is an interesting dichotomy. Many of the destitute are substance abusers. Our overall economy pays for everything it consumes, including drugs. The war on drugs simply escalates that cost, which we all finally have to pay in the end.
Jews believe there are different levels of tzedakah (charity) and the last is to give grudgingly. I think any charity should be given free from expectation. If you are moved to give, then give. If not, then don't. But to make excuses for why you did or did not give to soemone makes no sense because when it comes down to it, you never know what that act of giving will lead to. IMO, making excuses for why you didn't give to someone ("They will probably use it for drugs", "they don't look like they need it", etc.) is just that, and excuse to make one feel better for not giving. You are not obligated to give to anyone, but then that is a choice you shoudl make based on your own intention, not that of others.
I started to say something about those people that have the signs "Will Work For Food". They get all kinds of bent out of shape if you give them food.
Oh yeah, or the gas scam is always popular. One person approached my friend and I at the gas station and gave us this sob story about breakdown out of gas a few blocks away and needed money for gas (and had a gas can). My friend, a softy and holding the gas nozzle, said give it here I'll pump in a gallon. The guy went berserk with flinging his arms around and screamed "I don't want no Fing gas, I want the Fing money you fing idiots" and stomped off.
Oh yeah, or the gas scam is always popular. One person approached my friend and I at the gas station and gave us this sob story about breakdown out of gas a few blocks away and needed money for gas (and had a gas can). My friend, a softy and holding the gas nozzle, said give it here I'll pump in a gallon. The guy went berserk with flinging his arms around and screamed "I don't want no Fing gas, I want the Fing money you fing idiots" and stomped off.
Sounds like Gas Can Man should have received a beat down.
I just kick them in the head and laugh.These vermin are, of course, of no worth; and every last one of them is lying about the hard times. They actually live in mansions on the hill and are flown via personal Leer jet to their 'workplaces' around the country. I learned that one man, who had no arms or legs and was begging for a quarter from me, and who told me he had lost all appendages in the war, actually had a fellow panhandler saw them off the week prior. This deplorable swill is supported by the weak, pathetic, bleeding hearts who are willing to propagate their conspiracy against all of the rest of us white hats.
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