Panhandling: The Moral Dilemma

My whole life I’ve been aware of the homeless among us. I remember like it was yesterday driving with my parents in downtown New Orleans and going down Camp Street, which was the city’s Skid Row at the time. I was about 11 or 12 and I remember looking out the window in wide-eyed fascination at the broken bottles and litter on the sidewalks, the abandoned buildings, but most of all, the people lined up at the Ozanam Inn, the one and only homeless shelter run by a Catholic order, I forget which one. This was before the days when drug addiction and crack cocaine and meth were widespread or even known about to any extent. The hapless men lying on the sidewalks were all, it was presumed, alcoholics down on their luck, “bums” as people called them. I wondered how people and places like this could exist in my tidy, childlike middle class suburban universe. My world was a place where respectable houses and neat lawns and front yards lined the streets, overhung with shady oak trees. On Camp Street I felt like I was looking out on an alien world, a place I couldn’t comprehend and thus feared.

The memories of that street have stayed with me over the decades, but as I moved on in my life and careers, I lived and worked in smaller towns and cities and didn’t notice the problems that festered in bigger cities. Even in Columbia in the 1970s, I wasn’t too aware of it, even though there was a large shelter downtown.

When I was in junior high and high school more than 50 years ago, I’d go shopping on New Orleans’ famed, wide and teeming main thoroughfare, Canal Street. It was a fascinating time and place to wander the streets of a big city, and on Canal Street there were huge department stores and dime stores, air-conditioned icy cool. What a relief to step into one of those stores on a sweltering Saturday afternoon in semi-tropical New Orleans. But often, I would spot outside the store, and in other locations along the street, men with missing legs in wheelchairs holding tin cans in hopes of getting passerby to drop in a few coins. I was aghast at this sight and hurried along my way.

I’ve lived in Charleston 25 years now, and there are a lot of homeless in this city, drawn here for many of the same reasons they came to New Orleans. When I was a kid, it didn’t occur to me that the homeless might be residents of the city. Maybe I thought they were modern-day hoboes who still hopped freight trains and cross-crossed the country, restless, aimless wanderers who were supposed to possess the ultimate freedom — nothing to tie them down. Perhaps in the 1930s that was one way to survive the Great Depression. But the reality today is far different. Homelessness is an outgrowth of lack of treatment for the mentally ill, including many homeless veterans, out-of-control substance abuse, a nationwide shortage of affordable housing, and the terrible misfortunes that strike people of all classes of society at all stages of life. To me, homelessness exposes the rot at the core of an unequal and unjust society where money rules and greed corrupts.

Over the years I’ve often been approached by panhandlers asking for “a couple of dollars for bus fare.” No more “Can you spare some change?” Inflation, you know. I mostly assumed these individuals, men as well as women, were homeless and hungry or desperate. Why on earth would anyone ask for money from strangers? Or were they shrewd con artists hustling up to a hundred dollars on a good day? Who’s to know? So I mostly just passed by, mumbling “sorry” or something equally lame.

Sometimes I’ll listen to their stories for a few seconds or minutes then quickly make my exit from a scenario that always troubles my conscience. Yes, they’re most likely going to use whatever I give them for beer, wine or worse, but again, how am I to know? They’re probably really hungry. But in my mind, I always say to myself that I’ve contributed to the local homeless shelter and food bank for many years, so why don’t they just go there instead of bothering me and shaking the wobbly foundations of my house built on sand of excuses and rationalizations.

So I always come out of these encounters feeling a bit ashamed, slightly soiled by the gritty realities of life that I mostly manage to elude and keep compartmentalized. But if I’m the Christian I profess to be, but who often fails mightily at living up to the core values and tenets of his religion, can I ever justify not helping someone in need, even if they’re only using the small sum of money you’re giving them for alcohol or drugs?

In Matthew 25:40 are these words, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ “ I’ve come to the conclusion now that if someone asks me for money I’m going to give them something. Not a card that gives them the address of the homeless shelter.

Our local newspaper carried a big article and editorial last year citing the admonition of police and city officials for people not to give money to panhandlers because of many of the reasons I cited above.. Back then when I first read it I said, “Okay, that’s the answer to this terrible moral dilemma. Now I have an excuse and a rationale, a reason not to give in to the unkempt and wild-eyed mendicants who approach me. I can’t escape from the problem, but I don’t have to support their drug habits. End of story.

A couple of months ago in the parking lot of the post office a man made a beeline for me, requesting a couple of dollars. Hesitating only for a moment, I pulled out my wallet and gave him a dollar. “Thanks,” he said, and went on his way. For once I didn’t feel guilty or embarrassed for myself or the person asking for the money. It would have been easier to just say, “sorry” and forget about it. But it’s never been easy for me to do that. I always had to struggle with my conscience. Not anymore, if I can help it.

A month later I was coming out of Dollar Tree and there was a man soliciting money for homeless veterans. That particular store apparently allows solicitation. I didn’t see the man, and he didn’t ask me for anything, but I overheard a young guy tell his companion, “I buy lunch for a bum at least twice a week.” I had to laugh because I’ve never done anything like that. I thought they’d just get belligerent if I offered to buy them some food. We all have our own way of dealing with this. I’m not going to judge anyone, but I recall many years ago seeing a man unhesitatingly deposit some money in the hand of a beggar. I remember thinking, “Wow, that person has a heart. I should be more like him.”

As they say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”