Being a resident of Madison, WI all of my life has allowed me, along with many of my friends to grow up living a very sheltered lifestyle. Growing up, we never experienced big city crimes, nor did we worry about people breaking into our houses. One thing that we also never encountered would be panhandling. As a child, I knew and recognized that the homeless existed. However, I had not directly encountered a homeless person until almost the age of 14. The thought was interesting, because I constantly asked myself, "Although one looks homeless, does that really mean they're really homeless?" This may sound ignorant, but I believe that this is an appropriate question to be asked. Personally, I do not come from wealth, but when the chance to help people that are less fortunate arises, both my family and I are on board. We are constantly donating items such as canned goods to the Middleton Outreach Ministry. We also donate all of our clothes to Saint Vincent DePaul and volunteer through our local church. However, should these "donations" go as far as giving money to a complete stranger on the street? There has now been a huge increase in the number of people that panhandle both in downtown Madison and on the West Side. How should we be reacting to this?
I am not a person to be overly possessive with money; however, I want to help the homeless for the better. I don't want to hand someone money to purchase food or clothes and have them spend it on drugs or alcohol later that day. Even though you never know what they are spending money on, there are different circumstances where you could hope and pray that they are using it to better themselves. In one instance, my family has encountered the same homeless U.S. veteran for many years in Madison. We always try to provide him with something, whether it is a sandwich or a $20 bill. We do this because he carries two garbage bags with him wherever he goes, and he has certain tendencies that have potential to being correlated to mental disabilities. Between these factors and the way that he presents himself, my family does in fact believe that he is homeless. He is always in the same place, standing holding a sign for long days, and he is never inconsistent.
On the other hand, we just recently noticed about four or five other people standing on the same street corner panhandling – most of them being women that carry only one backpack. One day, while driving through this area, I saw the group of women standing at the same intersection but on different dividers. However, when I was driving back home in the opposite direction, I experienced them all sitting in a circle and laughing while counting the money that they had compiled in those previous hours. Although I do not know who they are or what their back story is, I can tell you that I do not believe that they are homeless. I say this because these women had the luxuries of sunglasses, North Face backpacks and clean clothes.They didn't present themselves to be homeless either, as they stood in annoyance holding their homeless signs and smoking cigarettes. Although I am not the deciding factor of who is homeless and who is not, I knew that just around the corner there was a man standing who was in a lot more need than they were.
When I noticed this sudden increase in panhandlers, I began to experience the feeling of uneasiness. I know that there are professional panhandlers; however, I am not sure that I agree with the idea of someone with a house and a stocked fridge taking the money that could have gone to someone in need. According to Channel 3000, "the money and food obtained equaled $36 an hour, or more than $70,000 a year without paying taxes." Now the question becomes, should we make panhandling illegal for this reason?
There are many places in Madison where panhandling is illegal, such as in front of businesses or residential areas. Should panhandling be illegal everywhere in Madison? Although I have many doubts when it comes to this subject, I do not believe that panhandling should be illegal. I believe that we shouldn't take this right away from actual homeless people because there is potential for indolent people also asking for money. This where we also can ask the question: who should we be giving money to? Well, this is up to the individuals who have room in their wallet to help others. All we can do at this point is attempt to understand why we have so many homeless people and try to help them. There will always be people that abuse the system, but hopefully we can decrease the poverty rate right here in Madison.
