15 ms·

What happens when you give homeless people a prepaid credit card.

369 points by pavs 16y ago

ars 16y ago
LCBO is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
- jeffcoat 16y ago
  I had to look that up, too. Wikipedia says, "LCBO stores are generally the only stores allowed to sell hard liquor in Ontario". About 30% gets spent there, the majority of it on a card reported stolen.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  The Canadian government has all kinds of monopolies, the LCBO is just one of several. You can really see how Canada has its roots in The Hudson Bay Company when you study how that came to be. In case you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company
  - philwelch 16y ago
    In the US, we have state monopoly liquor stores as well. They were instituted as part of the regulation scheme when alcohol was legalized at the end of Prohibition. They continue on as major revenue generators for the states. Many states don't have them, but many do as well. Ontario is one of the Canadian provinces which implemented Prohibition as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      It's really interesting how disconcerting this is. I live in Pennsylvania, which has the same state store concept. I've lived here all my life. I don't travel much, and so the once a year or so that I leave the state, I have a roughly five second period when I walk into a 7-11 and they have beer in the cooler.
    - brc 16y ago
      My first experience with state owned liquor stores was in Norway. At first I was shocked at finding them - they look more like a pharmacy than a store - after thinking about it, I could probably accept those in my life. After all - if you want to purchase liquor you still can. But why not monopolise the revenue from the stores to the state, while distributing what is a dangerous substance in a controlled way. If you start purchasing too much, then you can get flagged as needing help. I'm pretty sure that's why Norway does it - you don't want too much dangerous drinking during the long winters. I'm normally against any type of state intervention like this, but I can see the benefits. Provided, of course, that the revenue is used to offset personal income taxes- which is probably naive on my part.
- phjohnst 16y ago
  Yeah, in Ontario the LCBO sells wine/liquor, and then The Beer Store sells, well, beer/coolers/etc.
deleted 16y ago
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jfornear 16y ago
Insufficient sample size for drawing conclusions about target population. /sarcasm
- izendejas 16y ago
  Right, that shouldn't be the point of this article. I think the takeaway are the personal stories. Has anyone ever talked to a homeless person before? I recommend doing so from time to time. It's easy to judge some of these "bums." You'll find out some of these people have serious psychological/psychiatric problems (with alcoholism/drug addiction being a result, not just a cause).
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    There was a girl living in a house of mine that stood empty for a year because I couldn't sell it. Before then she was living in an old caboose. We talked quite a bit, she was a gifted artist on the one hand and totally out of touch with the world around her on the other. She said she could talk to trees and was completely fascinated by eyes. Last I heard from her she was living in Spain, doing drugs living on the street again. I don't think she was homeless out of need as much as that she simply chose not to be a part of this society of ours.
    - izendejas 16y ago
      Sounds like schizophrenia to me. I subletted to a person with schizophrenia (a very nice korean guy, very religious), also. As I point out somewhere around here, it's a truly fascinating mental condition.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      I am not a doctor but from your description of her there's a good chance she had schizophrenia. Her statements are consistent with it, and problems keeping friendships and jobs leads to financial and social problems with then leads to homelessness which then leads to more problems, including drugs, and it snowballs from there. If this was the case, the root affliction is not her fault, and she probably needed anti-psychotic medication on a regular basis, and government financial aid to keep her off the streets. Talk therapy is almost useless for that condition. Though giving her shelter and helping her to keep social connections is vital. So it sounds like you helped her out a lot.
cperciva 16y ago
Stories like this make me wish that it was easier for homeless people to be declared mentally ill and placed into mental health facilities. (Damn you, deinstitutionalization.) There are some people who are homeless because they're poor, but in the vast majority of cases it seems that the primary problem has nothing to do with not having a home.
- pyre 16y ago
  > (Damn you, deinstitutionalization.) Read up on what actually happened in those places. Read up on 999 Queen St. (for a Canadian example) or watch "Mental: A History of the Madhouse" (a BBC Documentary for a British example). I would agree with you if those places didn't end up being worse than prisons... ("No one will believe the crazy girl when she says that I raped her!", etc) [edit] In general, Canada seems to have better support for mental health issues than the US does.
  - cperciva 16y ago
    I would agree with you if those places didn't end up being worse than prisons... Thing is, the streets are worse than (Canadian) prisons, too. It's not unheard-of for homeless people to ask judges to please send them to jail. But more significantly: We need to fix mental health institutions. Saying "making functional mental health institutions is hard, let's go ride bikes" is fundamentally failing in our obligations to the mentally ill.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Another big issue is failing to provide a social security network that actually works in that it helps those in real need and has enough of an incentive to get out of the program again. There seem to be only two versions of this, one that leaves people without incentive to go back to work (the European model) and another that says 'you're on your own' tough luck. Another thing that jumped out at me in these stories was the lady that had daughters but was living on the street anyway. If my mom were about to be homeless she'd be living here, not on the street and I'm sure my brother and sister would think about it just the same.
holychiz 16y ago
these homes people seems awfully nice, but these are Canadians people we're talking about here. Let see how they do, say...San Francisco? Hey, SF Chron, are you listening?
- zoudini 16y ago
  Yea, what about NYC?
jacquesm 16y ago
Being homeless in Canada is 'something else'. You don't really realize how harsh those winters are until you're in Toronto and you see the streetpeople after a night at -30 Celsius. I've lived on King street, where it ends on the lake, and from there it was about a 20 minute walk to the office. Every day I'd walk that same route and meet probably between 5 and 10 people living 'off the street'. They'd all be equally friendly. They had their own spots. The police in Toronto was pretty laid back at the time (I'm no longer there so I have no idea how they are today), when a really cold night would approach they'd round up the homeless people and bring them to a shelter. But every year, in the spring one or two bodies would be found in the melting snowbanks. The unlucky ones that avoided the shelters and slept in 'their' spots only to never wake up again. Winter in Canada is harsh.
- phjohnst 16y ago
  Totally agree with this. Spend a year out east and all of the homeless people there get a seriously rough deal all winter. I cannot actually comprehend how anyone survives it. Living in Vancouver though, it seems that everyone that could get some form of transportation has ended up here or in Victoria; it certainly feels disproportionate to the population/economy.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Yes, that's because the winters there are somewhat lighter because of the presence of a large body of water to the West.
- dschobel 16y ago
  Ditto Chicago. The fact that every homeless person in the country does not save up the $50-$100 (less than a week's work in a major city) in bus fare and make a beeline for Miami or San Francisco has some scary implications about the depths of the problem and/or their ability to make some simple improvements in their situation.
  - suninwinter 16y ago
    Not all homeless people are hobos. Many of them probably have roots in the cities where they live.
poundy 16y ago
>Card 5: $75. Laurie buys $74.61 worth of food, phone minutes and cigarettes at a gas station convenience store. Returns card. Looks like Laurie checked the balance on the card and used it fully. She was the only one to use almost the entire balance.
- punnned 16y ago
  Smart? or Greedy?
  - tkahn6 16y ago
    That's a false dichotomy.
- acangiano 16y ago
  To me, Laurie is the only one that has a shot at improving her condition.
  - thefool 16y ago
    She's been out of a job for 10 years...
    - acangiano 16y ago
      Obviously they are all in tough situations. However she spent the money somewhat wisely, knows how to use a computer, skype, and has some programming skills. She also sends out resumes. I'm not saying that she will make it, but from this pool she is the one who may manage to get out of it.
known 16y ago
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. " -Confucius
- gloob 16y ago
  "Sit around feeling smug about your superior moral philosophy without doing anything, and the poor bugger'll starve to death."
punnned 16y ago
I read this article a while back: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4018083-beggar-earns-50000-per-year http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4018083-beggar-ear... $50,000 (AUD) a year! no tax as well. What do you guys think about a beggar earning more money as the average Australian who actually works and earns money(I'm simply giving Australia as an example because I live there)?
- ahpeeyem 16y ago
  I think it's a scandal and a disgrace - SOMEBODY call 60 minutes! But no, seriously, why do people have such a big problem with this? The person begging and earning 50k is hardly getting money for nothing - I've done both telemarketing and shopping mall face to face direct sales and that's not easy or enjoyable. I think directly asking for money would be worse. If someone spends 20 to 40 hours a week and manages to make a decent living, I don't see how that is bad, and I'm sure I can think of jobs and maybe entire industries that have a worse net effect economically or socially but are considered OK. There are definitely more dishonest yet not as maligned ways to make a living than donning some old clothing and pretending to be poor.
  - gthank 16y ago
    People have a problem with this for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: 1. They feel duped. They gave some money to a person because they thought that person was down on his/her luck, then find out that they were played. People don't like being defrauded. 2. They are intellectually outraged because the beggar has made a career out of taking money in exchange for nothing of value, although some might argue that the warm fuzzies provided by the act of giving count as something of value. 3. They are angry that these beggars are destroying good will toward other beggars who are begging because they really do need help. Of the ones I discussed, I image #1 is the biggest factor.
- tyng 16y ago
  There's the "Begger King" in Hongkong whose daughter studied her undergrad in Oxford, UK!
GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
A good portion of the problem of homelessness could be addressed by a sane approach to substance abuse. One innovation is a special 'drug court'. If a person charged with an offense has a drug problem, they have the option of entering a rigorous rehabilitation program with intensive support and somewhat intrusive monitoring. The upfront costs are a little higher (than standard courts) but data indicates that it really pays off in the long run. And related to that, it would be really helpful if drugs were treated as a mental and social health issue and not as a law enforcement problem.
- duairc 16y ago
  A better approach would be destroying capitalism. Edit: Sorry, I do more or less agree with you that what you are describing is pretty much the right way to handle drug problems, but I think it's important to point out that poverty and homelessness are symptoms of capitalism, which is the real problem.
  - dschobel 16y ago
    Capitalism is an economic system. It says nothing about social services or policy. There are plenty of countries with free market economies which provide extensive social services and have very progressive social policies (see northern europe and scandinavia).
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - IgorPartola 16y ago
    I'm just curious, what other systems have you seen?
    - duairc 16y ago
      Okay, I should probably just come clean and say that I'm an anarchist (an anarcho-socialist for those that believe that "anarcho"-capitalism is actually a form of anarchism). Anarchists have a bunch of ideas about what are the causes of the problems in our civilisation are and what can be done to change it and our lives for the better which are more or less internally consistent. So do capitalists, "anarcho"-capitalists and even the Catholic Church. All of these respective philosophies are internally consistent, or at least can be made so. So, I guess it was kind of pointless for me to say "capitalism causes poverty", which although I believe in the truth of that statement, most of the people on this site are capitalists and have a set of basic assumptions which justify capitalism. The statement I was making doesn't attempt to question or identify those basic assumptions, which I guess was my intention, but was just a lazy post that really just seems a bit absurd by capitalist set of assumptions. It makes sense perfect sense from the anarchist set of assumptions. So really, the post should have said "hey guys, while that drug policy sounds good, there is a school of thought that says that the real problem is capitalism itself, and I would subscribe to that school of thought and vouch for its applicability to the real world, and maybe you might find it interesting to think about that and read up on it a bit", but in order to do that I would have had to explain everything in a much deeper way than I was prepared to do at the time. I want to get back to the point about internal consistency though. It's pointless to exchange our theorems (things like "if we change X about drug policy, Y about homelessness will change") when the axioms on which we build such theorems are different. The only truth we can get from a discussion like that is "well, given the capitalist set of assumptions, we can prove that this is true, but it is not true given the anarchist set of assumptions". That's a lemma you can use in the proof of the truth of such a statement, but to prove that it's true you have to show that capitalism's (or whatever) assumptions accurately model the real world. I admit I'm very much guilty of ignoring this in my post above, and I'm sorry for lazily making such a meaningless post. (By the way, the reason "anarcho"-capitalism isn't anarchism is because anarchism and capitalism have assumptions which contradict each other, so to be able to make it internally consistent, they must lose some of the assumptions that anarchists have which contradict capitalism's assumptions.) So, economically then, what do I propose? A sort of decentralised socialism, I guess. I would broadly subscribe to the ideas outlined here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism#Economic_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism#Economic_th...), which probably explains it better than I can. The reason I think these ideas and the ideas and the assumptions that justify them are more applicable to the real world than those of capitalism is basically just because they line up with better with what my intuitions have been. I've always been unhappy with authority and being coerced, and the justifcations offered to me for such coercion have always seemed kind of circular. In is-piracy-bad debates, I've always been on the side of the pirates, but also always felt that there's more to it than this, that there's some sort of logical conclusion that we (pirates) are not taking this to, and now I think anarchism is that logical conclusion. Anarcha-feminism agrees with and expands on ideas and feelings I've had about gender before I knew about it. Anarchism gives legitimacy to my intuitions and offers a framework in which they can be made logically consistent, and also offers an explanation for some social problems that I hadn't ever even thought about that are consistent with my intuitions. Basically, and I know this is pretty much a false dichotomy, but it does kind of get the point across - I've always felt that it's much more satisfying and generally better to be co-operative than competitive, and I think capitalists basically think the opposite and say that it's human nature to be greedy, etc. My experience has shown that I get a great pleasure out of sharing my things and with people and helping them out, but capitalism makes it difficult to share with people because you need money and everything in order to survive in a capitalist system, so by giving stuff away, you're risking your chances of survival, or at least decreasing your freedom. I think capitalist ideas might appeal to people because it gives them justification for being many times richer and therefore freer than other people. I don't think that is justifiable, certainly not when it's something that affects a person from birth (how wealthy a background they come from), and it's incredibly naive to think that everybody who's poor can just go out and start a business and get as rich as anyone, as if it's their fault that they're poor (for not doing this) and that everybody is completely in control of how wealthy they are. Those are pretty much the ideas that I have. Anarchism is the school of thought that makes them logically consistent, but capitalist ideas are also logically consistent in their own framework, and if we disagree on the axioms then there aren't really any words or logic that can be done to resolve that disagreement. I'm really just trying to make people aware of anarchism, and maybe make them feel that their ideas are legitimate if they have anarchist ideas (because I think a lot of people have anarchist ideas but don't take them to their logical conclusion or realise that it's possible to do so), and maybe make people realise that there's more to anarchism than punk rawk, if there are people who haven't taken it seriously until now because of that kind of perception. That's it. Sorry about the initial post.
TallGuyShort 16y ago
An intresting idea. For those that would like to be charitable to the homeless but are concerned about how it gets spent, we've started carrying a few $10 gift cards to McDonalds (or something similar). That way we know it gets spent on a relatively decent meal, and not booze. Recently we've seen more homeless families with kids - and it's especially nice to be able to give them a few of those. edit: An added benefit during the winter, is that they get to be a 'paying customer' somewhere warm for at least a couple of hours.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That's a really nice initiative.
- abalashov 16y ago
  I don't know -- McDonald's + "relatively decent meal" is a very relative idea. From a nutritional perspective, it may be only marginally better than booze.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Bullshit. McDonalds is not the best food in the world but it's not going to have an intoxicating effect on you and de-hydrate you to boot. It also isn't addictive. Personally I'd eat anywhere but there but you really can't equate giving someone a burger (or perhaps a salad?) with a bottle. It's a ridiculous thing to say. And I'm about as anti-Mcd's as it gets, mostly because whenever I go there I feel like crap for the next 24 hours (lack of gal bladder) so I avoid them like the plague.
    - abalashov 16y ago
      True enough. I'm not a foodie snob, by the way. I've never even been to the West Coast. :-) It just gives me serious pause to think about giving a homeless person who eats sporadically and drinks a lot McDonald's. It seems like it would wreak havoc on their digestive system.
- duairc 16y ago
pmorici 16y ago
"...a man who had appeared with a can of beer and poured half into her paper cup. Joanne appeared sober." I wonder about the accuracy of this reporters story, after reading this passage.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I think the operative word is 'appeared'.
kloncks 16y ago
What really killed me was seeing the homeless buy or sell drugs/booze. I went from a really wealthy suburb to a college campus that was more representative of "the real world" and encountered the homeless on the edge of campus for the first time in life. At first, we'd give money and feel awful about the homeless situation. Then, we saw a couple of the regulars making a drug deal. Then we saw that again. After that, in my mind, any dollar I'd give isn't going for a McDonald's sandwich. Instead, in my mind, I was practically buying crack for the homeless myself. The sad part is that I realize that it's likely that there's only a few bad apples and they're not all representative of the whole batch...but it's enough to let me say "no" without feeling guilty.
- brazzy 16y ago
  So basically, you know you're rationalizing your lack of charity, and you don't care.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Everybody has their own way of rationalizing why something is not 'their problem'. You could buy some food and give that instead. I've had a guy panhandling outside a supermarket here refuse food that I'd just bought because it wasn't money. Clearly he wasn't hungry but to me that doesn't make me look at all homeless people in the same way.
- kloncks 16y ago
  To be fair, we have now done exactly that. If we have food on us, we'd give it. Not saying I don't care or rationalizing that it's not my problem. I'm just saying that the way I explain this could be used by many others to explain it as well.
- Devilboy 16y ago
  'This homeless guy asked me for money the other day. I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol. And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on. Why am I judging this poor bastard.'
kingkawn 16y ago
The minor side-story here is that all these cards probably ended up, even if further used by the author, with small balances remaining on them. Pure profit for the issuer.
grandalf 16y ago
As an American who has visited Canada many times, I've always been struck by the high functioning of Canada's homeless population. There are a lot of homeless youth and young adults who panhandle, etc. Also, in Canada the work force is far more competitive (higher unemployment drives this). The person helping you at a fast food restaurant is a good communicator, appears clean, and is helpful and good natured. Across the border in the US, many fast food employees are noticeably less able. So my hypothesis is that due to higher unemployment, many "homeless" in Canada are in fact people who would easily hold down a job in the US. The US homeless, on the other hand, almost all appear to have psychiatric problems or substance abuse problems. I'd speculate that few US homeless would be able to hold down a simple job even if they were given a $5K per month stipend and fully subsidized apartment for the first year.
- deleted 16y ago
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- 9oliYQjP 16y ago
  Here's a good essay on Canadian vs American unemployment numbers. Structurally, the Canadian unemployment rate has largely tracked the American one, but been higher. The professor who wrote this essay delved into the reasons why and found that the unemployed in Canada were more likely to search out work and therefore be counted as unemployed (i.e. the definition of unemployed in both countries being folks who seek work but currently have no job). http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/criddell/canusune.pdf http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/criddell/canusune.pdf Also, Canadians have traditionally been supportive of quality public education and other social institutions. The person serving coffee at a Tim Hortons working minimum wage probably was in the same school system as the person he or she is serving who might be a banker. Private schooling is typically relegated to the upper middle class/rich, and those parents who want to send their children to religious schools (e.g., Jews or Muslims, as Catholic schools are fully publicly funded in many provinces). Speaking as a university dropout and child of a middle class family in the poorest, most stigmatized part of Toronto, it was expected of all my friends that we get a post-secondary education. There was no question about it. Census numbers seem to back this up (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-595/P2C.cfm?TPL=RETR&LANG=E&GC=35080 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/pro...). There were roughly 14 000 people aged 25-34 in that area of the city. Only 4 000 of these people had no post secondary education. Anecdotally, there's a Catholic high school in the area that installed a day care so that it could accept mothers (usually unwed teenagers of course). It was a little bit controversial when it was first started, but this was in the early 1990s long before these kind of things were normal. Incidentally, that same Catholic high school also supplied free condoms in their bathrooms, much to the dismay of the Church. There's much more of a push to be educated here in Canada than what I see in the U.S.. So that might be what you saw during your visits. Also keep in mind that because we have universal health care, it's much easier for the mentally ill to seek and get the help they need before it's too late and they end up on the street. That said, I live in downtown Toronto now and most of the older homeless that I encounter seem to be mentally ill or have addiction problems. The younger ones usually come from abusive households, so that's what drives them into the streets.
kgo 16y ago
I think asking them to return the card games the experiment. They might get paranoid and think it's some weird undercover sting. Or more likely, maybe they think they've found a sugar daddy who's going to start hooking them up every week, so they want to play nice. It'd be interesting to see if the results would be different if you just dropped the card off and walked away.
deleted 16y ago
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zach 16y ago
So am I the only one curious about the potential embodied in this experiment? If you have accountability (via the credit card system) and challenge/reward (through a broader giving community), maybe you have the beginnings of a new and effective system for helping people.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  But does it scale? Once you get beggars knowing they can get free money like this, how much do their attitudes change? How many people start to scam the new system? Does the scamming effectively prevent it from helping people who actually need it? And as pointed out in other comments, many 'homeless' are homeless by choice, not because they can't get one. Some beggars aren't even homeless... They just choose to ask for money instead of earning it. It's very difficult to make a system work properly when all humans are involved.
  - zach 16y ago
    Yeah, people will either go along with a game plan or game the system itself. But maybe this is a way to structure in some freedom and personal connection that isn't there currently. The move to electronic benefits from paper food stamps has reduced fraud substantially, and perhaps most significantly reduced the social temptation to game the system. So it seems like there's a similar benefit possible from moving from hard currency panhandling through rechargeable gift cards and public-purchase credit cards. If a Kiva-ish system is more beneficial than standing out on the street, maybe you give people the freedom to stop structuring their life around panhandling and give them incentives to live more independently. And these tools could even help provide a system that actually fills the gap between someone just making it in the working world and giving up on it for the more toxic world of panhandling. But it's true that you are facing the most enormous incentives to game the system imaginable. It requires some really careful and clever reward design. I know it seems a little overenthusiastic, but I keep thinking it would be fascinating if there were a nonprofit that offered game design resources to other nonprofits...
pacomerh 16y ago
Became clear that the problem is not in the need of money, but in finding a purpose, fulfilling an immediate need. If they had used the money in the most efficient way, they wouldn't be there in the first place (obviously)

369 points by pavs 16y ago

ars 16y ago

LCBO is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

jeffcoat 16y ago
I had to look that up, too. Wikipedia says, "LCBO stores are generally the only stores allowed to sell hard liquor in Ontario". About 30% gets spent there, the majority of it on a card reported stolen.
jacquesm 16y ago
The Canadian government has all kinds of monopolies, the LCBO is just one of several. You can really see how Canada has its roots in The Hudson Bay Company when you study how that came to be. In case you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company
- philwelch 16y ago
  In the US, we have state monopoly liquor stores as well. They were instituted as part of the regulation scheme when alcohol was legalized at the end of Prohibition. They continue on as major revenue generators for the states. Many states don't have them, but many do as well. Ontario is one of the Canadian provinces which implemented Prohibition as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    It's really interesting how disconcerting this is. I live in Pennsylvania, which has the same state store concept. I've lived here all my life. I don't travel much, and so the once a year or so that I leave the state, I have a roughly five second period when I walk into a 7-11 and they have beer in the cooler.
  - brc 16y ago
    My first experience with state owned liquor stores was in Norway. At first I was shocked at finding them - they look more like a pharmacy than a store - after thinking about it, I could probably accept those in my life. After all - if you want to purchase liquor you still can. But why not monopolise the revenue from the stores to the state, while distributing what is a dangerous substance in a controlled way. If you start purchasing too much, then you can get flagged as needing help. I'm pretty sure that's why Norway does it - you don't want too much dangerous drinking during the long winters. I'm normally against any type of state intervention like this, but I can see the benefits. Provided, of course, that the revenue is used to offset personal income taxes- which is probably naive on my part.
phjohnst 16y ago
Yeah, in Ontario the LCBO sells wine/liquor, and then The Beer Store sells, well, beer/coolers/etc.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jfornear 16y ago

Insufficient sample size for drawing conclusions about target population. /sarcasm

izendejas 16y ago
Right, that shouldn't be the point of this article. I think the takeaway are the personal stories. Has anyone ever talked to a homeless person before? I recommend doing so from time to time. It's easy to judge some of these "bums." You'll find out some of these people have serious psychological/psychiatric problems (with alcoholism/drug addiction being a result, not just a cause).
- jacquesm 16y ago
  There was a girl living in a house of mine that stood empty for a year because I couldn't sell it. Before then she was living in an old caboose. We talked quite a bit, she was a gifted artist on the one hand and totally out of touch with the world around her on the other. She said she could talk to trees and was completely fascinated by eyes. Last I heard from her she was living in Spain, doing drugs living on the street again. I don't think she was homeless out of need as much as that she simply chose not to be a part of this society of ours.
  - izendejas 16y ago
    Sounds like schizophrenia to me. I subletted to a person with schizophrenia (a very nice korean guy, very religious), also. As I point out somewhere around here, it's a truly fascinating mental condition.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    I am not a doctor but from your description of her there's a good chance she had schizophrenia. Her statements are consistent with it, and problems keeping friendships and jobs leads to financial and social problems with then leads to homelessness which then leads to more problems, including drugs, and it snowballs from there. If this was the case, the root affliction is not her fault, and she probably needed anti-psychotic medication on a regular basis, and government financial aid to keep her off the streets. Talk therapy is almost useless for that condition. Though giving her shelter and helping her to keep social connections is vital. So it sounds like you helped her out a lot.

cperciva 16y ago

Stories like this make me wish that it was easier for homeless people to be declared mentally ill and placed into mental health facilities. (Damn you, deinstitutionalization.) There are some people who are homeless because they're poor, but in the vast majority of cases it seems that the primary problem has nothing to do with not having a home.

pyre 16y ago
> (Damn you, deinstitutionalization.) Read up on what actually happened in those places. Read up on 999 Queen St. (for a Canadian example) or watch "Mental: A History of the Madhouse" (a BBC Documentary for a British example). I would agree with you if those places didn't end up being worse than prisons... ("No one will believe the crazy girl when she says that I raped her!", etc) [edit] In general, Canada seems to have better support for mental health issues than the US does.
- cperciva 16y ago
  I would agree with you if those places didn't end up being worse than prisons... Thing is, the streets are worse than (Canadian) prisons, too. It's not unheard-of for homeless people to ask judges to please send them to jail. But more significantly: We need to fix mental health institutions. Saying "making functional mental health institutions is hard, let's go ride bikes" is fundamentally failing in our obligations to the mentally ill.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Another big issue is failing to provide a social security network that actually works in that it helps those in real need and has enough of an incentive to get out of the program again. There seem to be only two versions of this, one that leaves people without incentive to go back to work (the European model) and another that says 'you're on your own' tough luck. Another thing that jumped out at me in these stories was the lady that had daughters but was living on the street anyway. If my mom were about to be homeless she'd be living here, not on the street and I'm sure my brother and sister would think about it just the same.

holychiz 16y ago

these homes people seems awfully nice, but these are Canadians people we're talking about here. Let see how they do, say...San Francisco? Hey, SF Chron, are you listening?

zoudini 16y ago
Yea, what about NYC?

jacquesm 16y ago

Being homeless in Canada is 'something else'. You don't really realize how harsh those winters are until you're in Toronto and you see the streetpeople after a night at -30 Celsius. I've lived on King street, where it ends on the lake, and from there it was about a 20 minute walk to the office. Every day I'd walk that same route and meet probably between 5 and 10 people living 'off the street'. They'd all be equally friendly. They had their own spots. The police in Toronto was pretty laid back at the time (I'm no longer there so I have no idea how they are today), when a really cold night would approach they'd round up the homeless people and bring them to a shelter. But every year, in the spring one or two bodies would be found in the melting snowbanks. The unlucky ones that avoided the shelters and slept in 'their' spots only to never wake up again. Winter in Canada is harsh.

phjohnst 16y ago
Totally agree with this. Spend a year out east and all of the homeless people there get a seriously rough deal all winter. I cannot actually comprehend how anyone survives it. Living in Vancouver though, it seems that everyone that could get some form of transportation has ended up here or in Victoria; it certainly feels disproportionate to the population/economy.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Yes, that's because the winters there are somewhat lighter because of the presence of a large body of water to the West.
dschobel 16y ago
Ditto Chicago. The fact that every homeless person in the country does not save up the $50-$100 (less than a week's work in a major city) in bus fare and make a beeline for Miami or San Francisco has some scary implications about the depths of the problem and/or their ability to make some simple improvements in their situation.
- suninwinter 16y ago
  Not all homeless people are hobos. Many of them probably have roots in the cities where they live.

poundy 16y ago

>Card 5: $75. Laurie buys $74.61 worth of food, phone minutes and cigarettes at a gas station convenience store. Returns card. Looks like Laurie checked the balance on the card and used it fully. She was the only one to use almost the entire balance.

punnned 16y ago
Smart? or Greedy?
- tkahn6 16y ago
  That's a false dichotomy.
acangiano 16y ago
To me, Laurie is the only one that has a shot at improving her condition.
- thefool 16y ago
  She's been out of a job for 10 years...
  - acangiano 16y ago
    Obviously they are all in tough situations. However she spent the money somewhat wisely, knows how to use a computer, skype, and has some programming skills. She also sends out resumes. I'm not saying that she will make it, but from this pool she is the one who may manage to get out of it.

known 16y ago

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. " -Confucius

gloob 16y ago
"Sit around feeling smug about your superior moral philosophy without doing anything, and the poor bugger'll starve to death."

punnned 16y ago

I read this article a while back: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4018083-beggar-earns-50000-per-year http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4018083-beggar-ear... $50,000 (AUD) a year! no tax as well. What do you guys think about a beggar earning more money as the average Australian who actually works and earns money(I'm simply giving Australia as an example because I live there)?

ahpeeyem 16y ago
I think it's a scandal and a disgrace - SOMEBODY call 60 minutes! But no, seriously, why do people have such a big problem with this? The person begging and earning 50k is hardly getting money for nothing - I've done both telemarketing and shopping mall face to face direct sales and that's not easy or enjoyable. I think directly asking for money would be worse. If someone spends 20 to 40 hours a week and manages to make a decent living, I don't see how that is bad, and I'm sure I can think of jobs and maybe entire industries that have a worse net effect economically or socially but are considered OK. There are definitely more dishonest yet not as maligned ways to make a living than donning some old clothing and pretending to be poor.
- gthank 16y ago
  People have a problem with this for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: 1. They feel duped. They gave some money to a person because they thought that person was down on his/her luck, then find out that they were played. People don't like being defrauded. 2. They are intellectually outraged because the beggar has made a career out of taking money in exchange for nothing of value, although some might argue that the warm fuzzies provided by the act of giving count as something of value. 3. They are angry that these beggars are destroying good will toward other beggars who are begging because they really do need help. Of the ones I discussed, I image #1 is the biggest factor.
tyng 16y ago
There's the "Begger King" in Hongkong whose daughter studied her undergrad in Oxford, UK!

GiraffeNecktie 16y ago

A good portion of the problem of homelessness could be addressed by a sane approach to substance abuse. One innovation is a special 'drug court'. If a person charged with an offense has a drug problem, they have the option of entering a rigorous rehabilitation program with intensive support and somewhat intrusive monitoring. The upfront costs are a little higher (than standard courts) but data indicates that it really pays off in the long run. And related to that, it would be really helpful if drugs were treated as a mental and social health issue and not as a law enforcement problem.

duairc 16y ago
A better approach would be destroying capitalism. Edit: Sorry, I do more or less agree with you that what you are describing is pretty much the right way to handle drug problems, but I think it's important to point out that poverty and homelessness are symptoms of capitalism, which is the real problem.
- dschobel 16y ago
  Capitalism is an economic system. It says nothing about social services or policy. There are plenty of countries with free market economies which provide extensive social services and have very progressive social policies (see northern europe and scandinavia).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- IgorPartola 16y ago
  I'm just curious, what other systems have you seen?
  - duairc 16y ago
    Okay, I should probably just come clean and say that I'm an anarchist (an anarcho-socialist for those that believe that "anarcho"-capitalism is actually a form of anarchism). Anarchists have a bunch of ideas about what are the causes of the problems in our civilisation are and what can be done to change it and our lives for the better which are more or less internally consistent. So do capitalists, "anarcho"-capitalists and even the Catholic Church. All of these respective philosophies are internally consistent, or at least can be made so. So, I guess it was kind of pointless for me to say "capitalism causes poverty", which although I believe in the truth of that statement, most of the people on this site are capitalists and have a set of basic assumptions which justify capitalism. The statement I was making doesn't attempt to question or identify those basic assumptions, which I guess was my intention, but was just a lazy post that really just seems a bit absurd by capitalist set of assumptions. It makes sense perfect sense from the anarchist set of assumptions. So really, the post should have said "hey guys, while that drug policy sounds good, there is a school of thought that says that the real problem is capitalism itself, and I would subscribe to that school of thought and vouch for its applicability to the real world, and maybe you might find it interesting to think about that and read up on it a bit", but in order to do that I would have had to explain everything in a much deeper way than I was prepared to do at the time. I want to get back to the point about internal consistency though. It's pointless to exchange our theorems (things like "if we change X about drug policy, Y about homelessness will change") when the axioms on which we build such theorems are different. The only truth we can get from a discussion like that is "well, given the capitalist set of assumptions, we can prove that this is true, but it is not true given the anarchist set of assumptions". That's a lemma you can use in the proof of the truth of such a statement, but to prove that it's true you have to show that capitalism's (or whatever) assumptions accurately model the real world. I admit I'm very much guilty of ignoring this in my post above, and I'm sorry for lazily making such a meaningless post. (By the way, the reason "anarcho"-capitalism isn't anarchism is because anarchism and capitalism have assumptions which contradict each other, so to be able to make it internally consistent, they must lose some of the assumptions that anarchists have which contradict capitalism's assumptions.) So, economically then, what do I propose? A sort of decentralised socialism, I guess. I would broadly subscribe to the ideas outlined here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism#Economic_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism#Economic_th...), which probably explains it better than I can. The reason I think these ideas and the ideas and the assumptions that justify them are more applicable to the real world than those of capitalism is basically just because they line up with better with what my intuitions have been. I've always been unhappy with authority and being coerced, and the justifcations offered to me for such coercion have always seemed kind of circular. In is-piracy-bad debates, I've always been on the side of the pirates, but also always felt that there's more to it than this, that there's some sort of logical conclusion that we (pirates) are not taking this to, and now I think anarchism is that logical conclusion. Anarcha-feminism agrees with and expands on ideas and feelings I've had about gender before I knew about it. Anarchism gives legitimacy to my intuitions and offers a framework in which they can be made logically consistent, and also offers an explanation for some social problems that I hadn't ever even thought about that are consistent with my intuitions. Basically, and I know this is pretty much a false dichotomy, but it does kind of get the point across - I've always felt that it's much more satisfying and generally better to be co-operative than competitive, and I think capitalists basically think the opposite and say that it's human nature to be greedy, etc. My experience has shown that I get a great pleasure out of sharing my things and with people and helping them out, but capitalism makes it difficult to share with people because you need money and everything in order to survive in a capitalist system, so by giving stuff away, you're risking your chances of survival, or at least decreasing your freedom. I think capitalist ideas might appeal to people because it gives them justification for being many times richer and therefore freer than other people. I don't think that is justifiable, certainly not when it's something that affects a person from birth (how wealthy a background they come from), and it's incredibly naive to think that everybody who's poor can just go out and start a business and get as rich as anyone, as if it's their fault that they're poor (for not doing this) and that everybody is completely in control of how wealthy they are. Those are pretty much the ideas that I have. Anarchism is the school of thought that makes them logically consistent, but capitalist ideas are also logically consistent in their own framework, and if we disagree on the axioms then there aren't really any words or logic that can be done to resolve that disagreement. I'm really just trying to make people aware of anarchism, and maybe make them feel that their ideas are legitimate if they have anarchist ideas (because I think a lot of people have anarchist ideas but don't take them to their logical conclusion or realise that it's possible to do so), and maybe make people realise that there's more to anarchism than punk rawk, if there are people who haven't taken it seriously until now because of that kind of perception. That's it. Sorry about the initial post.

TallGuyShort 16y ago

An intresting idea. For those that would like to be charitable to the homeless but are concerned about how it gets spent, we've started carrying a few $10 gift cards to McDonalds (or something similar). That way we know it gets spent on a relatively decent meal, and not booze. Recently we've seen more homeless families with kids - and it's especially nice to be able to give them a few of those. edit: An added benefit during the winter, is that they get to be a 'paying customer' somewhere warm for at least a couple of hours.

jacquesm 16y ago
That's a really nice initiative.
abalashov 16y ago
I don't know -- McDonald's + "relatively decent meal" is a very relative idea. From a nutritional perspective, it may be only marginally better than booze.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Bullshit. McDonalds is not the best food in the world but it's not going to have an intoxicating effect on you and de-hydrate you to boot. It also isn't addictive. Personally I'd eat anywhere but there but you really can't equate giving someone a burger (or perhaps a salad?) with a bottle. It's a ridiculous thing to say. And I'm about as anti-Mcd's as it gets, mostly because whenever I go there I feel like crap for the next 24 hours (lack of gal bladder) so I avoid them like the plague.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    True enough. I'm not a foodie snob, by the way. I've never even been to the West Coast. :-) It just gives me serious pause to think about giving a homeless person who eats sporadically and drinks a lot McDonald's. It seems like it would wreak havoc on their digestive system.
duairc 16y ago

pmorici 16y ago

"...a man who had appeared with a can of beer and poured half into her paper cup. Joanne appeared sober." I wonder about the accuracy of this reporters story, after reading this passage.

jacquesm 16y ago
I think the operative word is 'appeared'.

kloncks 16y ago

What really killed me was seeing the homeless buy or sell drugs/booze. I went from a really wealthy suburb to a college campus that was more representative of "the real world" and encountered the homeless on the edge of campus for the first time in life. At first, we'd give money and feel awful about the homeless situation. Then, we saw a couple of the regulars making a drug deal. Then we saw that again. After that, in my mind, any dollar I'd give isn't going for a McDonald's sandwich. Instead, in my mind, I was practically buying crack for the homeless myself. The sad part is that I realize that it's likely that there's only a few bad apples and they're not all representative of the whole batch...but it's enough to let me say "no" without feeling guilty.

brazzy 16y ago
So basically, you know you're rationalizing your lack of charity, and you don't care.
jacquesm 16y ago
Everybody has their own way of rationalizing why something is not 'their problem'. You could buy some food and give that instead. I've had a guy panhandling outside a supermarket here refuse food that I'd just bought because it wasn't money. Clearly he wasn't hungry but to me that doesn't make me look at all homeless people in the same way.
kloncks 16y ago
To be fair, we have now done exactly that. If we have food on us, we'd give it. Not saying I don't care or rationalizing that it's not my problem. I'm just saying that the way I explain this could be used by many others to explain it as well.
Devilboy 16y ago
'This homeless guy asked me for money the other day. I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol. And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on. Why am I judging this poor bastard.'

kingkawn 16y ago

The minor side-story here is that all these cards probably ended up, even if further used by the author, with small balances remaining on them. Pure profit for the issuer.

grandalf 16y ago

As an American who has visited Canada many times, I've always been struck by the high functioning of Canada's homeless population. There are a lot of homeless youth and young adults who panhandle, etc. Also, in Canada the work force is far more competitive (higher unemployment drives this). The person helping you at a fast food restaurant is a good communicator, appears clean, and is helpful and good natured. Across the border in the US, many fast food employees are noticeably less able. So my hypothesis is that due to higher unemployment, many "homeless" in Canada are in fact people who would easily hold down a job in the US. The US homeless, on the other hand, almost all appear to have psychiatric problems or substance abuse problems. I'd speculate that few US homeless would be able to hold down a simple job even if they were given a $5K per month stipend and fully subsidized apartment for the first year.

deleted 16y ago
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9oliYQjP 16y ago
Here's a good essay on Canadian vs American unemployment numbers. Structurally, the Canadian unemployment rate has largely tracked the American one, but been higher. The professor who wrote this essay delved into the reasons why and found that the unemployed in Canada were more likely to search out work and therefore be counted as unemployed (i.e. the definition of unemployed in both countries being folks who seek work but currently have no job). http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/criddell/canusune.pdf http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/criddell/canusune.pdf Also, Canadians have traditionally been supportive of quality public education and other social institutions. The person serving coffee at a Tim Hortons working minimum wage probably was in the same school system as the person he or she is serving who might be a banker. Private schooling is typically relegated to the upper middle class/rich, and those parents who want to send their children to religious schools (e.g., Jews or Muslims, as Catholic schools are fully publicly funded in many provinces). Speaking as a university dropout and child of a middle class family in the poorest, most stigmatized part of Toronto, it was expected of all my friends that we get a post-secondary education. There was no question about it. Census numbers seem to back this up (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-595/P2C.cfm?TPL=RETR&LANG=E&GC=35080 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/pro...). There were roughly 14 000 people aged 25-34 in that area of the city. Only 4 000 of these people had no post secondary education. Anecdotally, there's a Catholic high school in the area that installed a day care so that it could accept mothers (usually unwed teenagers of course). It was a little bit controversial when it was first started, but this was in the early 1990s long before these kind of things were normal. Incidentally, that same Catholic high school also supplied free condoms in their bathrooms, much to the dismay of the Church. There's much more of a push to be educated here in Canada than what I see in the U.S.. So that might be what you saw during your visits. Also keep in mind that because we have universal health care, it's much easier for the mentally ill to seek and get the help they need before it's too late and they end up on the street. That said, I live in downtown Toronto now and most of the older homeless that I encounter seem to be mentally ill or have addiction problems. The younger ones usually come from abusive households, so that's what drives them into the streets.

kgo 16y ago

I think asking them to return the card games the experiment. They might get paranoid and think it's some weird undercover sting. Or more likely, maybe they think they've found a sugar daddy who's going to start hooking them up every week, so they want to play nice. It'd be interesting to see if the results would be different if you just dropped the card off and walked away.

deleted 16y ago

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zach 16y ago

So am I the only one curious about the potential embodied in this experiment? If you have accountability (via the credit card system) and challenge/reward (through a broader giving community), maybe you have the beginnings of a new and effective system for helping people.

wccrawford 16y ago
But does it scale? Once you get beggars knowing they can get free money like this, how much do their attitudes change? How many people start to scam the new system? Does the scamming effectively prevent it from helping people who actually need it? And as pointed out in other comments, many 'homeless' are homeless by choice, not because they can't get one. Some beggars aren't even homeless... They just choose to ask for money instead of earning it. It's very difficult to make a system work properly when all humans are involved.
- zach 16y ago
  Yeah, people will either go along with a game plan or game the system itself. But maybe this is a way to structure in some freedom and personal connection that isn't there currently. The move to electronic benefits from paper food stamps has reduced fraud substantially, and perhaps most significantly reduced the social temptation to game the system. So it seems like there's a similar benefit possible from moving from hard currency panhandling through rechargeable gift cards and public-purchase credit cards. If a Kiva-ish system is more beneficial than standing out on the street, maybe you give people the freedom to stop structuring their life around panhandling and give them incentives to live more independently. And these tools could even help provide a system that actually fills the gap between someone just making it in the working world and giving up on it for the more toxic world of panhandling. But it's true that you are facing the most enormous incentives to game the system imaginable. It requires some really careful and clever reward design. I know it seems a little overenthusiastic, but I keep thinking it would be fascinating if there were a nonprofit that offered game design resources to other nonprofits...

pacomerh 16y ago

Became clear that the problem is not in the need of money, but in finding a purpose, fulfilling an immediate need. If they had used the money in the most efficient way, they wouldn't be there in the first place (obviously)