There seem to be an inordinate number of homeless people in this city. I've been panhandled many times in front of the Safeway, near the Lloyd Mall and downtown. Because there's so much competition, there's creative signage. Young women who admit to being broke and pregnant, men admitting they just want money for a beer and burger or money for their unhealthy looking dog or cat. They're almost all white and just as many young as old and they try to engage you by showing you a destination they need to get to or tell you a story about running out of gas. When I worked for a summer at the Seattle Times about 15 years ago, I had to do a story about all the panhandlers who hung out at Pioneer Square in the old district of the city, which had been recently gentrified. Every social worker and law enforcement person I talked to said people should absolutely not give them money. The problem would go away in one day if that happened, they all said. Furthermore, they said the money almost always went for alcohol or drugs and stopped them from getting the treatment they needed.
To a lot of people, that seems too mean-spirited, but, as anyone knows from psychology 101, intermittent reinforcement is even more effective than constant reinforcement. It's a gambler's life. A reporter from the Willamette Week Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper in town, posed as a homeless person one time and was threatened with a beating from someone whose corner he had unknowingly laid claim to.
My half-baked theory on the issue is that liberal cities attract panhandlers because people are more tolerant of them. It quickly reaches a point of unsustainability in every way, including social services. I've included several photos, although I generally don't take any because it feels invasive unless I pay them, which I am hesitant to do. Note in the one photo the man sleeping in the doorway with his belongings in a cart next to him.
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