What a Dilemma (Homelessness and street begging)

Member Name: GuruOnAMountain

Product:	Homelessness and street begging
Date:	17/08/04 (118 review reads)
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I'd never really encountered much begging until last year when I started University, meaning spending most of each day in a busy city. Initially, you would dig around for change and hope you had something to give, although often you didn't and had to walk past.

However, after a year you become immune to the beggars you come across. I still feel sympathy for them when I see them, but I see such a large quantity of them per day that I simply couldn't afford to give every one of them money. You also don't feel that giving them some loose change is actually going to make a dramatic difference in their life. It might feed them another meal, but then they'll be back where they started again, needing to rely on someone else for their next meal.

Nevertheless, being the incredibly naive girl that I am, I never assumed that any of them were anything less than honest and genuine cases, deserving of my sympathy, yet I encountered a beggar that spent most of his time roaming my University campus. I'd ran across him a few times and he would always wander about, standing in front of people refusing to let them past while asking for some change so he could afford to buy himself a bag of chips. One day, when I was walking home from Uni, I walked into an alley that I pass down to get out onto the main street and he was there. He tried to stop me and when I told him I was sorry but didn't have any change on me, he refused to leave me and followed me down the street demanding money and trying to grab my arm. This, I found a bit frightening considering I was on my own and there was no one else around, but I managed to get onto the main street unscathed. Unfortunately, a few days later I heard news of him attempting to mug another student who didn't give him money. I've also seen the same man in action on the streets outside of my Uni campus. He stopped one smartly dressed man and told him that he was starving as he hadn't eaten i
n two days and asked the man to spare some change. I watched the man go into his pocket and give the beggar £3, but instead of the 'starving' beggar skipping off to put some food in his belly, he simply waited until this man went away, then went up to a new person and gave them the same line.

Of course, I've also seen honest people in genuine need, and one particular case saddens me. My sister used to go into the city everyday and would faithfully buy every new issue of the Big Issue off a particular vendor. Over the course of a few years they got talking, and I've been introduced to him now and talk to him too, on occassion. He had a very hard life and due to difficulties with his family found himself on the streets. He'd already started using heroin by this time, and he slipped into worse and worse problems. He had got his girlfriend pregnant before becoming homeless, and was desperate to have a relationship with the child, and after the birth of his son he decided that he'd have to take action to clean up his act. He sought help to get off the heroin and started selling the Big Issue. He applied for all sorts of help to get housing, but never got any, but managed to move back in with his mother. He applied for benefits, but even with them and his Big Issue sales, he wasn't making enough to care for himself. He couldn't afford to help his mother with the bills and feed himself, and now his little boy is at school he struggles even more. His ex-girlfriend refuses to buy clothes for her son, and refuses to let the boy's father have custody of him (although, to a court, I must admit his case wouldn't be very strong if he was applying for custody). So he has to clothe the boy, which he does happilly, even if it means going without food for a few days. However, his benefits got stopped when it was discovered that he was selling the Big Issue, and now he's in more trouble than ever. It seems that people like him will
never be fully supported by the system and will always face difficulties.

Begging is becoming a major problem in most cities, yet the government struggles to provide housing for all the people who need it. Generous donations by kind-hearted people will only go so far to provide for the homeless, and charities can only do so much. Ignoring the problem will only lead to it's growth, and maybe through desperation many homeless people will be lead to commit crimes. The government needs to act if they don't want this problem to escalate.

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