It happened again, this time at a busy intersection. A middle age man walked up to me, with change in his right palm, he asked, "you have some change?", he explained that he needs to eat, no, not only him, he and his fiancée need to eat. I looked at him, his face is red, probably from the sun, he is also holding some kind of device in his left hand.
Last night, I ran into a lady by 7-11, she was holding a bike helmet, claiming she needed a ride to 2 blocks away, she said she has been tricked by 2 men who said they would take her for beer, but instead took her last $10. She needed to get to her bike. This Caucasian lady actually said in Cantonese, "I am not going to rob you". Of course, I didn't take her. She did not have helmet hair...
"I am diabetic and bipolar", the man added, and he pointed at his heart.
The pedestrians around me either pretended not to be interested, or were looking at my reaction.
I must have looked puzzled, some of things he said don't make sense, how can a man asking for change on a street corner have a fiancée? From the man's desperate face, maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe the device is for dialysis, I have a grandmother who needs dialysis...
I could have given him some change, my left hand can feel the toonies/loonies in my left pants pocket. I always have, in the past. Especially the time when I was working in downtown area, in the 5 min walk from bus station to office, panhandlers are frequent encounters.
They always had different reasons, they were lost, they need bus fare, I usually gave them a dollar or two. They walked away. I usually never saw them again.
Until a time, when the same lady who claimed to be lost a few weeks before, asked me for change for "bus fare". I shook my head and walked away. I felt awful...
This time, I bit my lip, shook my head, looked away and walked away. I felt awful...
9 comments:
You did the right thing by walking away. Giving to the panhandlers only contributes to the problem, not solving it. Most beggers make better than minimum wage and they pay no taxes...
This is such a big problem in Vancouver... and only after living elsewhere have I come to realize that not every large city has such a problem with pandhandlers and poverty.
What I usually do is give money to charitable organizations that provide shelter or food for homeless people instead of giving directly to them... I do this to try to avoid feeding the drug problems in Vancouver.
While Anonymous is right that it doesn't solve the problem, it's also a bit cruel to assume that they are making good money. I really doubt that any of us would make the choice to panhandle just because we will "pay no taxes."
Many of the people on the streets in Vancouver are the casualties of the de-institutionalization efforts in the 80s and 90s of taking mentally patients out of mental hospitals and just putting them into the streets with no support and no follow-up therapy. Many of these people are mentally and physically ill and should not be living on their own.
Lamb, I'm glad that it made you think, because it means that you have a good heart. I hope enough people start putting pressure on the government to acknowledge this problem.
I agree that giving money to them doesn't solve the problem, 所謂救急不救貧, I have heard the argument with drug addicts and mentally illed, society shouldn't give up on them, but when u blend in the people who don't belong in either group, it becomes a much messier political issue.
Btw, how's life over there, miss cotton?
Life is good :)
How's life over in the ol' six-oh-four?
And yeah, I fully agree. It's a mess of an issue. What needs to be done is to get the people who need medical help *off* the streets, and then deal with the others.
I thought the pro-Olympic people were saying that the Games would fix everything... -_-"
I apologize if I made it sound like all these panhandlers are making good money and avoiding taxes. and I doubt they made the conscience choice to becoming one. My point is - giving them money doesn't help solve the problem. A good population of them use the money to feed whatever addiction they have. And it has been proven that some do live an ok life panhandling that it's better than working hard at a minimum wage job.
It makes me sad that 20 something year old, totally capable of finding a job and making a living, chooses to stand at the street corner, begging for free hand outs from you and I and the government...
@ Anonymous:
Yeah, I agree that some of these people are healthy and able to work. It's worth pondering and finding out what the reasons are behind their homelessness/panhandling. I suspect that the hurdles to getting a job and the wages paid simply aren't worth it for them.
I'm also a twentysomething and I really don't know if I'd want to work in Vancouver. It's a tough market for young people, especially with the paltry wages that are offered.
wow, this turns into a good discussion of social issues.
Although I wouldn't believe what Pro-Olympic ppl were saying about the poverty issues. I still think that the Olympic was one of the best experience I had. Seeing the waving flags, that is a good feeling.
Come to think of it, doesn't Olympic draw in more panhandlers? since Vancouver is becoming a more popular destination.
With the crazy housing prices, tough job markets, Vancouver is still the best place to live in my opinion. If one has to resort to panhandling by choice, then we definitely should not support them.
I must disagree about Vancouver being the best place to live. I believed in all that until two years ago when I left, and then it was exposed as the simplistic advertising slogan that I feel it is. My friends who also left to live abroad came to the same conclusion.
There are so many problems that I don't even know where to begin: gang violence, drugs, inequalities, subtle segregation, DTES, etc. Even simple things like the safety of taking public transportation. Neither in Japan, Taiwan, nor Europe have I ever felt the fear that I do taking the Skytrain through central Surrey.
That said, I can see why many people would feel that it is a good place to live, and I once also felt that way myself. I'm really not shooting down your opinion, Lamb, because I know that a lot of people feel that way. It really depends on where in Vancouver you live, your age, your political leanings, and your income bracket, I think. Vancouver definitely has a lot of good things going for it, but it needs to clean up its act for the "world-class" label it keeps applying to itself.
There are some particularly strange things going on in the Asian-Canadian community that people simply just aren't dealing with...
I am pretty lucky to have the chance to visit many places in the world, maybe I never stayed long enough to really appreciate any places, but I still come to to the conclusion that Vancouver is a great place.
Even though I cannot afford to buy a place, I don't think there is a better place to live.
All the things u said, are part of a growing city, and eventually Vancouver will lose itself among these social problems. It hasn't yet, at least to me.
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