When you live in the downtown core of a big city, you can easily get desensitized to the presence of disheveled and downtrodden souls begging for change on the street. When I lived in Chinatown, I was able to recognize most of the neighbourhood panhandlers by face. Once in a while I’d even stop to exchange 30 seconds of pleasantries with them. Usually, if I’ve been having a good day and I happen to have loose change in my pocket, I don’t have a problem sparing a buck or two. As a utilitarianist, my thinking is that my twooney is probably worth much more to them than it is to me.
I’ve also noticed I tend to have pronounced biases in terms of which demographics I’m more likely help out. For example, I never give change to able-bodied young people. Anyone under 30 with no discernible disabilities just doesn’t inspire any sympathy within me. I’m sure a lot of them have had it rough, but I can’t help but feel that a small percentage of them still have a bedroom in their parents’ four-bedroom house up in Richmond Hill, but they’ve voluntarily traded in the comfort of suburbia for the thrill of life on the streets in the big city.
But even if that’s not the case, I don’t see why these young people can’t just get jobs? Today I was walking down Bloor Street in Yorkville when I came across a young woman begging for change outside the Harry Rosen store. She was actually quite attractive, except for a grotesque tattoo that covered her forehead and included a thick stripe that extended down the entire bridge of her nose. This was the second time I had observed this phenomenon. Near where I go to school, there’s a guy who stands at the intersection holding up a sign asking for change from passing motorists. He looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Nothing about the guy’s would suggest that he’s unemployable, except for the Maori-style tattoos he has covering his entire face. Part of me wants to say to the guy one day, “Gee, maybe if you hadn’t gone and turned your face into a painting of a Japanese rock garden, you could get a job and stop begging people for money.”
Of course, I’m not that dismissive of everyone who asks for change. I’m especially sympathetic to older women who live on the streets. One time I gave this homeless woman a 10-dollar bill. It was a cold night and I was walking down College Street on my way to meet some friends at a bar. It was already pretty late so I was walking fast to try and salvage the night, when, off in the distance, I saw an elderly woman who I knew was either strung out or battling mental illness, because she wasn’t wearing any shoes and her feet had to be freezing (plus you don’t usually see senior citizens wandering around College and Spadina after midnight unless something is amiss). As I got closer I tried to avoid eye-contact, but curiosity, compassion and a momentary lapse in discipline caused me to glance at her as I passed by. In that moment she must have sensed weakness because as soon as she saw me look, she broke into a desperate, incoherent mumble that was obviously her version of “can you please spare some change?” At first I just kept walking but after a couple minutes I started to think of all the money I was going to waste that night on overpriced drinks I didn’t need, and my guilt forced me to turn around. When I got back to the place where we had first crossed paths, I spotted the woman inside a convenience store trying haggle the cashier into letting her take food that she clearly didn’t have the money to buy. So I walked in and dropped a 10-dollar bill on the counter and then walked back out. To this day, I feel like it was money well spent, although I haven’t been anywhere near as generous since then.
Perhaps “generous” isn’t the right word. In a sense, one could argue that I was exploiting this woman’s situation as an opportunity to assuage my own guilt about the relative privilege I’ve inherited in life, or guilt about the apathy I exhibit toward those living in poverty when that poverty isn’t on display right in front of me. This is a contingency that I’m totally comfortable with. From a utilitarian standpoint, it’s the perfect transaction because every wins. Well … sort of.
