Can you spare some change?
At the Circle K on Highland Road and East State Street, it’s as common of a question as “cash, credit or debit?” Are these handouts out of hand?
The 2010 Census counted nearly 1,000 homeless residents in Baton Rouge, and they seem to all congregate outside this Circle K – which is assuredly among Dante’s Circles of Hell.
It’s a vicious cycle – or circle, if you prefer. And it’s almost become ritualistic at this point, akin to paying a toll to access the store, a mecca for stoners and beggars alike.
There, a Thirst Buster runs 69 cents plus tax. Not to forget the rest of the change in your pocket.
It’s a moral dilemma, ultimately. Sure, we ought to help the needy. But are panhandlers really needy? And are handouts helping?
“I feel bad, but it’s uncomfortable,” said kinesiology sophomore Erin Schwenzfeier, who was accosted twice by the same panhandler during a recent trip to the Circle K.
Schwenzfeier doesn’t bring cash with her anymore, which makes it easier to deflect the panhandlers, she said.
Begging to differ, communications graduate student Brian Goldenberg said he doesn’t mind the vagrants.
“I’m from Orlando, where it’s a lot worse. They’re a lot more aggressive there,” he said.
Orlando’s not in the Florida Panhandle, but it might as well be.
The city has matched its vagrants’ aggressiveness with such ordinances as requiring panhandlers to obtain permits and refrain from downtown “spanging,” or spare-changing.
Baton Rouge has similarly sought to curb “aggressive panhandling and forceful begging,” according to Gabe Vicknair, director of project development for the Downtown Development District.
“We are mainly concerned with the safety of our visitors,” he said.
In January, the DDD put the bums, hobos and vagabonds of downtown Baton Rouge on notice. They proposed increased sentences and fines for panhandling, which is illegal and can result in arrest, according to Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman.
But restrictive civil ordinances are the least effective means of reining in panhandling, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report.
Most effective, the report asserts, are education campaigns discouraging the public from giving money to panhandlers: “In all likelihood, if people stopped giving money to panhandlers, panhandling would cease.”
But there’s something utterly irresistible about the pleas of a distressed human being, as music graduate student Joel Mathias attested.
Like Schwenzfeier and Goldenberg, Mathias was confronted by a panhandler outside the Circle K as he returned to his apartment from Raising Cane’s.
“‘Help a brother out,’ he said. I didn’t have any change, so I gave him a chicken finger instead,” Mathias said.
The incoherent panhandler was “probably tweaked,” he continued, “but he’s still a person. He still has to eat.”
The problem, Mathias said, is that so many panhandlers are dishonest.
There’s always a different misfortune du jour, though there’s often only one reason they’re panhandling.
“If they’d just say they wanted beer money, for example, I’d give them a buck for their honesty,” Mathias said.
But that’s never the case. Rather, panhandlers exploit humanity’s altruistic instinct – our sympathy.
Human beings are fundamentally philanthropic, which is perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the human experience: A life lived for others is ultimately a life lived for all humanity.
In turn, it is precisely this humanitarian drive that panhandlers prey upon, which is utterly condemnable.
In the end, should we find our souls moved by the ever-rattling cup of the homeless, we need only make a contribution to the agencies combatting homelessness – not to the panhandlers perpetuating it.
And that change is ultimately something we can all spare.
Phil Sweeney is a 25-year-old English senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_PhilSweeney.
 
 
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Contact Phil Sweeney at [email protected]