I had two encounters today that were totally different experiences...
I was walking to work under the 1st St SW underpass this morning and there were two young people (a guy and a gal) that were not exactly clean but obviously not drunks/drug addicts either (maybe travelling through though I didn't ask.) The woman asked if I had any spare change to help them buy breakfast so I stopped since I happened to have a granola bar on me that was going to be my mid-morning snack. Gave it to them and carried on. Managed to dig a granola bar out of the back of my desk at work so my own starvation was averted.
At the end of the day, I was walking back towards the same underpass (but not at it yet or this would have been even scarier.) Saw a scraggly guy approaching and prepared my usual "sorry man, I can't help you" response. But he didn't say anything...until he got right beside me and then he blurted "Spare change?" in a sort of sharp whisper. Kinda freaked me out and I just blurted "Nope!" and kept walking, my heart beating faster. Probably the most I've been freaked out by a request for change since a drunk Indian grabbed my arm and literally stopped me to ask for change just outside the Mac's at 11th Ave and 1st St. (I just clapped him on the back and gave my usual line and he let me pass without further incident.)
So to get back to the original question - when I first moved here, I was a lot quicker to hand over some change. But as I became desensitized (?) to the number of homeless people here and realised that any money I gave them more likely went to booze & drugs than to food, I resolved that I wouldn't give money very often (I judge each situation individually - sometimes if somebody has a good line, that's enough to earn a buck in my view!) but that I would always offer food if I had it on me. (The funniest offer was when I handed out big Fred Flinstone-style Tony Roma ribs to two homeless people after we ordered too much for a lunch meeting once and I was taking a near-full box back to my office with me.)
On the survey Ralph's sending out, I wish there was a box - "help the most disadvantaged people in society" and that more money would go to people on AISH ($800/month or something ridiculous), homeless people, artists, etc.
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