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Panhandlers

On the way to a ballet performance recently, Piper and her mom encountered a depressed-looking young man with a sign "Out of a Job, Anything Will Help." All Piper had was a bag of Gummi Bears, and she decided to give them to him. Heidi secretly worried that the guy would scoff. But when he got the little bag of candies, he was so happy.

There are more panhandlers on the street, and interestingly, most of what they really want is food. Inspired in part by stories of how homeless people choose to spend money on free credit cards, we've decided to stock up on some goods to keep in our car to give away to highway-side panhandlers.

Our items:

• Boxes of granola bars and other food bars from Costco. If you give a panhandler cash, they will spend the money at McDonalds. As affluent middle-class suburbanites, we can get much more food for the same dollar at Costco.
• Socks. Really down in the dumps homeless people love a pair of dry socks.

Posted by David at September 16, 2010 06:51 PM