If anyone else set up a table to make money on the street corner , most cities would immediately pounce on you for permits and compliance regulations
These people who stand in intersections are no different. They are there to make money.
The cities should tell them they need permits to stand there and start hitting them with fees and regulations like they do any business.
Keep Austin Weired and kindly contain the infection.lol. All smart folks are moving to Cowtown. Everybody up here packs and we don’t take much sheet off any smart mouth yankee hippies. Now in some areas the family trees look more like a post but that’s mainly in White Settlement from what I heard from an boy who tried to keep them
Straight for quite a while.
When I was 18 I had my vehicle towed in S. Padre during a beach camping trip. This was before the advent of cell phones and since we were low on cash after riding around in a taxi looking for my Jeep me and my buddy was up a creek. It took the better part of a day to locate my vehicle and later that evening an older couple pulls up where we’re sitting on the curb and asks if we had any luck getting in touch with anyone to which I replied no. Id seen them earlier that day inside while I was talked to the cashier and they knew the back story to what was going on. They took me inside, paid the bill, and left. As I was driving out the gate the cop that was working the guard shack gave me a hundred dollar bill and said the couple asked him to give it to me in case I needed it.
I’ve found that a nice smile while growling a polite No(with a look of a smoldering death awaits you burning from my eyes) usually works quite satisfactory.
Decades ago there used to be what we called "beggars". Folks down on their luck askin for change on the corner etc. Nowadays its an organized business. I can show you at least one location in Houston that I visited when I was installing CATV. They had about 6 units at the storage building place with all the walls knocked out. Picnic tables to organize folks, room for about 50, signs hanging on all the walls (gimme money signs on cardboard) , and a cage for check in and check out with those little airport busses runnin folks in and out to their locations.
I just say - no but thanks. I have compassion and give a lot, just not to street people. So many organizations can help IF they want it but most do not.
Knew a guy who always gave them money. His grandfather told him that God sometimes sent angels to test people by looking like bums.
Back in my pipeline days, we had a foreman at a compressor station that was very religious, deacon in his church, etc. and every so often he had to come to Houston and stay over for some meeting or training. He was a huge guy - shot-put champion in college - and a big outdoorsman. He hated staying in Houston like most people would hate staying in jail. One night he took a walk and of course got set on by a street person. The foreman told him, "I won't give you money to buy drugs, but I'll never let a man go hungry." He marched the bum to the McDonalds over his protests and bought him a meal. He sat with the bum while he ate, and when the guy was finished, he bought him a meal to take with him.
When I was going through a divorce, I stayed in a low rent apartment complex. The guy next door helped another guy wrap roses to sell on the side of the road. I learned that pretty much 100% of those folks are just scam artists. They make 40 or 50 thousand a year - with no taxes - and many have cars and houses. I give them nothing.
But I did have a young Hispanic guy stop me in front of a BBQ stand in Pasadena and pointed to himself and said "Hungry, hungry." I took him in and bought him a meal and never said another word to him. I guess I liked the example of my old pipeline friend; I won't give them money for drugs, but I won't let a man go hungry either.