Strange

Want to beg - you’ll need a note!

by matte | March 1, 2008 at 05:28 pm

687 views | 5 Recommendations | 7 comments

Seems like a move to increase paperwork - but at least the panhandlers will have a good excuse to get out of the cold and go into the mall...

Beggers in the US city of Lacey will now have to get a written note from property owners before begging in their driveways.

While initially limited to larger supermarket and shopping centers the practice could soon see smelly, grimey people knocking on doors all over the city.

Evidently the change was needed because the oddly named practice of ‘panhandling’ at the corner of a busy shopping center driveway where queues of economically non-challenged people with trunks laden with nutritious food and fragrant soaps can be found, raises the risk of a rear-end collision when .....

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Amy Judd

at 17:30 on March 1st, 2008

What an interesting and strange story! I've never heard of anything like it!

matte

at 17:38 on March 1st, 2008

Indeed, with social security why allow begging at all?

Barry ORegan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 22:01 on March 1st, 2008

Matte, this is great stuff, "Hell". Vancouver should do this as well downtown, of course the Panhandlers will certainly face big challenges in Chinatown where most business owners don't speak a Lick of English, but damn it would be fun to watch them try and get these business owners to sign off a permission note.

But then City Council is always trying to find unique ways to spend taxpayers money, instead of putting it into soup kitchens.

matte

at 22:02 on March 1st, 2008

I think in many places around the world - but why is it so evident in the econoomic powrhouse of the world?.

Interestingly, do don't see it in London, it is rife in Paris (Eastern Europeans mainly) and virtually non existant in Australia

Barry ORegan

at 22:11 on March 1st, 2008

Perhaps the pickings are not as good in the down under region.

I put it this way, when I see able bodied young adults swarming the streets, with their Doc Martens and gold or silver fishing tackle firmly affixed to every patch of skin on their face or expensive tattoos, and a pit bull or other animal such as a kitten with them, it says to me, don't bait me with sympathy with an animal and two, if you do not wish to earn a living and conform to society, then do not ask for spare change, from a society you have no qualms of asking for money from this same society you abhor. I certainly have no sympathy for them. Where as the elderly when I asses are not druggies and in their twilight years certainly is a sad state and allows me to give them a few bucks whether they ask for it or not as I do not understand their situation.

mtippett

at 23:58 on March 1st, 2008

'Beggars' is not a word that gets used very often. The few people I've ever talked to who were homeless were usually there as a result of circumstances beyond their control (i.e. violence at home etc.). Seems like an easy and unfair group to pick on.