I still feel bad about the beggar I ignored years ago.
Fear of being mugged while fumbling for money has often kept me walking past beggars. But on that occasion I felt safe since I was with friends. Wimpishly, I took my cue from them. Later we compared notes - we’d all felt a strong urge to give.
Some of us never give, others always do, and, some like me, agonise, summoning instinct to make snap decisions, then fretting we’ve made the wrong ones.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should always walk on by, though reasons to give freely tug at my heartstrings.
Contrary to urban myth, those asking for money usually don’t make rich pickings, as television presenter Jeremy Kyle has just found out. He went undercover with a homeless man, huddling in a Manchester doorway behind a sign asking for help. After four hours, during which two hundred people passed by, all they got was £4.
Aggressive beggars and con artists deliberately dressing down for sympathy are a scourge on our streets and sap sympathy for the others. However, isn’t it better to be ripped-off occasionally by a professional, than fail to help a needy person?
In my ears ring the words of a friend who always gives because he says it costs a beggar more emotionally to beg than it costs a giver to give. He keeps change in his pocket ready to dole out.
I believe in 'there but for the grace of god go I'. If life had dealt me different cards, it could be me begging. I once met a street person who’d been a doctor. After his family was killed in an accident he started drinking and had nobody to halt his downward spiral.
Giving to charity, rather than individuals, helps more than one person, and charities can tackle complex and interrelated problems such as mental illness and drug use. But they cannot immediately help the person suffering in front of you.
And what if some money goes on booze or drugs to dull the edges of hard life on the streets, where the weather is cruel and people are crueller? Who are we to judge? Even Pope Francis recently said we should give to beggars 'without thought', reminding us that we also secretly spend money on guilty pleasures.
But giving to beggars is not benign. Councils, the police, and charities say most beggars are addicts. By giving we are harming them and putting money into the pockets of drug dealers.
London charity Thames Reach says, bluntly, that frontline homelessness charities like itself are in no doubt that money given to beggars is 'invariably, spent on heroin and crack cocaine'. Note the word 'invariably'. Chillingly, the charity says it knows cases where a 'significant' portion of the money spent on drugs by people who have died from overdoses was from donations of loose change.
Here we must distinguish between beggars who usually have some sort of roof over their heads, and the soaring number of homeless rough sleepers. Most rough sleepers try to keep warm inside where possible during the day, and aren’t on the streets begging. And most aren’t addicts.
Beggars are trapped in a desperate cycle of begging from us, then scoring drugs. If we refuse them money we may help break that cycle and maybe even encourage them to seek help.
Addicts need real change, not spare change. But that doesn’t stop me worrying about beggars aren’t addicts who could benefit from my coppers. And even addicts have to eat. Charities have limited resources and rules. They can’t reach everyone.
So how about, when we’ve time, buying street people food? My first experience doing that didn’t go well. A woman asked for money to buy a sandwich. I’d no cash so I bought her one. She told me to f**k off.
Recently I bought a guy asking for food a sandwich and a bun. I added the bun - just because he was dependent on others didn’t mean he shouldn’t have a treat. He said thank you.
Maybe we should carry addresses of charities in our pockets to give out, and phone them if we see someone looking particularly desperate.
We could ask beggars what would make their lives better. Socks? An old sweater? Even a 'hello' and looking them in the eye could make a difference.
Not giving money doesn’t mean not helping. But I still wish I’d given money to that guy years ago.
Lynne Bateson is a freelance writer and journalist. She was a national newspaper financial editor and consumer columnist.