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wasoxygen · 3096 days ago · link · · parent · post: Don’t Feed the Homeless, It Only Encourages Them
- “If you give cash out on the street, generally about 93 percent of it goes to alcohol, drugs and prostitution.”
[citation needed]
I almost feel like the assertion that you can make enough income panhandling to be able to spend 13 times as much on recreation as you do on food debunks itself.
- I consulted with 6 of America's foremost institutions and experts in the field of homelessness. None of them knew of any data that would substantiate that 93% claim. I could only find one survey, conducted recently in San Francisco. It asked 146 panhandlers what they spent their money on. 94% said they used some of the money for food, while only 44% said they used some of the money for alcohol or drugs (undoubtedly a much smaller figure than among housed people). That's 44% who spent even a nickel on alcohol or drugs, not 93% of their money.
After finding no published evidence to support Marbut's figures, I interviewed Marbut himself. He acknowledged that his 93% figure was not based on anything he had read. Instead, he said, he came up with that figure through his own research....