Once or twice in your life, you may have experienced someone asking you for money. Whether it be from walking car-to-car carrying a sign that says something like ‘Homeless and Hungry God Bless.’ When you see these types of people you might wonder if this person is lying, if this person is trying to just make a quick buck, or with the children they might be using for begging are being used as an ornament.
Sadly, whenever money is involved, there are bound to be some scammers out there trying to make an easy buck. This causes some people to become skeptical of such things, it is a problem especially in Downtown Atlanta. In downtown, you can see a bunch of people on the street trying to get someone to listen to their sad tale on how they ended up homeless and if that person could help them.
It becomes a problem whenever the panhandler involves their children in the situation where they ask for money. It is wrong to use your child for any reason to earn money. The panhandler involving their children knows that bringing them into this would give them sympathy points to the people walking down the street. They would see the cardboard sign probably stating that they have children, and they are homeless. And the most infuriating part is, you do not know if the person is scamming you or not.
Panhandlers can affect students at the Atlanta campus. Sadly, when you first enter college, some people do not understand the person could be lying. By giving these people money every time it could cause the student to struggle financially. At the downtown campus, a lot of the homeless people roam the campus usually having their stuff in shopping carts moving from one place to another.
In a perfect world, the people who ask for help are 100% telling the absolute truth. But it is not a perfect world, people lie, especially if it is about money so it is not safe to give money every time you see someone asking for it. It is harder to trust someone when they target naïve people. It could most likely be one of the college students which causes them to suffer financially.
It is getting harder and harder to trust people when they ask for help due to these panhandling scams. Especially if you know that they target college students that might look a bit naïve in life who expect that the people are always doing good by the law. But if that were the case criminals would not exist, everyone would have some sort of stability in their life.
For the next time you are considering helping someone try examining their clothes, possessions, or anything that might give away that they are lying. If they are carrying the latest iPhone, have clean clothes, or expensive looking watches most likely they are lying to you.
