Panhandling: Telling the Difference by Joshua Stamer

It has happened to everyone at one point or another. Walking down a Staten Island street you see a man who appears less fortunate. He then either has a sign saying he needs help, or he may even just ask for ask for money. Awareness has been raised on these situations, since in the news there has been multiple documents of panhandlers who are scamming people, and made a lot of money from their actions. So the concern for Staten Island people has now become, do we cold-heartedly turn down people who seemingly need help ? or do we provide our hard earned money (even if it's loose change) to people who could be scamming us ? A Port Richmond senior named Ryan said “ The Fakers are spoiling it for the people who actually need help. If I see someone who needs help I would give them the money. If they are faking, then they have to live with that. “ Perhaps the most difficult part of this entire situation is telling the difference between people who actually need help, and the posers. Another student named Amanda stated, “ I ignore the panhandlers, I don't want to waste my money that I work for.” Since there is no real accurate way of telling the phony  from the genuine, I have come up with a new solution. Whenever, a panhandler, asks for help, you could provide him with food instead of money. While money is an important part of anyone's life, it is not edible, and the homeless people cannot eat money.  “ I am always considerate to panhandlers since I know that sometimes people really need help. But there are times where people use children to beg for money or use the money for drugs so I try to supply food instead.” Said Mrs. Baptiste a tenured Port Richmond Trigonometry teacher.   If you are one of the people who wants to help the needy, providing a protein or granola bar would be a big help. They usually cost around 50 cents and you wouldn’t have to feel any guilt of not helping someone in need. If more people were to do this, scammers would be really upset at the end of the day when they end up with 50 granola bars, instead of 50 dollars.