Homeless Thrive on Convention Attendies

Anyone who walks around the Baltimore Convention Center at Otakon can’t help but notice the in-your-face homeless people out for your money. I saw/heard one homeless man with a megaphone yelling some incoherent nonsense about ‘Jesus’ and ‘the Lord’ while holding a cup for money. Some aren’t that bad and come up to you with a joke. For example, “What’s the greatest nation in the world?” and naturally I said, “Afghanistan”, but that was somehow wrong. We gave up and he said, “A Donation” which gave us a little laugh but we still refused to give him any money since I was fairly certain he was just panhandling for unnecessary items. Later I overheard a group of homeless people on a bench ask a homeless lady if there was any beer left at which point the homeless lady exclaimed “of course!” and opened a backpack full of it. At that point, I was certain what the money was being spent on.

Moral of the story, you should generally not give homeless people your money. Money will not fix their situation because, most of the time, they are where they are because of lack of motivation and money management skills which is what they really need help with. If they really need your help, offer to buy the item they need. Doing this will expose whether their intentions are genuine or not.