I've always had quite an issue when it comes to homeless people and beggars. My genuine consensus has generally been fuck them.
While there are certaily some people who are homeless because there is no other option, part of the greater truth is that they are homeless because they chose to be. We (i) and others do our best to offer as many jobs as we can to local homeless folk to get them back on their feet, but they generally say fuck it, they simply cannot be buggered with a 20-40 hour work week. In the UK a huge number of folk say fuck work and that lot, easier just to claim benefits and take the money and get fucked up on hard drugs, they have no desire to maintain a job and make something of their life. As i say, there are people who are homeless through no choice of their own, but here, a huge number of the homeless are homeless because they have absolute no desire to change it for the "better". Most days i can look outside of my windows and see 2 homeless people who live in tents in the woods, sat in the churchyard, pissed out of their minds on bargain booze and smoking joints and such, and they have no issue with it, they actively turn down offers of work and such. While i do what i can for them, be it having a long chat with them or buying them some groceries, i have a very hard time feeling sympathy for their situation for the sole fact that they actively chose that situation. At times i can't say i blame them, to have a roof over ones head means to be a slave to your governemtn, that holds no appeal to me, i often wish to just fuck off with a tent and say fuck you governemtn with your council taxes and this and that, i'll just sleep in a tent and get fucked up on some cider and some weed and just live my life a free man, not a slave.