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Schwartz: Panhandlers in Sun City don’t need our pity

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These people have “homes.” Sadly, they are located behind local restaurants, strip centers, gas stations and, new to the mix, winter visitors’ homes.

They use whatever resources they can tap into unseen or for free and don’t clean up the messes they leave behind. Most choose this lifestyle because “they don’t owe anything to anybody,” or so they say. But they don’t pay for anything either. Fellow homeowners, these people are not to be pitied! They don’t need our long-saved and hard-earned money. They need to be removed from our neighborhoods.

About 40 years ago when “street people” were turning up in large numbers in downtown Chicago, one of the local TV journalists went off the air and undercover to live with the street people there for a few months. He discovered that people begging on the street made up to $60,000-plus from unknowing, sympathetic people and their belief in Christian charity — and that was 40 years ago. They were being used just like we are.

Please, fellow homeowners, don’t facilitate this lifestyle. Save your generous giving for the agencies and organizations whose work it is to benefit the most people through their services. Understand that the “homeless” are there by choice, no matter what they may write on a piece of cardboard. I have personally seen the same people in the same locations for the last eight years or more.

These people don’t want our “help.” They just want our money. Let’s not give it to them.

Pam Schwartz

Sun City