Article
Comment
Politics
Suffering
6 min read

Why begging ‘bothers us tremendously’

We need a public discussion on begging which avoids the unhelpful polarization between naïve compassion and harsh cynicism, argues Jon Kuhrt.

Jon Kuhrt

Jon Kuhrt is CEO of Hope into Action, a homelessness charity. He is a former government adviser on how faith groups address rough sleeping.

A beggar sits cross legged against a glass railing holding a sign.
Photo by Jean-Luc Benazet on Unsplash.

Recently I was in Birmingham New Street station when a man approached me, saying he was homeless and asking for money for food. We were right next to a Greggs so I suggested I buy him some. As there was a queue, we got talking and he said:  

‘I’m not really homeless you know, I’m just so bored and I live in a s**t-hole.’ 

For many people living or working in towns and cities, being asked for money like this is an everyday experience. It can often cause feelings of distress, guilt and confusion. What is the best way to respond to someone asking you for money? In thirty years of working with people affected by homelessness, it is by far the most common question I have been asked. 

Earlier this month, Matthew Parris wrote in The Times about his experience of giving £25 to someone begging after being told they needed money for an urgent train ticket. The following week he saw the same person using the same story and he realised that he had been suckered.  It is an experience that many of us might relate to.  

I used to be the manager of an emergency hostel for young homelessness people in Soho in central London.  Most of our residents had complex problems which were complicated and intensified by drug addiction. Begging was a key source of income.  

Some residents used the duvets that we gave them as begging props to indicate they were sleeping rough.  We would often overhear them telling passers-by that they ‘needed money to get into a hostel’.  Often, they could raise large sums of money based on their articulated need for food, accommodation or travel. But none of the money was ever used for these purposes. 

Matthew Parris is right when he writes ‘begging and sleeping rough bother us tremendously.’  They are some of the most obvious and visceral indicators of poverty and this ‘bother’ gives the issue considerable political capital. As Parris says:

'Any minister or prime minister who could associate their name with making a visible difference would reap a harvest.' 

We need a compassionate realism about the nature of the problems which surround those who beg and honesty and bravery about how best to respond. 

But as well as high profile, homelessness and begging are both very sensitive issues.  Thankfully, gone are the days in the 1980s when newspapers like The Sun would routinely describe those who sleep rough and beg as ‘dossers’. Today, the public discussion is couched far more sympathetically, but this change in tone can create difficulties in talking honestly about the reality of begging. It can be a minefield where those cautioning against giving money can easily be viewed as mean-spirited or judgmental. 

We need a public discussion on begging which avoids the unhelpful polarization between naïve compassion and harsh cynicism. Neither of these help anyone. And we should remember, that whilst we should avoid judgementalism, we cannot help people effectively without showing good judgement. We need a compassionate realism about the nature of the problems which surround those who beg and honesty and bravery about how best to respond. 

We live in a time of severe economic and housing injustice. The years of austerity, cuts to public services, the pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis have all deepened the challenges for poorer communities.  Our country urgently needs to address the chronic shortage of affordable housing.   

But does this rise in wider poverty mean that we should give money to people begging? My answer is ‘No’, because I don’t believe that it is an effective way to help people.  These are my reasons. 

The material need and physical destitution are symptoms of the deeper issues of trauma, poor mental health, broken relationships and the addictions. 

Firstly, it is important to remember that the issue of rough sleeping and begging are related but are not the same.  Many of those who beg are not sleeping rough, and the majority of homeless people do not beg.  In fact, begging has much more of a direct link with addiction or criminal gangs than it does with rough sleeping.  In the last 10 years there has been a growth in the coordinated use of immigrants, many trafficked, to beg in city centres. Your cash donation will not truly help the person. 

Secondly, we need to appreciate that immediate material resources are not the key problem for people begging. Whilst there is a deepening crisis of poverty in the UK, there are many day centres, charities and community groups offering emergency food and clothing. The material need and physical destitution are symptoms of the deeper issues of trauma, poor mental health, broken relationships and the addictions which have developed in response. These deeper problems are often compounded, rather than helped, by gaining money through begging. 

Thirdly, we need to focus on the true needs of the person begging rather than on our need to respond. Our feelings of awkwardness and guilt may be assuaged by handing over money, but this does not mean that what we have done is right. The temporary ‘feel-good feeling’ is not to be trusted.  If more people gave money to people begging then it will not result in a more just world. Allowing untruthful and manipulative behaviour to succeed in eliciting cash helps nobody. It can literally be ‘killing with kindness’. 

Fourthly, we need to recognise the lack of truth in the exchange between someone begging and a potential donor.  Often a scenario presented is designed to place emotional pressure on the hearer to do what is being asked. For example, that money is needed to pay for a hostel bed, to get a hot meal or travel money to see an ill child. But hostels and shelters for homeless people do not charge on the door - they are either free or the rent is covered by housing benefit. In my experience, the vast majority of the scenarios presented in the begging exchange are simply not true. 

Underneath these points are key principles around how we help others. Despite the retreat of Christian faith in public life, the injunction to ‘love our neighbour’ is still a foundational one in our society and culture.  And authentic love is always made up of both grace and truth. 

Our instincts to show compassion and care are part of what makes us human. We are moved and motivated by seeking to address suffering and hardship. We have a desire to show grace to those suffering.   

This does not mean being cynical. Authentic change is possible, and I see it every day. 

But this grace must remain connected to truth.  We must take responsibility for how our instinct to show grace can be manipulated.  The reason that begging is never a positive aspect of someone’s recovery journey is because it is a transaction rarely based on truth. 

We may long for a simplistic world where good intentions are enough and where all donations given in good faith are well-used, but this is not the world we live in. 

This does not mean being cynical. Authentic change is possible, and I see it every day at Hope into Action. We help people who have been homeless by offering them a quality home with both professional support and befriending in partnership with a local church. Last year we housed over 400 people and it’s a privilege to walk with people and help them on their journey of recovery. One of our tenants said to me: 

‘Hope into Action didn’t just give me a ladder to get out of situation, they showed me how to build my own staircase.’ 

The best services for homeless people show grace in their acceptance and welcome, but from this base they explore the truth about the challenges people face. And truth is a key ingredient in all effective recovery, counselling and rehabilitation programmes.  

Change is possible but truth is always a critical ingredient. It’s the truth that sets people free.   

 

How should we respond to someone begging? 

  • When someone begs from you, look them in the eye when you respond and speak as confidently as you can. 

  • If you have time, stop and talk with them. Ask them their first name and share yours. 

  • If you have the time and money, offer to buy them a cup of tea, or some food. 

  • Research what drop-in centres, charities or churches are open for vulnerable people in the area where you live or work. Knowing what is available allows you to ask the person if they know about these and whether they have used them.  

  • If you are worried about the vulnerability of someone sleeping rough then contact Street Link on 0300 500 0914 to inform them. This is a coordinated phone line which informs the local homeless outreach teams. 

  

Related articles

Article
Comment
Politics
5 min read

Politics needs some deep stirring emotion

In politics, the struggle between our reason and desire is a fair fight.
A young woman in a blue suit stands at a wooden box in a parliamentary debating chamber looking upward while speaking.
British Youth Council parliamentary debate.
British Youth Council.

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.” So goes the famous quote, variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Joseph de Maistre and George Bernard Shaw. Of all these thinkers, Maistre is perhaps the most interesting, describing the business of government as a kind of religion, a political “faith” – one complete with dogmas, mysteries and even ministers.  

Maistre was, somewhat surprisingly amid the turmoil of eighteenth-century France, a staunch monarchist. His argument was that, if the authority of a political leader was only a product of social convention, then that authority would always lack a sufficient degree of legitimacy, leaving the door wide open for violence and strife. His solution was to defend the divine right of kings. This was a controversial position, as much then as it is now.  

Aside from his famous quote about elections, Maistre’s political philosophy is oft-criticised as polemical, hearkening back to a golden era of European monarchy that never really existed. Nevertheless, within his writings, Maistre laid bare a reality that we often prefer to keep veiled: that our political will is as much about what we find to be emotionally compelling as it is about what we find to be rationally convincing, indeed, the latter is very much dependent on the former. The more social scientists are able to demonstrate the reality of subtle phenomena such as confirmation bias, unconscious bias, and racial prejudice, the more we see that we are often being governed by pre-cognitive or non-cognitive instincts, even those of us who like to think that we are better than that. In the end, we have to concede that when it comes to politics, as with so much else, the struggle between our faculty of reason and the desire of our heart is a fair fight.  

  

“They have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.”  

Amy Buller
You may also like

In 1930’s Europe, there was certainly a lot of emotionally compelling politics around. Fascinated by the language and culture of the German people, thinker and educator Amy Buller made repeated visits to Germany from the 1920’s onwards, often accompanied by reading parties of British academics, church leaders and university students. In those decades, as the political landscape of Germany began to shift, her purpose became less about countryside walks and studying, and more about the facilitation of urgent, open and honest dialogue between Buller, her fellow travellers, and their German counterparts in the churches and universities wherever she had contacts. As Hitler rose to power, and even before the full horrors of Nazism became widely known, Amy was compelled to find out why so many people, especially young people, were being attracted by what she saw as a “brutish” ideology.  

In 1943, amid the violence and destruction of World War II, Buller published a book, Darkness Over Germany, which gives a first-hand account of the many people that she and her travelling parties had met, and the conversations that had taken place. Like Maistre, Buller proposed that without God, politics was a dangerous kind of faith in something, one that tended towards violence. In the introduction to her book she writes of “…the tragedy of a whole generation of German youth, who, having no faith, made Nazism their religion.”  

It’s common these days to hear complaints about the political apathy of the young, with polls commonly reporting that only about 50 per cent of British 18 to 24-year-olds are intending to vote in the next General Election. However, there are those who raise the caution that this may not be a symptom of apathy, so much as a symptom of the cultural and structural injustices that put barriers in the way of young people engaging with our nation’s political life. Young people are not likely to “believe in” a political system from which they feel excluded. As Buller’s writing notes – when this happens, young people are likely to put their “faith” in something else.   

Maistre’s solution was perhaps too extreme for modern sensibilities: asking the politically minded populace to believe that their leaders were imbued with the authority of God, by God. In the twentieth-century, Buller took a more moderate view. As the Nazis began to view her with suspicion, trips to Germany became increasingly difficult to arrange, so she travelled elsewhere to places such as Hungary and Bulgaria. Wherever Buller went, she found more and more young people who wanted to talk to her about their political hopes and ideals. Summarising the whole, Buller suggested that Europe’s political landscape was eschewing “shallow rationalism” and instead being shaken by a “deep stirring” of emotion, particularly among young people. She recorded the observation: 

“They all want change, and they all want a chance to play a part in that change, but so few have any religious faith, which means that they have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.” 

In a recent report, published by the Jo Cox Foundation, increasing the public’s “political literacy” was highlighted as a key response to prevent the outbreaks of abuse, intimidation and violence towards elected officials. As any educator will tell you, literacy is a two-way street – it includes not only the “shallow rationalism” of knowing information, or knowing where to access information, but also the ability to communicate that information effectively to others. Such communication comes from a much deeper, embodied kind of knowing, one which requires one to have assimilated knowledge and worked with it, feeling its malleability, and testing its apparent truth-claims against an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong.  

For Buller, this internal standard was inextricably linked to faith. To the end of her life, she remained open minded as to what form this faith might take, albeit her own religious practice was firmly Christian. Cumberland Lodge, the educational charity she set up to promote her aims, was from the start open to those of all faiths and none, and she warmly welcomed dialogue between those of different faith groups, including atheism. But in 1943, as Amy Buller looked with hope towards the prospect of a post-war Europe, she summed up the political landscape as follows:  

We are now faced with the greater task of bringing healing to the nations, including our own, I am convinced this cannot be done without a faith in God adequate to the tremendous task of reconstruction.  

Given Amy Buller’s open-mindedness, one can read the word “God” in this statement its broadest possible sense, as referring to whatever moral compass one takes as an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong. But the point remains that the political will is therefore not a matter of rational thought, or not only of that, but is an expression of feelings and instincts that run far, far deeper.  

Related articles

Related topics
Politics