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RE: The Homeless Pretenders.
Oha? I thought you would say it people gave them money out of their own free will (to feel better themselves of all reasons), so everything is ok.
I doubt that anyone offered work for food or asked of they were homeless, so it is not even a swindle.
I like to compare things, so:
In Germany everyone is entitled to help. So you rarely see homeless people and for most of them you not only see that they are homeless but also what their main problem is - alcohol or worse.
And then there is the sort where you don't see it, but again, since everybody can get help it is your choice if you give, you don't need to feel bad if you don't.
That's the thing you don't SEE homeless much here either. They type she was referring to that swindle people are typically panhandling. They will go with signs and sit near a busy intersection somewhere. There are not a ton of them.
Those that are there often are there for your "alcohol or worse" type of situation. I know because I have an uncle who does that. He's one of the worst alcoholics I've ever encountered.
Yet short of going and asking for VERIFICATION (which you won't get) when you are in your car trying to drive past it becomes an exchange based upon a very brief period of time so they can capitalize on that.
Sometimes their sign, demenor, etc can be quite moving and people will want to help.
There has actually been a documentary on this before where there are people making $60K+ per year doing this. The problem is due to passing in a car at an intersection, there really is no time for verification.
The best ways to verify are if you see a sign that says "will work for food", offer them some work. The fakes will generally refuse such an offer no matter the work you offer.
We do have neighborhoods with a lot of homeless people usually somewhere near the dense city locations, and sometimes they are there for purely voluntary reasons. Other times they may not be. It is hard to say again without getting the persons story and they are often very reserved about that. It also sometimes is mental illness related. Since we do tend to subsidize a lot of things in the U.S. as well it is not as though some entity could not make good money helping those people. It is not always so clear cut.