As the director of North Platte’s homeless shelter, I am frequently asked for my opinion on how people should respond to panhandlers. I affirm what assistant police chief Jim Agler is quoted as saying in The Telegraph on June 14. He’s right: “These transients go where the money is.”

These days, panhandling is, in my opinion, a business that has some of the characteristics of any other successful business: persistence, marketing, a niche, a clever angle, and a product. So what is the product ? They want you to buy a warm fuzzy feeling for having helped someone in need.

Well, you may get the warm fuzzy feeling, but you have probably not helped someone in need, so you have essentially been ripped off. People who are in desperate straits readily come to service providers like the Rape & Domestic Abuse Program, The Connection homeless shelter, Mid Nebraska Community Action, The Salvation Army and others. They give their names, tell us their situations and accept an appropriate level of accountability. They are grateful, and the help we give them actually makes a difference.

The panhandlers you see over and over again on the street corners are not like that. I know many of them personally because we have asked them to leave the shelter (shelter residents are not allowed to panhandle). They are counting on your sympathy and on your lack of interest in what they do with the funds you give them.  Their business model is, “Give us some money, take your ‘warm fuzzy’ for the day, and don’t look back.”

I personally do not support that approach. If someone sells me an implied sense that my money will make their life better, and then they just blow my money on things that do not improve their lives, I quit buying. I’ll buy my warm fuzzies elsewhere.

I would happily support signs at the entrances to our city that say, “We help panhandlers through our local agencies.” Further, I would urge you to go to the shelter’s website, www.theconnectionnp.com and download a page of business cards that direct panhandlers to The Connection or The Salvation Army. Hand those out instead of money and I predict that the number of panhandlers will decrease, in part because some panhandlers will go to the agencies, and in part because panhandlers will decide it's not worth it to stand beside the road with a sign. Of course there’s a good chance they’ll throw the cards on the ground, but hey, we can just pick them up and recycle them.

I would also be in favor of enforcing the law that says it is illegal to camp down by the river. Get rid of the tents and shelters down there, and we will go a long way toward solving the problem.

If we shut down their business by not supporting it, and instead put our money where it really does some good, not only will the people in real need be better served, but our city’s image will too.

I did not write this because I don’t care about the poor and needy. I wrote it because I do.