Three common panhandling stories demystified

Whether you’re a closet fan, or guard the remote at 4:00 every weekday, you may have caught (or heard about) the Oprah episode where she gave $100,000 to a homeless man. In case you missed it like I did (I read about it later though), the producers had cameramen follow him around to watch how he spent all this money. To the every day viewer, the results may have come as a big disappointment. If you saw it, you may have wanted it to turn out like Extreme Home Makeover where they march in and save the day by building the family a brand new house, and reveal it with a big dramatic ending involving a semi-truck and kids jumping on their new drivable race car beds. But instead, the guy rented himself an apartment, bought a $32,000 truck, then proceeded to take his friends to car dealerships and let them pick out the car they wanted that he would pay for. He bought some more stuff, and gave money away, and sooner than later ended up back on the streets where he started.

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