My answer

In most counties whether it be Britain. America. Australia Africa, there will always be people out to get what they can when people show compassion. The vast majority are just like you and me they want a home, they want work and if they suffer from some affliction like addiction they want help and need it. Just because we see it everyday doesn't mean we have to become immune to it. I get the feeling that there is something beyond your unwillingness to have compassion for someone else. I get the feeling that your not telling me everything.
In this country the emphasis has now turned to people who have unsettled ways of life and temp accommodation and need help getting work or permanent accommodation so they can intergrate themselves back into main stream society. We don't want to see people living on the street. We don't want the conmen either but the choice to give money to someone on the street is down to the individual no one forces them to. There's no law that says you can't say no, but it's what we call compassion when you do and maybe that little you give might just be their turning point. I spent over thirty years living on the street and an addict. So in a sense I was your worst nightmare. I was that person, that bum as you call them. How do you change someone's habits of a life time? By helping them. It takes time to sort out a nations problems but we will eventually get there maybe not in our life time but it will happen one day.
We all live with regrets. I know I do and there's people I owe an awful lot to but if I go to another place say just five miles away there's a story going round that I died from an overdose. What I am saying is you shouldn't believe all you hear. Hearsay was one of the major causes of war and divorce. I can't say what your country is like because I've never been there but I do know this, that everyone has a dream in America it's called the American dream in Britain it's just a dream. But for most people it's the same dream everyone wants some place to call home, a job and for some a family. Everyone wants to smile when they meet each other. That's what I call normal. To get there is the problem and the more people that keep on saying what about me? When we can see for ourselves that there is a problem. The longer the problem will take. My advice is simple don't give money to people on the street. Give it to something that will make a difference.