This more or less recaps a conversation between my wife and I as we ate breakfast this morning while looking though a window at the Court House lawn in Boulder:
H: That must be a homeless guy over there. I wonder where he stays at night.
M: Is that a sleeping bag?
H: I wonder how these people can afford to be homeless in Boulder? It’s pretty expensive here.
M: Maybe they take the bus in from Louisville every day.
H: So they ride a bus here to panhandle during the day, and then go back to Louisville at night?
M: Lotta wealthy people here.
H: Yeah – I suppose they could make more money in Boulder.
M: Yeah. Lotta liberal guilt here.
Piece of Mindful 
As Michael S. Scott, the director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, says in his online article “Panhandling”:
Estimates vary from a couple of dollars (U.S.) a day on the low end, to $20 to $50 a day in the mid-range, to about $300 a day on the high end.
Women, especially those who have children with them, and panhandlers who appear to be disabled tend to receive more money. For this reason, some panhandlers pretend to be disabled and/or war veterans. Others use pets as a means of evoking sympathy from passersby. Panhandlers’ regular donors can account for up to half their receipts.
In a study of Toronto panhandlers conducted by Robit Bose and Stephen Hwang, note that
a journalist who briefly lived on the street in Toronto working as a panhandler . . . reported that panhandlers can earn more than $200 per day . . .
These differences may be partly explained by the fact that high-earning panhandlers were presumably less likely to participate in our survey, and these individuals may have formed the basis for Stackhouse’s observations.
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