Puppies for panhandlers

I don’t really know what to make of this: starting 1 August, the City of San Francisco is going to try to stop people from panhandling by paying them to adopt shelter dogs.

Here's what concerns me about this story: “The applicants must…show they’re not severely mentally ill, aren’t hoarders, don’t have a history of violence & are seeking treatment if they have addictions.” Who decides the severity of mental illness? Shelter animals can be pretty stressed & have all sorts of behavior & socialization problems. I’m not sure I could handle one right now; are the barely out-of-homelessness going to be mellow enough for it?

Plus—the last few times I’ve adopted shelter cats, I practically had to prove membership in the DAR with respect to my moral rectitude & ability to pay for the animal’s veterinary care. How do the panhandler set pass such requirements? What does "seeking treatment" mean? & what kind of addictions? 

I'm pretty sure that the Montgomery County shelter came close to wanting to know how many glasses of wine I had per week; now addictions are okay? Are they weighting the scales toward this category of unemployed over the employed?

Finally, frankly, even though they say they’ll remove any dog found being a party to panhandling, I don’t know how they’ll ever enforce that. They don’t police the begging to begin with, & a sizable number of panhandlers use their dogs as a prop or sympathy ploy. (There’s a woman at the Sunnyvale Safeway who has her shopping cart, her sign & her dog out there a lot. She seems to specialize in rainy weather.) I just don’t see how the cops are going to distinguish between a non-shelter panhandling pup & a shelter one.

Plus, I'm betting these guys make heaps more than the $50-$75 per week this program is going to pay. I can't imagine they'd forgo the enhanced revenue-driving capability that having a dog would bring, especially if they know they're going to get the base salary (so to speak) that pays for the puppy chow.

But I guess we’ll see.