Originally Posted by onwebcam

When I lived down in Palm Beach as a teen there was a millionaire who use to spend most of his time on the streets. He actually owned the building my dads bar was in. On the bad nights he would usually leave the bar and go next door to one of his other empty buildings to sleep rather than a buss stop bench or whatever. On the flip side there was also a couple who panhandled down the road and someone did an article on them and it turned out they were actually living a better than average lifestyle panhandling (condo, new cars, etc.) So yeah a wide range of people but as someone else said it's generally a mental issue, alcohol, drugs, etc combined with no family to keep an eye on them.