There is already some excellent writing about why you rather should not give a meal or some money to the person you’re randomly meeting on the street.
“A few weeks ago, I stopped and observed a beggar who looked quite a bit like Mother Theresa. She had a small picture of Jesus in front of her. When people walked past, she bowed her head, folded her hands, prayed, and made sure to mention “Jesus Christ” in her prayer. About one in six gave her money. If the average giver gave her 50 cents, and 10–15 people passed her every minute, she got $50 to $70 per hour. If you give money to beggars on impulse, chances are that you end up giving to the Mother Theresa look-alikes (and their equivalents), not to the poor men and women whose appearances have less power to elicit sympathy and guilt in people passing by and who occupy less favourable spots in the city.”
There are numerous organisations for example in Berlin, where homeless people can sleep, get food, keep warm during the day and get psychological support. By giving them a meal and/or money, you keep them away from these shelters and proper help.
MrBeast, one of the most successful YouTubers ever-ever, announced for the last 3 years, that his one of his end goals of getting all the attention on YouTube, is to help the homeless. In 2020 & 2021 he stated he would like to “open hundreds of homeless shelters/food banks”.
In 2022, he not only had food or temporary shelters in mind to help the homeless. But to “build houses for the homeless”. Which is smart, because this is a known measure to reduce homelessness. Some cities have “solved homelessness”. Like Vienna and Helsinki, which introduced a “housing first scheme” to provide the homeless with permanent housing.
This is possible because, for example in Vienna, the government owns enough housing. So the city doesn’t rely on private landlords considering homeless people while having many other applicants who are less likely to cause trouble.
So MrBeast may be better off building flats and giving them to the homeless. Cities would also do this if they (1) had the money to build new affordable housing plus (2) the space to do so – which is often not the case.
But is it really the case that there are not enough existing affordable flats in the world? How many people need to live in cities? What percentage of people is really the happiest living in cities? Maybe to decrease the competition for flats in cities, other locations with existing affordable flats can become much more attractive? Maybe the homelessness problem is to some degree an attention problem because people are not yet aware of new attractive locations?
“A dollar given to a beggar is a dollar not given to a starving child in Sub-Saharan Africa. So why should you prioritise the beggar in the Western world over the starving child in Africa?”
There is this nice thought experiment that asks why you would save a drowning child in a pond next to you, but not the starving child in Africa (3 minutes long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EHnUsV1J2M
Then how can I feed hungry children in Africa? Elon once asked the CEO of the World Food Programme (WFP) if he could provide a detailed plan on how to effectively solve world hunger with $6B.