Shielded

This is something that I see from time to time with panhandlers in the area; they tuck their heads down behind the tops of their signs, so that their faces cannot be seen from the front. I've always presumed that it's simple fatigue; most of the panhandlers I encounter are attentive for people coming towards them, in order to actively ask for money, especially in a situation like this, where his positioning places him on the passenger side of a car leaving the parking lot. But I can't presume to know.

For as long as I've been out here (which by this point is the majority of my adult life), the Seattle area has always struck me as having a large number of homeless and/or destitute people. The expansion of the technology sector in the area, along with stagnation in homebuilding, has only made things worse. Developers are building apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums, but the market still encourages them to chase higher-end customers, so the less-well-off are left out in the cold (and, in this part of the country, the rain).

As is often the case, the perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to solutions, if for no other reason than good solutions require trade-offs. And since those trade-offs typically impact either perceived quality of life or the equity that people have in their homes, they tend to be deal-breakers. It's easy to forget that even a housing crisis has clear winners. And so, the panhandlers remain. They may drift around from place to place, but they're almost always around somewhere. Even if they don't always show their faces.