What’s the point, from your point of view, of the homeless newspapers?
To me it’s always seemed like mostly a way to regulate begging, and also to let both parties pretend it isn’t begging. And in the best case maybe it’s therapeutic for people to write for them.
But it doesn’t seem like anyone reads these, and I wonder, are the other effects worth the cost / effort?
It's the best way to get them out of homelessness. It's not begging at all.
They have to buy all the papers they are distributing in advance. It's a financial risk. But a good income, if you've got a good location.
Most homeless in western european countries come either from losing their job and having drug problems, or losing their wifes and thereby homes. The many eastern homeless cross the borders because they can live much better by begging on the streets here than in the east. But there are plenty of homeless, squatters there also. Eg nost of the abandoned village houses in the east were subsequently squatted by gypsies. The city center in Bucuresti is also full of homeless. When writing a book about homeless over the world in the US and Russia, the problems were the same, just that in the USA there's a homeless shipping industry to get them out of the city, but they still prefer the warm south where it's easy to survive. Who wouldn't. Even the rich old folks prefer Florida over NY. Just politicians and police are more inhuman there.