A woman who looks to be my age is lying on the other side of a bus shelter, not 10 minutes from the U.S. Capitol. When I draw even she raps on the shelter’s plastic windshield and says something I cannot make out. Something to do with wanting money.

I do not stop.

I usually don’t, even though not stopping makes me feel like a heartless bastard.

I have heard all the arguments for and against giving money to the homeless.

The Case For:

1. The Judge-Not Argument: If someone uses your little gift to buy some short-term relief from the unending misery of their lives, zei gezunt, as my grandmother would say. They should live and be well. It is ungenerous to give with strings attached.

2. The There-But-For-the-Grace-of-God Argument: It could be you lying in a bus shelter after a run of bad luck. In the meantime, share your good fortune.

3. The Try-a-Little-Tenderness Argument: You’re not being called upon to save the world or even this individual. But when a person asks you for help, give it if it is within your power to do so.

4. The More-to-Be-Pitied-Than-Scorned Argument: The homeless tend to be mentally ill. They are no more blameworthy for their plight than cancer patients are for theirs. Therefore they cannot be expected to hold down jobs. Therefore they deserve our compassion.

The great proponent of many of the “for” arguments is Jon Carroll, longtime columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Carroll counters social service organizations like the United Way with what he calls the Untied Way. The way it works:

Go to an ATM and withdraw a sum “sufficient for you to notice its absence. It shouldn't hurt, but maybe it should pinch a little.” Then go to a part of town where people are likely to ask you for money and give until the sum is gone.

The beauty of it, Carroll says, is that none of the money goes to organizational overhead: It all goes directly to the needy.

To those who warn that the needy will spend your donation foolishly he asks, “Have you ever spent your money foolishly? Have you ever behaved unwisely? Untied Way clients are human beings like you.”

* * * * *

The Case Against:

1. The Don’t-Be-an-Enabler Argument: The homeless know where to go for a free meal. Any money you give them will be spent on drugs or alcohol. Your money is better spent if you give it to an organization that helps the homeless.

2. The Sponges-into-Hell Argument. Where you see one homeless person you will usually see many. Even if you were to give money to all of them you will neither make a dent in the misery of those individuals nor in the problem as a whole.

3. The I’m-Not-Bill-Gates Argument. You work hard for your money. You spend it on living expenses, your children and yes, on a little bit of pleasure. Why should you give it away?

4. The Get-a-Job Argument: These people are moochers. If they want money why don’t they work for it, like the rest of us?

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez was nothing if not generous with Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless musician who became the title character of the book and movie, “The Soloist.”

But Lopez’s experiences on the streets of L.A. have taught him that the homeless need information and conversation more than they need cash. His recommendation: Find out where the homeless can go for help and talk to them about their lives. They’re human beings with stories to tell, just like the rest of us.

* * * * *

I believe in generosity, but when I see a homeless person and pretend I don’t see, or, if that’s not possible, I wave him off, I stand exposed to myself: not generous.

Despite years of interviewing strangers as a reporter and a folklorist, my response seems to come from a deeper place that professional training and practice cannot reach. That place, I suspect, is the segregated suburb where I was raised. It triggers a recoil response when I encounter anyone who is not like the people I grew up with. In most situations, I recover quickly. With the homeless, though, it’s as if their condition were contagious. Better not get too close.

But there is more to it than fear. There is also shame. This is probably the most rational part. For in a society as wealthy as ours, we should be ashamed that so many of us live on the street.

Not far from the bus shelter where the homeless woman reached out to me is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, a lovely place of manmade waterfalls and walls inscribed with some of FDR’s most ringing pronouncements. One from his Second Inaugural Address (1937) goes like this:

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

We, as society need to take those words to heart. I, as a person, need to do the same.

To instruct Russell Frank in the art of generosity, write to rfrank@psu.edu.