The city of New York will pay out a total of $15 million to the 22,000 people, many of them panhandlers, it has charged for loitering since 1983 — when the law under which they were arrested was declared unconstitutional. That works out to about $681.81 per person. Okay, fine, it’s not quit-your-job money, but it would take a lot of very generous souls in a heavily trafficked area to otherwise match that profit.
