Back in Atlanta, my last restaurant was located in a high-end business and theatre district, across from a nice park, which homeless folk would gather in at times. Most were fine, no problems, and passers by would sometimes stop and give them money or snacks (Atlanta is a friendly, mostly liberal city). I used to ask homeless people who begged from my patio diners to come around back for a hot meal, which was served to them at an employee break table in a corner of our huge kitchen. This was a fine dining restaurant, so that meal was not anything to scoff at! If they refused, and continued to accost or stare at my customers, that was when they would get told to leave. A few actually started fights with the male manager, even though he was a kind man, and very polite, as he also respected the customer's feelings as they witnessed these interactions. The violent ones got arrested.
We often hired the ones who cooperated to do cleaning or trash bag duty, paid them cash, $20 or more. All of the active beggar types had alcohol or drug addictions. The ones who were aggressive, violent assholes usually had outstanding warrants for mugging, purse snatching or burglary, so I didn't feel all that bad about them getting arrested.
