The city council of Burnaby, British Columbia, has come up with what may be an unusual solution to the area's vagrancy problem: "donation meters."

The town has installed two specially-painted parking meters that will allow warm-hearted pedestrians to donate to the homeless at the meters instead of giving to street-corner beggars.

The money from the meters will go to food banks, shelters and other charities.

Mark Levesque

Now "I gave at the meter" can become an easy response to "Spare any change?"

The automated panhandlers, to be installed later this year, are part of a community campaign to discourage begging in front of businesses in the area. Notices on the meters will tell people: "Please stop giving to panhandlers and stop feeling guilty about it."

"It's a comfort mechanism," says Dan Johnston, a Burnaby city councillor. "Members of the community who don't feel comfortable donating to panhandlers, they have a mechanism which will go to a social service agency which can redirect the money."

The meter idea was first tried in Kamloops. Six panhandling meters were installed last year on the advice of the local RCMP. Donations at the Kamloops meters have been "modest," police say.

By most cities' standards, Burnaby has almost no panhandling problem. But it's not the number of panhandlers that's at issue, says Claudia Laroye, who runs the local merchants' association.

"It's a quality of life issue," says Laroye. "And whether we have one or three or 10 or 20, it remains a serious issue with our local residents and with our merchants."

Mark Levesque is one of the few regular panhandlers in Burnaby. He says people will just ignore the new meters.

"They wanna see they're helping somebody out right there and then. They don't like to see it go to the government, and that's why I'm here, because I don't get enough from the government."