Homeless people in Bethesda beware. Little red parking meters are getting ready to eat up that spare change you've been begging for.
There are four of them in all. One by the elevator at the Bethesda Metro station, another at Veterans Park, and one each in the front of the Old Georgetown Rd. Chipotle and near the Bethesda Ave. Chicken Out.
They've got a white label on the top semi-circle of the meter that reads, Bethesda Cares.
They're supposed to help you out. You know, raise awareness of your sitch, stop allowing your current lifestyle and send you running off to the nearest shelter for help.
"The reason the panhandlers keep coming out is because people keep giving them money," Ken Hartman, director of the Montgomery County government's liaison office for services in Bethesda, told The Washington Post. "You don't want to keep enabling their problems and lifestyle. You want to get them into shelters and to care workers."
Hartman isn't the only person who thinks that. There's a whole group of Bethesda residents and businesspeople, as well as Bethesda Cares, behind the meters.
Things could get tough out in the 'burbs.
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Luckily for you, the meters don't take checks or big bills. People with that kind of money can donate it elsewhere.
