In the City of Detroit many such people walk the streets. Some are the type that you described. Those people are the people that were turned out on the streets when the previous Governor closed down the State Mental Institutions. Another type stands at Traffic lights with a practiced pathetic look holding signs asking for money. Those are primarily heroin addicts. Another kind is skin and bones and may be seen panhandling, prostituting themselves or just looking for something to steal. They also carry around a gas can and bum money claiming to have just run out of gas. These are the crackheads. A very small sub group is the time honored hobo. These are mostly middle aged and older men who actually hop trains to travel and spend the summers up North and the winters down South. They congregate in camps located on overgrown empty lots (Detroit has tens of thousands of these) near Churches or other entities that distribute free food to the downtrodden. They look in trash cans and dumpsters at car washes and strip malls for bottles to return for deposit. To be honest, I try to stay away from all these people. I would never give any of them money but I used to be willing to buy them fast food until I bought a man some McDonald hamburgers and fries that claimed to be starving and found him outside the door trying to sell them at 1/2 price. In Detroit such characters are plentiful on a daily basis as are abused dogs. If you tried to help each one that you saw you would have to live the life of Mother Theresa.