Panhandlers are and all-too-common sight in American cities—self-described homeless individuals clutching cardboard-sign pleas for money on median strips and busy street corners. But how much do people give to these folks?

In Miami the answer might be more than $40-million a year, based on a survey of citizen giving commissioned by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, an advocacy group.

Some charity leaders expressed skepticism of the findings. The Miami Herald quoted the founder of a homelessness assistance group calling the figure “nuts” and “ridiculous” and saying there should be no homeless in the city at all if that many millions were changing hands.

The purpose of the survey was build municipal support for developing ways to make it easier for Miamians to give spare change to social-service charities rather than panhandlers.

“Like many cities across the country, local officials want to steer small street donations away from panhandlers and into programs that help people get into housing,” writes Joel John Roberts, head of Path Partners, a social-services charity in Los Angeles, on his LA Homeless Blog “The city of Denver has the ‘parking meter’ program, where people donate small change into parking meters that then go toward funding bona-fide homeless service and housing agencies.”

Mr. Roberts says such intentions are good, but his feelings are mixed about the survey and the attention it gained.

“If people want to give money toward resolving homelessness, they should donate to programs that actually help people get off the streets,” he writes. “But to reinforce a stereotype that homeless people are getting rich off of panhandling is not appropriate.”

What do you think?