Sensing Online: Should compassion be a basis for public policy?

I recall a story in the Washington Post from the early 1990s, when I lived in northern Virginia, written by a Catholic nun.

It told of a ministry in downtown DC that she was working, offering free lunches to the poor.

When she and her fellow charity workers had started this ministry they had decided not to require means tests of the people who came to eat. 

Means tests - requiring the recipients offer evidence they could not afford to pay for the meals - would be degrading, they concluded...

Yet after several weeks the sister had changed her mind. 

The soup kitchen initially attracted diners who were clearly homeless, near-indigent or working poor. 

But as time went on, she observed the diners were better and better dressed. 

They were cleaner, obviously more healthy. 

At first, a large number of diners had walked to the kitchen, but now most drove, and as more time passed, older cars parked outside gave way to newer cars, then expensive cars. 

The kind of person who first began eating there became rarer and rarer.
The nun concluded that they should have required means testing to protect the poor....