The Boston-Cambridge colossus is doing so well these days that the only guys you see begging for money in the streets are newspaper columnists or start-up entrepreneurs looking for venture capital funding.
Most urban centers have a population of panhandlers that borders on a profession. Begging replaces the discouraging search for a job, or hostile negotiation with a welfare office or cash-flow problems associated with the purchase of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.
Of all the public manifestations of poverty – or, at the least, bad times – panhandling tends to generate the least amount of sympathy.
We tend to prefer our poor folk as an intellectual abstraction, not an in-your-face plea for help. To ease the pain of seeing our brothers and sisters in bad circumstances, we tend to assume the worst of them: They aren’t really “poor”; they spend their cash on wine, women and song; and, most importantly, they’re lowering real estate values by hanging around.
Communities are most likely to rouse themselves to “do something” about the panhandlers when tourists are coming to town. A big convention or trade show that allows the metro area to show itself off – except, of course, for those beggars on the street corners.
But what to do? If you attempt to criminalize begging, the American Civil Liberties Union will sweep down on you, demanding that the panhandlers be secure in their First Amendment right to free speech.
In order to play the “public health and safety” card, some communities have outlawed “aggressive” panhandling – something on the order of banging on people’s car windows or confronting them nose-to-nose on public sidewalks. As a prosecutor, would you like to take one of those babies to court? Neither does anyone else.
Begging For Answers
The Worcester City Council has asked its city manager for a plan to deal with panhandlers – a problem one councilman complained is so prevalent now that it appears to be an organized effort.
In 2005, Worcester was one of the earliest participants in what became a nationwide experiment to discourage the public from giving beggars money, funneling the money to charities or social service agencies instead.
The Worcester council has also been sophisticated enough to recognize that this anti-panhandling issue is more tricky than it might appear. Church groups and school groups also “beg” for money in ways more adorable than the scruffy, down-on-their-luck panhandlers – and you don’t want the local cops carting away the fourth graders and charging them with aggressive panhandling in the third degree.
Cops tend to have mixed feelings about the “panhandling” thing; some of the ordinances are more complex than the tax code. In Deming, N.M., for instance, you can’t panhandle within 50 feet of a financial institution. And none of that “aggressive” panhandling in Deming, either, please.
One of the frustrations in dealing with the panhandling epidemic is the lack of detailed information on who they are; why they are out on the streets, looking for love; and whether they are already tied-in to government social service programs. Many of the beggars are a small slice of the hodgepodge of homeless and addicted and mentally ill – some of whom need to be treated, others who deserve to be scolded.
In Denver and Baltimore and a handful of other metro areas, a number of downtown parking meters collect “donations” that might ordinarily have gone to panhandlers. The money presumably goes for job training and food and substance-abuse counseling – whether or not that was why the panhandlers were begging for the cash.
Again, one of the challenges becomes a determination whether the panhandling is a symptom or the disease. In 2006, the police chief of Daytona Beach, Fla., ordered his cops to arrest “homeless” people on minor chargers such as “panhandling” – so they could be pushed into getting help from social service agencies.
For purposes of retail politics, the homeless and the panhandlers are one in the same. They’re embarrassing – and they clutter up the parks and sidewalks. The “aggressive” panhandlers may also be pests.
The solution? Public officials are begging for answers. Oops.
