Would you like to buy a flower, please?

Linda used to work as a custodian at Howard Johnson's, but business got slow and she was laid off. "Jack" collects and sells scrap metal whenever he can, but it's not enough to make ends meet, so he's been sleeping in his car this winter. "Kim" has ha d a rough time lately: she's HIV-positive and is getting sicker.

What do these three people have in common? They're all panhandlers, and if you walk along York, Chapel, or Broadway-in short, if you ever leave your room-you've seen them. You may not have talked to them, but they've talked to you: "Spare some change? " or "Would you like to buy a flower so that I can sleep in the shelter tonight?"

If you're like most students, you don't know how to respond to these pleas. Sometimes you give to panhandlers, sometimes you don't, and you never know which decision is the right one. There are no easy answers to the problems of public begging, least of all for the panhandlers themselves. The lives of panhandlers are often ruled by forces beyond their control-the whims of strangers, the decisions of shelters, the moods of the police, and the demands of their own addictions.

Who are panhandlers?

One myth about panhandlers is that they are all homeless. Actually, though panhandlers are the most visible face of extreme poverty in New Haven, only about half of them are homeless. Assistant Chief of Yale Police James Perotti estimates that of the 10 regular panhandlers in the Yale area, about five have some type of housing available to them-either their own apartment or a relative's. There is a sharp division between panhandlers and the homeless who utilize shelters and soup kitchens, and the two groups don't really trust one another. Some people in the homeless community feel that panhandlers give them all a bad name.

"Jack," a 50-year-old panhandler who often works Chapel and York Streets and who did not wish to give his real name for publication, prefers sleeping in his unheated car to the shelters because, "You never know who's going to hurt you in a shelter." H e got stabbed once in a shelter in Boston, and he hasn't gone back to one since.

Unemployment is the usual reason people end up homeless, and drug dependency occasionally follows, whereas drug addiction is more often the primary reason for panhandling, often leading to unemployment, according to Rob Spector, LAW '96, executive dir ector of New Haven Cares. The underlying problem behind both homelessness and panhandling is the lack of employment opportunities in the New Haven area. Every social service worker interviewed for this article stressed the need for more jobs-jobs that do not require computer or technical skills, and jobs in areas accessible without a car. Until that happens, it is highly unlikely that the scene on the streets will get any better.

(See Would you like to buy a flower, continued... )