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. They fight the law, and the law wins
Panhandling is legal in New Haven; unlike New York City or Hartford, there is no anti-panhandling ordinance here. It is, however, illegal for a panhandler to block a pedestrian's path-police can charge aggressive panhandlers with creating a public dis turbance, or with disorderly conduct in more serious cases. There's a gray area between what the law allows and what the individual officer decides, and panhandlers themselves seem unclear on their rights.
"I'm tired of the Yale cops always bothering me," said Linda, a friendly 30-year-old who lives in a shelter and sells flowers around Yale. She said that she has been arrested seven or eight times, mostly by three specific cops who "just ride around the st reets and pick on innocent people begging for change."
In multiple interviews with panhandlers, Spector said he found that the unspoken police policy on panhandling has become less tolerant during the past two years. He said that panhandlers are no longer allowed to stand in one spot and ask for change, b ut have to keep moving. There are also fewer panhandlers than there used to be, according to Spector. While this may seem like a good thing to some, he said it actually makes the streets less safe: "One big effect is that panhandlers are more aggressive n ow. They'll walk right up to you, boom, [and ask,] 'Can I have something?' If the police are trying to decrease fear in New Haven, they're just shooting themselves in the foot."
"Jack" said that he could see why the police crack down on some panhandlers: "Some people are very obnoxious and rude, which is wrong. You're asking for something that is theirs." But Jack said that he has noticed a recent increase in arrests. He begs in a very non-aggressive way and he's been arrested a couple of times. During our conversation, he saw a policeman looking around the corner at him, and suggested we move along-he seemed afraid to have the police see him engaged in the perfectly legal ac t of conversing with someone on the street.
Whether or not there has been a recent crackdown on stationary panhandling, social service providers and panhandlers openly acknowledge that during special events-Yale Parents' Weekend, the Special Olympics last summer-the police suppress panhandling. "Kim," a regular panhandler who requested that her real name not be used because she doesn't want people to know she's HIV-positive, said that the police treat her well because they know she's a good person. But when asked if they sweep the streets of pa nhandlers during events like Yale Commencement, she shrugged and said, "Well yeah, of course."
Jane Chen, JE '97, who is a YHHAP coordinator, said that the lack of street people during last Parents' Weekend was positively spooky: "We turned around and it was amazing: there was no one on the Green, there was no one out there.ŠThere's no way that it's just a coincidence." No Freeze
The most common panhandling line is, "I'm trying to get $3 to sleep at the shelter tonight."
"Aha!" you think, "There is no fee because of the no-freeze policy." Not so fast: the no-freeze policy is more complicated than it seems. Shelters signed a city-wide policy saying that they will waive the $3 nightly fee between November and May 1, if the shelter decides that the person honestly cannot pay. Between a $3 charge and a waived fee lies the discretion of the individual shelter intake worker.
Some of the smaller shelters are overwhelmed during the winter. The Women in Crisis Shelter, which only has a few beds, put a note on the door one night saying, "If you don't have $3, don't even ask," according to Tere Davis, activist/organizer for th e homeless advocacy group We The People. Also, he said, the gray area of the no-freeze policy often makes it harder on the homeless. "Some shelter intake workers have such a low opinion of the people who use shelters," Davis said, that if they think the h omeless person might have money or should be able to pay the fee, "They'll say, 'Go out and panhandle the extra $3.'"
The no-freeze policy doesn't make any promises about not freezing during the daytime. During the peak of the now infamous "Blizzard of '96," many shelters followed their normal policy of kicking people out at 7:30 a.m., according to several sources w ho were dismayed at the shelters' lack of compassion. Chen said that police even approached street people during the blizzard, warning them that they really shouldn't be outside and offering to arrest them, just to get them off the freezing streets.
Addictions
Many people worry that if they give a panhandler money, they're fueling a drug or alcohol addiction. Sadly, while some panhandlers are straight, addictions-usually to alcohol-are a main reason for panhandling. Perotti said that many panhandlers abuse alcohol, and he sees the results of it every day. "In the morning, it's calm, [panhandlers] act in a legal fashion," he said. "As the day goes on, they buy alcohol and consume it. It starts to take effect, and they become far more aggressive."
New Haven does have seven-day-a-week soup kitchens so those who are truly hungry can always find something to eat, which takes hunger off the list of reasons to need money. The desperation of panhandling indicates that addiction is the motivating caus e, Spector said. "Panhandling has an immediacy related to addiction," he said. "I've tried it, to see how it feels. It's the worst feeling. You don't want to do that unless you're desperate."
Most panhandlers are addicted to alcohol rather than other drugs, police and social service workers said. "Alcohol is a strong contributing factor" to panhandling-related arrests, Perotti said. Such arrests range from one a week to one a day. "It coul d be drugs, but to sustain a drug habit you'd have to do more than just panhandle [for money]," Perotti added.
One underlying cause of panhandling is that the availability of rehab programs does not come close to meeting the demand. David O'Sullivan, who runs the Community Soup Kitchen and is the director of New Haven Cares, said, "It's frustrating when someon e comes to us and says, 'I want to get into a program' and we have nowhere to send them."
O'Sullivan said he knew one social service worker who advised his clients to get arrested if they wanted to get into a detox program. Due to the long waiting lists and ever-more-stringent requirements for these programs, he said, "Having a court order may be the quickest way to do it." Does New Haven Care?
There are no easy answers for the problem of panhandling. Chen may know a lot of street people, but she voices the same concerns as most students about responding to panhandlers. "It's an ongoing conflict within myself whether I should give money or not," she said. "I wish what I could say was that I'm trying to help in other ways that you can't really see.ŠI feel really powerless when I give people money."
Sound familiar? Chen continued, "The argument for giving them money is that, for the moment, I'm giving them something. On the other side, it's not the way that things are going to get better." Chen worries that giving money to panhandlers is more lik e a band-aid than a cure for poverty.
Chen also worries about where her money is going. Some argue that when you give a handout to someone, you should give with no strings attached, but, she said, "I want them to get shelter, I want them to get food. I wouldn't buy them drugs. Giving peop le money, you don't know what's going to happen to it."
One way of dealing with the panhandling problem came to New Haven in the form of New Haven Cares. New Haven Cares sells 25-cent vouchers in stores for people to give to panhandlers instead of cash; the vouchers can be redeemed for food, bus tokens, or shelter, but not for cigarettes, alcohol, or lottery tickets. According to O'Sullivan, the purpose is "to responsibly help people who are panhandling, without encouraging someone to do so."
The voucher program which started in September 1993, was geared toward the individual panhandler and the individual giver, but that focus has changed. Now, while 25 percent of vouchers are bought in local stores by students and residents to give to be ggars on the street, the other 75 percent are purchased directly from NH Cares in bulk by soup kitchens, shelters, and the Veterans' Hospital to give to their clients. Thus the majority of vouchers are now given to the non-panhandling homeless.
Police and social service workers alike recommended the vouchers as a way for city residents to deal with the problem of panhandling on a daily basis. The voucher system "cuts through the moral dilemma of, am I sending my money to Bolivia [when giving to panhandlers], for something that's not going to do any good," Skip Ferry, director of Columbus House, which runs a 52-bed emergency shelter, said. Panhandlers said that, although the vouchers can only be used at certain stores, they do appreciate and use them.
The New Haven Police initiated New Haven Cares by contacting Berkeley Cares, the first voucher program in the country. However, the police have grown less involved and no longer attend New Haven Cares board meetings as they did in the beginning. The business community has also become less active in the administration of New Haven Cares. At the most recent New Haven Cares board meeting, Susan Chevalier, an influential business leader on the Chamber of Commerce and a founding member of New Haven Cares, resigned from the board via messenger-leaving Yale law students, undergraduates, and social service providers to lead the program.
Despite these changes, the voucher program has been a success by all accounts. According to Spector, $15,000 to 20,000 in vouchers have been sold, and more than 95 percent is redeemed. The most-50 percent-usually are redeemed for shelter at Columbus H ouse and Immanuel Baptist. Thirty-five percent goes for food, and the remaining 15 percent is redeemed for bus tokens or at places like Sam's Dollar Mart, for personal items.
What does the future hold for Linda?
Along with the daily work of collecting 25-cent vouchers and spare change to buy a slice of pizza or shelter for the night, Linda pays attention to larger sums of money-the billions of dollars that comprise the current budget debate. She fears the imp act of decreasing aid to the poor, and worries about the support she receives from the city and state. "What they expect you to do? How you supposed to survive?" she asked. She said that if people think the number of panhandlers is bad now, they should wa it until cutbacks in welfare and other types of government aid are made. Then, she said, "They might not ask you for money, they might just knock you on the head and take it."
Social service providers share Linda's fear. "People are saying there's going to be violence on the streets-it's really scary," Chen said when asked about the impact of federal, state, and local welfare cuts. "Drug programs and transitional housing se em to be the programs that are being cut, which I don't really understand-that's what people need the most. It's hard enough to survive as it is. I don't know what's going to happen."
Getting rejected and ignored again and again takes a psychological toll, in addition to the physical strains of being out on the street every day. Still, Linda is optimistic about her future. Her faith in God and her reliance on her friends seem to su
stain a flame of hope within her. When asked about her goals, she said she wants to have a job, a nice apartment, a car. She would like to have kids someday, maybe two or three-the typical American dream. She said that she would tell her kids about the ti
me long ago when she was down on her luck: "I was homeless, I sold flowers, I lived in a shelter. Now I got a job, I'm married, I got kids. Who would have thought it?"
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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