Sidewalk Handouts for the Homeless Hurt Downtown Businesses, Shop Owners Say

Pino Sirna admires the good Samaritans who bring food to the hungry street people who congregate around his auto shop in downtown San Diego, but he wants them to take their good works elsewhere.

It’s not that Sirna lacks compassion. The Italian immigrant, 45, knows what it’s like to be penniless. His own stomach and pockets were empty when he arrived in San Diego 18 years ago.

But he said the homeless people who loiter around his shop waiting for sandwiches and other handouts scare away his customers. His business and a neighboring print shop at Market and 14th streets near the San Diego Coalition for the Homeless have been burglarized in the past couple of months. And it’s difficult to find a person on the block whose car hasn’t been broken into recently, although no one knows whether transients are to blame.

“It’s getting worse and worse every day,” Sirna said. “I feel sorry for the people. I have nothing against them, but when is it going to stop?”

Some 3,500 men, women and children call the streets of downtown San Diego their home, according to recent statistics compiled by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. Fewer than half seek out missions and shelters for a bed and a meal. But as many as 500 have dinner in a Salvation Army soup line in Balboa Park and scores more eat in the streets. Their food is usually provided by church or community groups.

Residents and business owners increasingly complain that these sidewalk meals contribute to litter, crime and decreasing property values, police said. The homeless and their advocates, however, say feeding the hungry actually reduces their level of desperation and therefore reduces crime.

In an attempt to deal with the problem, city officials last week addressed but left unanswered the question of just where San Diego’s hungry people should be able to get a meal. Frustrated business owners were not granted their wish for an outright ban on street feedings, and advocates for the homeless were not offered sites at which to distribute meals.

While missions have been feeding the homeless for decades, police blame 25 to 40 “free-lance” advocates for causing the problems that have prompted complaints from Sirna and other business people.

“What often happens is a minister or a group will decide this is an issue they want to get involved in, so they’ll go into their kitchen, make up some chicken sandwiches and go out and duplicate the efforts of the missions out there,” Lt. Ron Seden said. “It’s the free-lancers that really cause the grief because they don’t realize the problems they cause both while they’re there and after they’ve left.”

The amateur good Samaritans usually don’t bring trash cans, and they frequently take their work to busy street corners that have no public restrooms, Seden said. Fights may break out over food, and the crowd may pose a threat to neighboring businesses and their employees, Seden said.

A few months ago, Barry Hagan, who manages Federal Printing Co. just a block from Sirna’s Autohaus, saw one giveaway get out of hand when a man who obviously had few previous dealings with the homeless arrived with his family in front of the shop with a carload of food.

“As he was trying to divvy out the sandwiches, people were grabbing stuff out of his hand,” Hagan, 32, said. “They started fighting and pushing and were trying to get into the car to get more food. He really got scared because people started getting rough and he had his family in the car. He only stayed a few minutes. As the guy got back in his car, I heard him say ‘I’m never going to do that again.’ ”

The city’s redevelopment efforts during the past 10 years have brought increasing numbers of downtown residents and employees face to face with street people. As the homeless population has swelled, so have the ranks of those who want to assist them.

Critics say these charitable efforts have been haphazard and uncoordinated, alternately resulting in a glut or a dearth of food for street people. Those who support the concept of helping the less fortunate often react less charitably when food handouts occur in their own back yards.

“There are some residents who cannot stand having the homeless in their neighborhood,” said Charles Hansen, who coordinates the Balboa Park food program for The Salvation Army. “Someone else will drive by and see what we’re doing and send us a check. But if we were to serve in that person’s area, we wouldn’t get a $100 check. We would get an angry phone call threatening to bring the full force of the law down on us.”

The conflict between property owners and those who feed the homeless reached a boiling point in mid-October when complaints by business people and residents prompted police to issue a warning: Anyone feeding the homeless without a license would be cited under a 1982 city ordinance.

Although some suggested the crackdown was connected to the city’s desire to put on a good face for the Soviet arts festival, Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory said the warning simply grew out of frustration.

“The Soviet arts festival had absolutely nothing to do with this issue in any way,” McGrory said. Instead, the warnings came because “police didn’t feel their concerns were being taken seriously--and in our offices as well. The feeling was they (homeless providers) weren’t responding quickly enough.”

To end speculation that plans to enforce the ordinance were connected to the festival, McGrory promised the city’s largest providers that no one would be ticketed during the festival’s run. A meeting to discuss the matter was scheduled after the festival ended.

At the meeting last week, a compromise was worked out in which city officials promised to help find a new site for the Coalition’s Wednesday night food program at 12th Avenue and Market Street, which has caused the most recent problems. By the end of the week, however, it became clear that finding a new site would not be easy.

Coalition director Norma Rossi said two sites under consideration by city officials (neither location has yet been revealed) required $1 million in liability insurance.

“We can’t even get it on our own property. How am I going to get it anywhere else?” she asked.

Meanwhile, the issue has disheartened some of the city’s most hopeless.

Stanley Sanders, 37, a former janitor who has lived on the streets since 1987, can hardly tolerate the suggestion that programs for the homeless are hurting businesses.

“I think it’s a bunch of crap about the homeless messing with their businesses,” Sanders said. “When people come to feed us, it’s generally on a Sunday, or 7 to 8 at night, after the businesses close. How is that going to hurt anybody’s business? People in the street get a bad deal by the county of San Diego.”

Sirna, whose shop is just a few feet from Sanders’ stomping ground, listened quietly to Sanders’ complaints. But he remained unconvinced.

“So many people come and ask me for a job, but at 9 o’clock they come and they’re drunk. They have no skills.

“What these people need is some place to go, a building or a place to hang around. Maybe a big center with a park where they could have a sandwich every day and a place to sleep,” Sirna said.

The idea of giving the homeless a place to call their own is a version of the American promise--that all the homeless need is “a piece of land and a way to grow their own food, and of course the work ethic, a way to relearn or even to learn to work and earn their living,” said Frank Landerville, homeless task force director.

The problem with this vision, he said, is that it’s totally unrealistic. It doesn’t take into account the varied causes of homelessness, he said. National studies show that 83% of the homeless have drug problems or mental illness.

Even if the city provided a meal and a place to sleep, it is probable that a significant number of the homeless would opt to remain on the streets, Landerville said. “Who do we know willing to stay in a location 24 hours a day?” he said.