Panhandling: A Give-and-Take : ‘The Main Thing Is to Put People in Touch With the Services That Can Help Them’
Every area of Downtown has a different problem. The need for graffiti removal and cleanliness is greater in some neighborhoods than others, but if everybody in our neighborhoods develops these projects we’ll link up the city one by one.
The Safe and Clean programs don’t target the homeless; they target panhandling. The main thing is to put people in touch with the services that can help them. Many people equate panhandling and homelessness, and that’s not necessarily an equation.
Our program discourages panhandling. It’s more of a self-educational process. We hand out pamphlets, we hand out signs for windows, and we discourage people who work in . . . and walk around the city from giving money to panhandlers.
That’s No. 1: Don’t give them money.
It’s one thing to say no; the other part of the quotient is to provide them with a pamphlet that shows them where they can get the services they need. If they are indeed homeless, here’s where they can go. We provide them with the address, the phone number.
If you’re an aggressive panhandler, that’s another story. Aggressive panhandlers can be arrested. Our approach is not geared toward embarrassing people on the street, arresting these individuals. It’s really geared toward educating.
If security guards do approach the panhandlers, they give them a pamphlet. We give our guests pamphlets too, telling people facts about panhandling. But the bottom line is: Meal coupons, children’s services, here they are. We’re not just shooing people off.
There’s not really that much contact between security guards and the panhandlers in the program. Just the guards’ presence is discouraging to panhandlers. But through Downtown Safe and Clean, in conjunction with the Downtown Security Directors Assn., we’ll also be setting up classes on sensitivity training and how to properly address these individuals, for both humanistic and realistic reasons.
Downtown has probably one of the largest private security forces in the country. The real problem is not that we don’t have a safe city, it’s just that we’re perceived to not be a safe city. By extending our eyes beyond our perimeters, we can basically be the eyes and ears for the Police Department.
The corporate community in Downtown does a lot for the homeless. There are more services to help the homeless in Downtown than in any other part of the country. We have to be corporate citizens. We don’t ignore our community’s needs, we address them. What we’ve been trying to do is address them head-on.
We’re not trying to hide these people, nor can we solve society’s problems. It’s a greater social problem than certainly our meager resources can handle. All we can do is do our best at selecting organizations and associations that can best serve the needs of these individuals.
If panhandlers need directions, we’ll give them to them. We’ve even talked about proposals where we’ll have a bus, so if someone needs a service, we’ll simply pick them up and take them to the appropriate shelter, where they can be provided with the right kind of service. The obstacles that have to be overcome are insurance questions, liability issues and so forth.
The Downtown Safe and Clean committee is part of the Central City Assn., and I’m the chairman of that committee. At every one of our meetings, we have people from Chrysalis and Union Rescue Mission, all the service providers and homeless advocates. They voice their concerns and they are invited to the meetings. We want to make sure all groups are heard.
We’ve also invited these agencies into our Downtown Marketing Council, a consortium of businesses coming together to market Downtown as a destination. We’ve embraced Chrysalis and encouraged them to let us know what’s going on.
We need to do our part. The question is: How much is our part?
The future of business and government is to work together, because having a bad situation in an area doesn’t do anybody any good.
