Homeless, The | Introduction
In Orlando, Florida, being homeless is becoming increasing difficult. Since February 1997, anyone wishing to panhandle on the streets must wear a laminated panhandling permit issued by the police department. Homeless people who hold permits are restricted from panhandling in certain areas— including bus depots, train stations, public parks, and sports arenas—and must follow a lengthy set of guidelines.
They cannot, as commentator Eric Brosch writes, approach people at ATMs or in vehicles, or come within three feet of the person solicited. They can’t use obscenities, follow people, or work in pairs. Panhandlers may not make false representations, which include: stating that the donation is required for a need that does not exist or that the solicitor is from out of town and stranded when it is not true, wearing a military uniform without having served, pretending to be disabled or using “any make-up or device to simulate any deformity.” Furthermore, it is illegal to beg “for a specific purpose and then spend the funds received for a different purpose.”
Homeless people who panhandle without an official permit, or who break any of the rules, may be required to pay fines of up to $500—a stiff penalty for someone whose source of income is panhandling—or can be arrested and may spend up to 60 days in jail.
Orlando is just one of many cities that are applying legal sanctions to homeless people who live on the streets. New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani began the effort in the mid- 1990s with “quality-of-life” ordinances that forbid the home- less from sleeping in public parks and ticket what he calls “squeegee terrorists” who wash car windows in hopes of receiving a handout. In 1999, after a homeless man injured a woman by slamming her head with a brick, Giuliani ordered that homeless people who refused city-provided shelter would face arrest. Under the mayor’s new policy, homeless people must work for their shelter; if the head of a homeless family will not work, the family’s children may be sent to foster care.
Other cities following Giuliani’s approach include Chicago, where policymakers recently erected giant chain-link fences around a downtown area to prevent vagrants from loitering there, and Cleveland, where homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks are subject to arrest. Even San Francisco, considered to be one of the most tolerant cities in the nation, now bans homeless people from camping in parks or sleeping in doorways, arrests people who give food to the homeless without a permit, and recently considered a proposal to confiscate homeless people’s shopping carts.
Some contend that local governments’ attempts to crack down on the homeless reflect the widespread view that, in today’s booming economy, homelessness is the result of laziness. Paul Boden, director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, says that “there is an attitude that with unemployment at record lows, with the stock market at record highs, if you’re poor, it’s your own damn fault.” As a result, claim U.S. News & World Report writers Warren Cohen and Mike Tharp, the public has little tolerance for homelessness. “[I]nstead of sympathy,” they write, “street dwellers are attracting hostility. Residents are sick of being hassled by ever more aggressive cadgers, and vendors say mendicants are hurting business.”
Proponents of measures to crack down on homelessness argue that the homeless are a public nuisance whose presence on the streets harms businesses, impedes the rehabilitation of dilapidated urban areas, and makes life unpleasant— or even dangerous—for other citizens. Furthermore, city officials contend, the new ordinances force homeless individuals to seek the assistance they need—be it alcohol or drug treatment, mental health care, or employment services.
Advocates for the homeless, on the other hand, argue that such laws rob homeless people of their civil rights and their dignity. As stated by the Safety Network, a publication of the National Coalition for the Homeless,
These city ordinances . . . are misguided because they seek to hide homeless people, not to end homelessness. They are unjust because they seek to punish people for being poor. They are, in effect, persecution because people who are homeless do not have the option to rest, sleep, and set down belongings in private. People who are forced to live on the streets have very few choices: Are these cities asking people who are homeless to choose not to exist!?
Moreover, maintain critics, city ordinances that target the homeless are a waste of resources. Carol Sobel, an attorney with the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, asks, “What is it you want your police to be doing? We don’t have enough people working on homicides. . . . Do we want to shift the limited resources that we have to arresting somebody who washes somebody’s window without permission?” Sobel and other opponents of the new laws argue that instead of wasting money trying to “hide” the homeless, the government should use its economic resources to address the causes of homelessness, such as low wages and lack of affordable housing.
With the numbers of homeless rising despite widespread prosperity—a 2000 study by the Urban Institute reports that as many as 3.5 million people are homeless, compared to 1.8 million in 1987—the problem of homelessness is once again in the public limelight. In The Homeless: Opposing Viewpoints, various commentators, including people who have experienced homelessness themselves, examine the causes of homelessness and offer proposals for reducing the problem. Chapters address the following questions: Is Homelessness a Serious Problem? What Are the Causes of Homelessness? What Housing Options Would Benefit the Homeless? and How Should Society Deal with the Homeless? Throughout these chapters, authors debate the plight of those who live in the shadowy margins of society.
