Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 9, 1993 TAG: 9304090431
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GIVE YOUR DIME AND TIME - ELSEWHERE
BROTHER, IF you can spare a dime, fine. But don't give it to a panhandler on the streets of downtown Roanoke.Give it, and much more, plus any time you can spare, to a social service agency or mercy group that provides food and shelter to people in need. You'll be doing far more good.
A study sponsored by Downtown Roanoke Inc. found that the dozen or so panhandlers who have become a regular feature downtown are not, generally speaking, homeless folk thrown out on the street by tough economic times.
As Frank Feather, chairman of the city manager's committee on the homeless, put it at a news conference Wednesday, a few aggressive panhandlers "can give the truly homeless a bad name." Most do have food and a place to stay at night, and spurn assistance from social agencies. They are victims not of society so much as of their own addictions to drugs or alcohol.
Such are not the unfounded assumptions of comfortable merchants worried only about the ease with which customers can get to their businesses - which is a valid concern. After a survey identified aggressive panhandling as a worry of more than 40 percent of downtown businesses that responded, the merchants went to social service, charitable and law-enforcement agencies to explore what could be done.
These are groups that know this street population: the city's Social Services Department, The Rescue Mission and Salvation Army, Roanoke Area Ministries, Total Action Against Poverty, the city's commonwealth's attorney's office and Police Department, Mental Health Services of the Roanoke Valley and the Veterans Administration Medical Center, as well as the city manager's committee on the homeless.
Their judgment: Don't give money to people asking for spare change on the sidewalk. More likely than not, you'll just be paying for drugs or alcohol, contributing to someone's addiction. Give instead to organized human-services groups in the community that are in a position to help these people, and those who are needier.
Such groups offer not only food and temporary shelter, but counseling, housing and treatment to people down on their luck. On the other hand, giving even a little money to panhandlers rewards and encourages the activity.
Even knowing this, it can be hard to turn down someone asking for just a little change. If you don't want to be part of the problem, the coalition of merchants and social-services agencies suggests a strategy. If you are approached by a panhandler:
Avoid eye contact. Don't stop. Politely say "sorry" and keep walking. Don't give money. If a panhandler as a result becomes a panhassler, and tries to intimidate you, protect your right to say no. Call the police.
If you feel compelled to give something, give a meal coupon good at The Rescue Mission and available at downtown banks. The mission serves free lunch Monday through Friday and supper seven nights a week.
Homeless activist David Hayden has a point in suggesting that many among the comfortable classes would prefer that the poor remain invisible, kept away from the rest of us, serviced by agencies paid to prevent us from having to confront misery in our midst. But the panhandlers themselves aren't helped by handouts.
There's no need for any of downtown's denizens to go hungry. It is every man's right to hang out on the street corner and, if he so chooses, to ask passersby for money. That's called free speech. It is also every man's - and woman's - right to refuse. That's called common sense.