Revenge of the Tiger Dog
Why No Panhandlers Would Be Worse than Too Many
Thursday, February 17, 2011
SPARE CHANGE: I don’t know that I qualify as a miracle of modern science, but I’m sufficiently improbable — statistically speaking — that someone could get a grant to study me. That’s because since moving to Santa Barbara on April Fool’s Day many light years ago, I have yet to be aggressively panhandled. Not even once. Sure, I’ve been hit up for spare change, but invariably to the dulcet tones of “God Bless You,” or “Have a Nice Day.” I remain mystified by my apparent immunity in the face of so obvious an epidemic. I’m not big. I’m hardly forbidding. I do, however, wear a fanny pack. It’s an essential part of my wardrobe as a dorky, middle-aged, white-male, urban bicycle commuter. I don’t pretend to know how this wards off the aggro and obnoxious, just that it does. The good news, at least according to TIME magazine, is that the fanny pack is poised on the precipice of making a big fashion comeback. Only this time, they’ll call it the “Lumbar Pack” or “Messenger Bag.”
Angry Poodle
While I may be both color-blind and tone-deaf where aggressive panhandling is concerned, not everyone is so happily afflicted. Based on the gnashing of teeth and rending of flesh the issue elicits, I can only deduce that Santa Barbara is currently engulfed by a tsunami of overly assertive requests for unearned income by wayfaring individuals disinclined —
despite theatrical assertions to the contrary — to work for food or anything else. According to the hotel owners, people from all over the country are lining up by the thousands not to come to Santa Barbara. According to business associations, these same people — once they don’t get here — are making a beeline away from State Street because they don’t wish to be accosted by street bums with a hyperactive sense of personal entitlement.
While the rest of the planet is fixated by historic shifts now occurring in the Middle East, Santa Barbara’s political debate remains stubbornly stuck on panhandling and the homeless. These two qualified as the 800-pound gorilla and elephant under the rug during this week’s City Council debate over a $2-million face-lift proposed for the landscaping outside the downtown Public Library. Two weeks ago, complaints of aggressive panhandling animated the knock-down–drag-out over a much needed shelter proposed for the mentally ill transitioning from the streets. The week before, the hue and cry was over emergency warming centers during foul weather. But for all the interminable talk, things have a habit of not getting done. And even when they do, they accomplish nothing. In November 2009, for example, the City Council passed a measure that attempted to simultaneously address the yin and yang of the problem. On one hand, the council approved a new get-tough-on-aggressive-panhandling ordinance; on the other, it set aside $75,000 for a new alternative giving campaign — Real Change, Not Spare Change. This would enable all the bleeding hearts and soft touches to help underwrite the cost of street outreach workers hired to connect the homeless with actual services rather than a bottle of fortified wine. To date, not one person has been cited for aggressive panhandling, and given the law was written in deference to the U.S. Constitution, probably no one ever will. In that same time, only 23 businesses have seen fit to put Real Change, Not Spare Change boxes on their counters. As a result, that program has raised only a paltry $3,600 so far. I don’t know for certain how many fanny packs $75,000 will buy, but I’m guessing half that amount would keep an enterprising outreach worker busy.
However elusive solutions have proven to be, it’s clear that more and more people are now on the streets. In response, we’re increasingly hearing how we’re doing too much. If we weren’t so generous, we are told, we wouldn’t have so many homeless. Build it, in other words, and they’ll come from all over. I don’t know if that argument is true or not, but it’s been around for a very long time. Way back in the 1950s, an industrialist in the area who got rich manufacturing Foam-X foot powder — Alexander Hyde — proposed installing real bathrooms and real shower stalls down at the ramshackle hobo village that had been located at the site of the present day zoo since the 1930s. Hyde was part of a veiled Christian-capitalist conspiracy to help the poor. He had notions that the Hobo Jungle was a positive prototype that, with some tweaking, could be exported successfully to other communities. To this end, he enlisted help from a city cop named Noah “Stormy” Cloud, who worked with juvenile delinquents associated with such gangs as “The Cavaliers” and their girl-gang auxiliary, “The Cavalettes.” Cloud and his young charges would do the grunt work under the supervision of professional contractors. When Cloud sought blessing from the City Council for this endeavor, many expressed fears the proposed improvements would draw more hobos and more poor people to Santa Barbara. Cloud wasn’t buying it. “These are our poor people,” he told them. “These are our residents.” Cloud won that argument, and the new facilities got built. But they didn’t last long. The hobos got old, and the zoo moved in. For his efforts, Cloud was hailed as “Man of the Year” by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. Shortly after, he left town to work with wayward youth in Orange County. In 1962, Hyde and his wife were killed, struck by a speeding car as they crossed the street.
The moral of this story is decidedly not that a problem doesn’t exist. It’s that Santa Barbarans, to an unusual degree, have traditionally responded with kindness to people without roofs over their heads, however much grumbling and complaining they may do. People want to help, whether they’re fat-cat industrialists like Alexander Hyde or pedestrians getting hit up for spare change. This attitude, I’m sure, draws some people to Santa Barbara who would not otherwise come. Some of these, admittedly, are righteous pains in the ass. In this equation, I’d be more alarmed by a town without any panhandlers than one with too many. We all have to pick our poisons. In the meantime, if you want to be left alone, wear a fanny pack
Comments
Oh you're the one with the fanny pack.
This article made me laugh, it made me cry and laugh again when the thankfully minimal yet lurid details of the Hyde's demise. Humorous because I keep hearing about how horrible it is for the MCA membership when an occasional crapper drops a load on a doorstep or bushes of a parking lot and the law enforcement requests to handle this crime wave. Meanwhile people are getting run over and all over this town just like in Orange County. Clearly our priorities are askew.
Suggestion tear down the fences, open up the toilets, provide hot water and cleaning and laundry facilities, maybe provide more 150 square foot living quarters. Perhaps we could transplant the Hyde approach to the rest of the country. And tax the top 2 % to accomplish this proposal and so much more, including street patrols. Perfection perhaps not but we've been doing the same hateful approach for at least a few decades now.
DonMcDermott (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2011 at 7:34 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Election time is coming up, I hope Francisco and Self get cited for panhandling.
EZK (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2011 at 9:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
DonM: Always wanting to tax the rich to solve all problems. (Eat, are you reading this). How about you paying up guys, instead of always looking to spend other peoples' money? And BTW I'm nowhere near the top 2%. I just believe that taxing the 'rich' for everything is a long term losing proposition.
JohnLocke (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2011 at 10:39 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As a longterm resident of Santa Barbara I have to say that the problem has gotten much worse in the past few years. Personally I have experienced being assulted by a homeless person and have to say that it is not a joke.
In my opinion we have made it too comfortable for the homeless here. I think the problem that they create are not fair to those individuals who are struggling to make ends meet.
I support a much tougher stance on them and think we need to seriously consider a more active policing policy. The police need to get out of their cars and walk their beats. Learn the neighborhood so that they can quickly identify trouble makers and get to know those community members who want to take an active role in making thieir neighborhoods more safe.
Golgo13 (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2011 at 10:55 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The City should install solar heating to the existing showers down at the beaches, so at least our homeless could bathe.
sdpaia (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2011 at 1:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The country was much better off when the top 2% paid their proportionate fair share of taxes.
EZK (anonymous profile)
February 18, 2011 at 3:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
[Nit pick] The phrase "many light years ago" is a measure of distance, not time. A "light year" is the distance a photon of light travels in one year.
You're welcome, Nick.
[/Nit pick]
SezMe (anonymous profile)
February 19, 2011 at 2:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Well said, Nick. I lived downtown, and in various locations around SB for 32 years until I escaped 5 years ago. I still visit friends downtown from time to time, I generally park my car and walk around town, and have never been aggressively panhandled by a homeless resident.
I HAVE had to dodge obnoxious patrons of the many bars downtown, as well as aggressive bicyclists and drivers. My limit is about 4 hours down there, and then the traffic, hordes of tourists, drunk college kids, toxic yuppies and continual buzz of go-go-go energy gets to me and I have to get out. If I am going to have to put up with all the BS of a city, I'll go to one which has something to offer in the way of accessible culture. SB has all the worst aspects of a small town and a big city, and few of the advantages or attractions of either.
On KEYT recently, a mistake was made in the free advertising of the "real change" program (it was disguised as a news story, but it was actually a big promo for "real change") and a homeless woman was allowed to get in that she was born and raised in SB. This is a fact that the media and vested interests do NOT want getting out, that most of SB's homeless residents are in fact, locals. There is a lot invested in selling the "transient" myth and the magnet theory, despite that both have been disproven time and again for years.
The bottom line here is that people need good jobs and secure housing. We can't keep squeezing the tube and then whining when there's toothpaste all over the mirror. Every time another SRO hotel or other realistically-priced is demolished and replaced with yet another high-end hotel or condo complex, those people have to go SOMEWHERE. If there is nowhere to go that they can afford, that somewhere is the streets. Pretending these RESIDENTS of this city are "transients" is just that, pretense.
What do you say to the 80 year old who has lived in SB all her life, who is pushed out of the last housing she could afford, and is sleeping in doorways at night? How about the 35 year old guy who was born in Cottage Hospital, has all his roots here, but whose rent has been raised so high that he was forced out, and cannot find anything he can afford or "qualify" for.
Yes, one must "qualify" to rent here...but that is another story.
What we are doing doesn't work. Pretending our homeless residents all flocked here from somewhere else is again, pretense. "Cracking down", harassment, tickets, rousting, moving along, Greyhound Therapy, etc...are not only unspeakably inhumane, but they DON'T WORK.
Until we look at the root causes and address those root causes, and become a functioning city again we will continue to see this situation worsen. The name-calling and sense of entitlement serve no one.
Bottom line here is that Nick is right. And...SB needs to wake up and stop contracting with camp wardens to warehouse its homeless residents out of sight of the tourists.
Holly (anonymous profile)
February 19, 2011 at 12:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Let me think... most people live paycheck to paycheck and barely get by (it is their fault), the rich who control everything and use all of the infrastructure to maintain their wealth have millions in discretionary income. Hold on, I'll get it... take the money from the poor (as in corporate/wall street bailouts $12 trillion) because the rich create jobs (in China) with their excess wealth and need more of it otherwise... what? They run out? No, now wait a minute I pay 39% of my paycheck taxes, SSI, etc. and rich people pay little or none... because what? They are rich and can pay off legislators?
contactjohn (anonymous profile)
February 19, 2011 at 7:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
In Santa Barbara the crime rate is down and the bed taxes are up. But it's still gloom and doom for some people. I think they need something to complain about...
local (anonymous profile)
February 22, 2011 at 4:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The gap between the rich and the poor is widening every year. The wealthy and in particular the super wealthy are doing better relative to the rest of us than at almost any time in the history of this country. However JohnLocke is worried about a small increase in tax rate that was proposed and shot down. Remarkable.
Noletaman (anonymous profile)
February 28, 2011 at 3:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)