Panhandling and the future of urban America

The Dallas Morning News ^ | September 2, 2013 | Froma Harrop, The Providence Journal

[2ndDivisionVet]

Indianapolis offers the full urban deal: great architecture, hot restaurants, famous museums and a walkable downtown. It also has had one of the worst panhandler problems I’ve seen. At almost every street corner, it seemed, someone was squeezing you for money.

In August, Indianapolis joined numerous other cities that have attempted to curb aggressive begging. And as has happened elsewhere, the American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a suit.

“The ACLU of Indiana,” its executive director, Jane Henegar, said, “believes in the power of the First Amendment to give everyone a voice, even when those voices confront us with our greatest challenges, such as poverty and homelessness.”

Defenders of panhandling commonly portray these laws as heartless campaigns to remove ragged people — the homeless, vagrants, loiterers and beggars — from the public’s view.

No doubt many businesses struggling to revive their downtown want these people gone. Courts have also identified another right — to use public streets without being confronted with demands for money. Depending on urban comfort levels, people’s response may vary from guilty compliance to mild annoyance to feeling threatened.

We’re talking about the future of urban America. As cities became repositories of the poor, the will to preserve their nice public things, be they libraries or parks, withered. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, the nation became a land of “private affluence” and “public squalor.”(continued)

[9YearLurker]

Any major city has massive programs—governmental and charity—to feed the homeless. Nobody is begging on the streets because they don’t have access to food.

[9YearLurker]

The trick is to get the illegal immigrants to go home.

[kearnyirish2]

“The trick is to get the illegal immigrants to go home.”

At this point you would have ghost towns if you did that (which is fine by me); the retail and housing sectors and public education cartel would never permit that. The illegals aren’t here to work any more; they are here to occupy living space and populate classrooms.