Panhandling: A real issue?
Moderated by Rick Badie
Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond wants to sweep the streets clean of aggressive panhandlers, though not necessarily the homeless. He has proposed an ordinance that calls for repeat offenders to serve a mandatory six-month incarceration after the third arrest. But homeless advocate Anita Beaty, who calls the law unnecessary and discriminatory, suggests the city should provide adequate services for the poor, not run them off.
By Michael Julian Bond
Just as Vine City, Inman Park, Polar Rock, Loring Heights and West End are communities that make up the diverse fabric of our great city, so does downtown. And just like all communities around Atlanta, downtown is also dealing with a variety of concerns.
I receive requests on a daily basis from citizens asking me to address myriad issues. Whether it is an abandoned and vacant property being used as a crack house, a broken sidewalk, a pothole or a high water bill, I am expected to respond, and I do.
Yet when I receive calls about aggressive panhandling and respond to the very real concerns being experienced by residents and small business owners who contact me about this issue, there is an immediate response from certain stakeholders who express shock and dismay that I am trying to address the problem.
Some advocates for the homeless believe that any attempt to curb aggressive panhandling criminalizes all homeless people. But not all aggressive panhandlers are homeless, and not all homeless are aggressive panhandlers. It’s a distinction illustrated every day.
Last Sunday as I was leaving City Hall, I saw a young mother with three small children crossing the street in front of me. They entered the back door of Trinity United Methodist Church, a longtime provider of services for the homeless. Sadly, this scene repeats itself hundreds of times a day in Atlanta. With a 100 percent voting record in support of homeless issues, I can say that this mother and her children — and the many who share their plight — are not the subject of the proposed legislation.
This initiative is not about homelessness, it is about harassment.
There are other scenes that play out every day in Atlanta. They may involve a college student walking to her class, or a waitress leaving her job to catch a MARTA train, or a couple walking their dog in a city park. What they have in common is that each was followed for several blocks, verbally attacked or physically intimidated by a person who claimed to be homeless and asked for money.
I know this because in each case the accosted person contacted my office and expressed fear, anger and frustration with the city’s refusal to address this problem.
Since last July, Atlanta police officers have made 279 aggressive panhandling arrests. Seventy-eight people were responsible for over 200 of these arrests — which mean some 75 percent of aggressive panhandling violations are due to less than 80 individuals. And if you talk to our public safety officials — be they police, solicitors, public defenders, judges or corrections officers — they will concur that it is the same small group of individuals commit the vast number of aggressive panhandling offenses.
Atlanta’s homeless deserve access to every available resource that we as a society can provide. The community’s voices and pleas must be heard and addressed. And we must hold accountable those few individuals whose behavior is having such a profound and negative impact on the quality of life of our downtown residents.
Until we are willing to address and acknowledge these realities, it will be impossible to make sound and just public policy on this issue. It is my intention to start the conversation and see it through to its end, ensuring that all communities and constituencies are at the table, that their concerns are heard and all are treated fairly.
A public safety committee work session to discuss Bond’s proposed panhandling ordinance will be held at 10 a.m. Aug. 23 in committee room No. 2 at City Hall, 55 Trinity Ave., SW. The session will be broadcast live on Channel 26.
Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond, chair of the public safety-legal administration committee.
By Anita Beaty
Yogi Berra said it best: “This is déjà vu all over again.”
We have all been here before, many times. Central Atlanta Progress and the mayor and city council decide for us, year after year, that homelessness is a public safety issue, not a result of exclusionary public policy and discriminatory legislation.
So they focus on criminalizing homeless people by passing more thoughtless, even unconstitutional legislation in order to avoid addressing the housing and social issues.
If homeless individuals are the problem, and if we define their public behavior as pathological at best or criminal at worst, then we can incarcerate them and avoid living next door to them or having to acknowledge them. We can frighten each other into believing that they might mean us harm instead of educating each other that relationships lead to communities that can provide for all of us.
We can be persuaded that the disoriented man on the street who approaches us means us harm. Fear blocks our own responses to his circumstance and perhaps to his request. No one wants to be verbally threatened or physically aggressed walking down the street, parking a car, waiting in a line or at a stoplight. But we already have laws prohibiting threatening words and aggressive behavior.
Repeatedly using public humiliation, harassment, and the threat of incarceration as deterrents to poverty and homelessness is insanity. In recovery circles, folks learn that repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results is called “crazy.”
Responding to a housing and social service crisis by criminalizing the very people we are failing, even refusing, to serve also creates outcomes that prevent those same people from getting jobs they may want and housing they might even afford. Categorizing those individuals as service-resistant or chronically homeless puts the blame on them for our exclusion.
In the years leading up to the 1996 Olympics, local corporate and political developers gave us “quality of life” laws, ordinances criminalizing behavior that in some cases is absolutely necessary for people who live without housing: “urban camping,” which amounted to sleeping in public spaces; “remaining” in a parking lot without a car; public urination, though there are no accessible public toilets.
By 2005, city officials were persuaded to approve what was called a “commercial solicitation” ordinance in exchange for the Georgia Aquarium. That deal required the city to make the area safe for the newest tourist attraction by criminalizing people who asked for any kind of help in certain areas we call the “tourist triangle.”
Not even a year passed before the very creators and proponents of the ordinance blamed their own policy for failing to solve their problems. By 2010, complaints about the “social dysfunction of the streets” again prompted Central Atlanta Progress to focus on drafting still another anti-panhandling ordinance, and to complain that these ordinances were obviously not working to eliminate street homelessness; nor had the expensive Gateway Center ended homelessness.
Still, there was no acknowledgement of causes: that maybe the demolition of 3,200 units of Atlanta’s public housing in a city where the unmet housing need already exceeded a minimum of nearly 100,000 units could increase homelessness.
So here we go again, faced with yet another anti-panhandling proposal.
We are told this ordinance addresses only “aggressive” panhandling. Look at the definitions of “aggressive” panhandling. Any behavior that might be construed by a reasonable person as threatening, that might cause someone to be afraid, can be called “aggressive.”
A mandatory sentence of six months for poorly defined behavior in a city that refuses to address or even acknowledge its housing and social service needs, where housing is destroyed, public transportation systematically removed from “poor” neighborhoods and developers reign is deeply destructive.
Anita Beaty, executive director of Metro Atlanta Task Force the Homeless.
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49 comments Add your comment
Doug
August 9th, 2012
9:44 am
I’ve quit walking to lunch anywhere that takes me past the Five Points area, because I was being consistently yelled at and even followed by aggressive (and half-crazed) beggars. Getting rid of this behavior would be good for the downtown business district!
Sara
August 9th, 2012
9:55 am
It would be really nice if you would allow one of the other many voices for the homeless to contribute their opinion. The Georgia Law Center for the Homeless comes to mind. Though they may say very similar things to Ms. Beaty, their opinion wouldn’t be automatically dismissd as hers is due to years of self-marginalization. Thanks.
Rick Badie
August 9th, 2012
10:07 am
Sara:You make a valid point. Thanks for the suggestion. Enjoy your day. Doug: I hung out around the Five Points area for a few hours Tuesday in hopes of capturing some scenes for a column on panhandling. I even walked up and down Peachtree, Trinity and other streets, but wasn’t accosted in any way, though they were groups of men sitting on the corner, etc. Guess I picked a bad day. Or maybe the cops have cracked down on the practice in that particular area.
Meli
August 9th, 2012
10:13 am
The City needs to actually enforce the ordinaces it currently has on the books to control aggressive panhandling rather than passing new laws that simply make it look good but then do nothing. There are already aggressive pandhandling laws, ‘urban camping’ laws, etc. Yet I still cannot sit at my MARTA stop to wait for a bus because someone parked their shopping cart and pitched their tent at the stop at 7 AM and won’t be gone until after sundown. And the last time I said no to a panhandler, I had my purse snatched. I told the police this particular panhandler was normally seen at a particular homeless program. What happened? When the police went to the program, the employees told them they would not cooperate because to them, all criminal behavior is necessary for a homeless person to survive, and ‘ratting’ would discourage homeless people from coming in. I used to give money to homeless programs, Ms. Beaty, but not now.
K-Ster
August 9th, 2012
10:22 am
Ms. Beaty, simply housing poor/homeless people will NOT fix the situation. It will only GROW the situation. If ‘the govment’ [sic] provides it all, why will they make an effort to leave? To better themselves? To STOP? I live near Vine City (Washington Park area). I see public transit (rail and bus). I also see wanderers. I hate seeing our city full of hoodlums and problematic mental health urban campers.
If you, Ms. Beaty, want to fix anything, then create a successful program that educates, medicates, and transfers homeless people into areas that can be economically inclusive. We have metro areas where they can find work. We do not need to bunch these people together in a communal building. It’s synonymous to prison. Grouping the same will not change a dang thing.
Ms. Beaty: FIX THEM. Don’t cater to them. Mr. Bond’s plan will at least provide a reason for them to change (or at least not act adversely). You can write your poetic hymns all you want, but it has way too many holes in it. Way too many empty dead-end wishes, hopes, fantasies. You may mean well, but your lack of action-planning only hurts the situation…Essentially making you party to the problem, as you so accuse Mr. Bond.
WORD.
I LIVE ONE BLOCK FROM BOULEVARD
August 9th, 2012
10:25 am
I live in the heart of this problem in the Old4thWard and frankly I have never seen a city that refuses to deal with a problem of this magnitude. It’s pathetic. There is a difference between having compassion for people and allowing regular citizens to be harrassed and fearful in their own communities: communities in which they certainly invest and deserve to feel safe. I will sit on my porch on Glen Iris and watch as women pushing strollers are panhandled. I listen as homeless men yell gibberish at random joggers. I am a well-travelled, able-bodied 25 year old male, but that is the ONLY reason that I feel safe walking around the neigborhood anytime after dusk. What I have not experienced in other cities is the brash and repetitive nature of these people. I’ve told a man “sorry I don’t have anything to give you” and he launched into a tirade about me “judging him” (I did nothing of the sort). Just last week I observed a panhandler leaning over a girl in her car with two hands on her car as she tried to get into her vehicle. I made a point of walking over and watched until he finally left after three or four “No’s”. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. It is height of ignorance to tell people we need to address the “social” causes of this: are you going to alleviate poverty, criminals, and bad parents, too? I’m not holding my breath. We can always do more to help these people but they should not be allowed to roam the streets menacing other people. I know many of these people are harmless, but that is not the effect they have. These people need help but they won’t get it wandering the streets. And you know what, I do feel sorry for the tragedy of a woman taking three babies into the shelter to feed them, but society at large should not bear the burden for her poor choices. This academic attempt to claim that these people are misunderstood and tragic may be valid in theory but in reality they are menacing the locals and that is unacceptable. I see and talk to these people all the time and they are in at least half the cases percieved rightly or wrongly as a threat: they prey on weak targets like young women and old ladies. These people deserve compassion but if they are repeat offenders they also deserve jail. Period.
K-Ster
August 9th, 2012
10:29 am
To “I LIVE ONE BLOCK FROM BOULEVARD”:
Amen to you! I’m a 20-something guy and I’ve also made it a point to casually approach single women who I see being harassed… As a way to be a true southern gentleman and provide her the safe feeling she’s most likely begging for internally.
Plus, it shows these aggressive adults that they’re NOT unseen.
K-Ster
August 9th, 2012
10:30 am
(by single, I mean alone, without a friend/family member)
Tammy
August 9th, 2012
10:31 am
It is embarrassing for people to come to our city and be accosted by beggars. Most other large cities in this country have dealt with this problem and it does not happen. I do not want to feel like I am walking through the streets of Bombay when I choose to go to the 5 points MARTA station.
skipper
August 9th, 2012
10:32 am
Any time folks get fed up with this crap they are either deemed hateful, racist in many cases, or many other terms. People need to be able to walk down the d@mn street w/o being accosted by some of these maniacal a$$holes. And yes, that is what MANY of them are. Nobody in the world deserves to be hassled by these leeches.
Grob Hahn
August 9th, 2012
10:38 am
Keep kicking this can down the road and your reward will be major headlines all over the nation. Ms. Beaty is clearly sitting bahind her desk and doesn’t have a clue what REAL people are going through with these rude, aggressive and often assaultive beggars. There are people who don’t go into Atlanta unless they are armed. The situation will have an obvious result and Beaty will likely have some blather prepared to cover her tracks and lack of motivation to actually DO something about this.
Grobbbbbbbbbb
B Ha
August 9th, 2012
10:44 am
ms beatty is like the cat lady who wants to “protect” colonies of feral felines. but these panhandlers t are human beings and should be treated as such. time for tough love. the city sidewalks belong to all residents and we should be able to walk them in peace.
eli
August 9th, 2012
10:57 am
Not a crime.
Coming from someone who has lived in 5 points, and on Pine street by the shelter–pan handlers are not a problem. They are courteous compared to other cities.
The only problem is with people whose preconceived ideas about society and the homeless prevent them from empathizing.
Midtown Lady
August 9th, 2012
11:04 am
Ms. Beaty’s opinion is worthless because she is an enabler. I just got yelled at for change at 14th and peachtree yesterday. Some dude sitting at Colony Square yelling “Baby Girl! Got some change!” he yelled this at me and a few other women passing by. I have no sympathy for panhandlers. The homeless who want help, and seek out the services available, I have no problem with.
Rider Inman
August 9th, 2012
11:10 am
I completely agree with “I live one block from Boulevard”. I too live in that area and my GF has been followed home by an aggressive vagrant after telling the guy she didn’t have any $ on her. Luckily, she was close to home and I was there waiting. I’m a tall/fit guy so they don’t really bother me, but when they start following 5ft girls around and demanding $, there is definitely a problem.
This might be a little off topic, but I ride my bike around the city often and whenever there’s a shelter or halfway house the trash around that area is exponentially higher. I’ve witnessed homeless ppl ripping through trash bags and dumpsters just leaving the area destroyed. Is there any way for these shelters to give trash bags to their “visitors” and make them clean up the neighborhood or surrounding area in order for them to get a hot meal, shower & bed. Is that too much to ask…seems like a win – win.
Rider Inman
August 9th, 2012
11:24 am
Eli, I don’t agree with you. I ride my bike to work almost daily by the Pine Street shelter and it’s pretty much 3rd world over there. The North Ave MARTA station isn’t much better, there’s a group of guys that hang out there regularly that constantly hit up ppl for $ or even follow them down into the station to “help” them. I’ve been verbally abused by a guy and I’ve watched others receive the same. Now, I’m not one of those suburbanites that are scared of the city shadows…I live in the city and love it. I expect city living to come with situations like this, it rarely bothers me. But to say Atlanta doesn’t have a problem is ludicrous. I’ve been to pretty much every other major city in the US and I’ve never experienced aggressive vagrants like I have here..
Berendey
August 9th, 2012
11:25 am
Ms. Beaty has her head in the sand. All she has tried to do for years is enable the beggars, try to guilt the rest of us into handing over our hard-earned money to them, and try to guilt the business and tourism groups into tolerating this harrassment. She has done a tremendous amount of damage to the quality of life downtown, and attitudes like hers (indirectly) encourage toleration of street crime. It is people like her and her army of beggars who make people like me try to avoid going downtown. As a woman, I feel extremely intimidated by men approaching me and aggressively asking for money. I have to go downtown for afternoon and evening business functions sometimes, and every time I dread it because of the beggars. Would I ever want to go downtown for any recreational reason, go to dinner or visit the aquarium, go to a sports event, things like that? Would I ever want to take a visitor downtown to see the sights? NO WAY. The downtown boosters keep whining that Atlanta should be like all the big cities that have vibrant after-hours activity and people walking around on the streets. This will never happen as long as citizens are accosted by beggars all the time.
ATL Hopeful
August 9th, 2012
11:34 am
Not all panhandlers are alike. Some are drug-fueled menaces who really do pose a threat and this kind of threat needs to be stopped. Panhandlers have gotten on MARTA coming from the airport on more than one occasion recently. They were screaming and bent over in loud and wild-eyed laughter, with bulging red eyes from an obvious crack high. They shouted on the train that everyone needed to be quiet and listen up. They said that everyone needed to give them money and nobody would be hurt. After two such incidents, I no longer ride MARTA to and from the airport.
I just returned from NYC where I felt perfectly safe walking the streets of Harlem and downtown, anytime of the day or night. The difference is police enforcement. I saw only gentle panhandling, not the aggressive panhandling there once was there and is now here.
Tired
August 9th, 2012
11:37 am
I walked past 5 points the other day, and there was a man that was asking for money, and SCREAMING and SPITTING at people who said no. I see this guy all the time and make a point to avoid him.
Michel Phillips
August 9th, 2012
11:44 am
Let’s say it costs $200 a day to keep someone in jail. (Surely that’s a lowball figure.) How about, on your third panhandling “offense,” the City of Atlanta gives you a job for $100 a day, oupatient psychiatric treatment for $300 a week (if you need it), and the taxpayers pocket the remaining $200 a week?
huntersdad
August 9th, 2012
11:48 am
The problem with downtown is not if you will get mugged but when. I lived in midtown for a few years and I am familiar with the homeless issue. Mr. Bond is correct. Panhandlers are the major problem. They are criminals who use fear and intimidation as weapons. They make living and working downtown an undesirable option for most people.
Darin
August 9th, 2012
11:50 am
Rick Badie: there is not nearly as much aggressive panhandling in the Five Points area and I’m not sure of the reason, but the decrease is really only during the day.
Night time is a different matter. You can catch a lot of aggressive panhandling behavior at night on the Peachtree Street corridor downtown and also in the Edgewood Avenue corridor, particularly near the row of restaurants east of the interstate overpass. Two other good places to catch it are: the Peachtree Center area on a night when there’s a convention crowd downtown; the Fox Theater area when there’s a big evening event there.
olganese Groves
August 9th, 2012
11:53 am
First of all Panhandling is not a Sport, When a person become homeless Jobless often times lacking Family support.Just pause for a minute you have nothing. What is some one in this position suppose to do ? I would rather have them ask for my spare change than mug me, Have many of you ever been hungry ? or needing to get on a Bus or train, with no money in your pockets ? let them beg me,
it is a sin to put a person in jail for seeking. The churches are not always available or willing to help.
The agencies the same.
been Homeless is enough hardship as it is.
We need to have a heart of compassion, for these people.
Tired
August 9th, 2012
11:57 am
olganese @ 11:53 – I’ve given people money before who nicely ask. Those people aren’t the problem. The people who yell, scream, spit, and trail you for blocks are the problem.
sam
August 9th, 2012
12:16 pm
I belong to an organization that had an annual meeting here about 5 years ago. There were 7000 in attendance. This is the only city where we have ever had anyone mugged…and 2 people were mugged and robbed. The meeting will never be held in Atlanta again. So this sort of thing really costs the city in real dollars.
Note too, no one is addressing the underlying issue: Why are there so many homeless? Is it because people have given up taking responsibility for their lives and what they make of them? For some that is exactly it. There will always be a few disabled who can’t fend for themselves, but there are some homeless with decent mental and physical health. Why didn’t they take responsibility for their lives? Were they simply impressed with the fact that now days the government will take care of you if you choose not to take care of yourself? That seems to be the new norm, unfortunately.
Atlien
August 9th, 2012
12:30 pm
There are two problems with panhandling. The major problem is that the money doesn’t get into the hands of the people who actually need the money. For example, people begging from car to car on MARTA make more per hour than most of the people on the train (untaxed too). The second problem is that people committing criminal activities can “blend in” by acting like a panhandler.
Obviously there’s no good solution, but I’d be in favor of banning loitering in tourism areas and providing a robust food/shelter system located away from tourist areas funded by tourism related taxes. Whether it is right or wrong, the city cannot afford to have homeless shelters used as basecamps for panhandling downtown and in midtown.
Scotty
August 9th, 2012
12:48 pm
Advocates for the homeless like Ms Beatty are always pushing for more and better “services for the homeless”. It sounds intentionally vague. The problem is that some of these services simply make it easier to remain homeless. Services need to focus on pathways toward employment and self-sufficiency. Otherwise we just perpetuate and exacerbate the problem. If we just feed the homeless, we will never reduce homelessness.
Musonda
August 9th, 2012
12:51 pm
The aggressive beggars who approach vehicles at intersections are a real threat. I know women who drive through the red stoplight to get away from them.
Marlboro Man
August 9th, 2012
1:06 pm
I simply tell them “I’m working this side of the street”
Badie
August 9th, 2012
1:07 pm
Thanks, Darin. Guess I will try one mo’ time. Have a good day.
nelson
August 9th, 2012
2:03 pm
I have never encountered 1 homeless person that wanted any other lifestyle. The homeless know where to get food, shelter. They have a freedom from responsiblity that many with homes would envy. The only issue that needs stiffening is the resolve of the municipalities to come down hard on those that pray on the homeless. They should be aggresively prosecuted.
The city of Orlando has a rather unique way of working with panhandlers. They created “begging zones”. This is having the sidewalks delienated with white stripes, inside those stripes panhandlers could lawfully panhandle.
The school age panhandlers were given every opportunity and encouragement to set their sights on becoming productive members of the community. None the less, homelessness defied resolution, so the community went for creating policies of peacefull coexistence.
middle of the road
August 9th, 2012
2:08 pm
If a person approaches another person to beg – that is agressive (as opposed to sitting on a wall asking for handouts. If a person repeats a request for money more than once to another person – that is agressive. You need to crack down on the vile abusers that run visitors out of the city of Atlanta.
By the way, since the advent of the new procedures for getting the mentally ill out of the hospitals so they are not “warehoused, they have ended up on the street – homeless and unable to work. How is that working out for you? Would it not be more humane to have them “warehoused” in a place that gives them shelter and provides three square meals a day?
T.A.
August 9th, 2012
2:10 pm
I feel both Ms. Beatty and Mr. Bond have valid points. We have to take the two issues (homelessness and pandhandling) separately. It is very true that some panhandlers are actually people who make thousands of dollars off of asking people for money but are not homeless. However, there are homeless that do ask for money because they don’t have any and need to get food, drink, etc. For the homeless people, they have to be integrated back into society by getting them off the streets, cleaning them up, figuring out what talents and gifts they have (everyone has a talent or a gift- it just have to be unlocked), provide training to strengthen that gift/talent, finding job opportunities where they can exercise that gift/talent, and then eventually transitioning them out of the guided rehabilitation path and let them take off and become productive members of society with check-ups to see how they are progressing.
As homeless people get off the street using a rehabilitation process like the one I mentioned, we can reduce panhandling by those who are homeless, since there are less of them on the streets. We can hopefully start catching those who panhandle just to panhandle, even though they’re not homeless. Those people make panhandling a profession and it is not- that is where aggressive action should be taken.
Jim S
August 9th, 2012
2:13 pm
These are separate issues. Bond is trying to address a solution for “aggressive” behavior (putting them in jail for 3 squares a day is maybe not the solution..our system is already overwhelmed). Many times just enforcing our laws already on the books can work, but it should be solved.
Beaty is instead addressing the homeless, which is a separate matter. Some people are down on their luck or opportunites while others are just lazy. A topic worth discussion and solution.
Seems as though they are fighting about something (again) rather than defining distinct issues and trying to develop a solution “together” for each (and many other problems).
Ms. Birdsong
August 9th, 2012
2:21 pm
For the past several years, almost daily, I’ve enjoyed walking in town (including Downtown, through Piedmont Park, down Ponce de Leon, and through the Old Fourth Ward). I’ve never been aggressively panhandled. On the contrary, one morning on Peachtree Street near the Fox a homeless person ran after me saying “lady, lady! I have some hot coffee – you want some?” One evening downtown a man hauling a big bag of bread (leftovers from his restaurant job) invited me to share a sandwich – he was on his way to a shelter to make supper for everyone. Recently a nice man offered me an umbrella when I was caught in a storm. There are some very sweet people living on the streets in Atlanta – Just wanted to say.
middle of the road
August 9th, 2012
2:24 pm
How about this suggestion – any person who is agressively panhandling (see my definition earlier) is automatically taken for a drug/ alcohol test. If drugs or alcohol (above limit of intoxication) the person is charged as needed. Otherwise the police should ask why the person is panhandling and if they are homeless – conveyed to a shelter. Maybe that would be a start.
Whatizit
August 9th, 2012
2:34 pm
I’ve traveled all over this country, from coast to coast, and I am sad to say that my hometown of Atlanta is THE WORST place for residents, visitors and tourists being harassed for money.
Once famous for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, Atlanta is now INfamous the world over for its legions of jaywalking, jive-talking, street-hustling, drug-using, urine-scented, ultra-aggressive, won’t-take-the-first-3-”NO!”s-for-a-response panhandlers.
These parasites on Atlanta streets all have one particular demographic trait in common, but you cannot cite that common thread without violating the “PC Police.”
Robin Kelly
August 9th, 2012
2:48 pm
When I watch a Season One episode of “THE WALKING DEAD,” filmed on the streets of Atlanta during that inaugural season, and see one of the stumbling, dazed, lethargic “walkers” approaching one of the main characters of the show, my cumulative experience of living in Atlanta has made me often initially uncertain whether it is actually a zombie walker or one of ATL’s indigenous panhandlers clumsily approaching to “ax” the characters for some free money.
delois
August 9th, 2012
2:49 pm
I am constantly hit up for money either on a MARTA train or at the MARTA stations. I am a 60 year old white lady riding MARTA – I have no idea why these drunks/druggies think I have any money to give them. My tax dollars are already being used to pay for fraudulent medicaid/welfare/foodstamp claims so I am paying my fair share and they will never get a dime from me. Sorry to be so cold but just read the news and see how much fraud there is going on with our tax dollars.
Don't Tread
August 9th, 2012
2:52 pm
Maybe Anita can open her house for the homeless.
The last time I gave a homeless person money was in 1984. He claimed to be hungry and wanted a dollar to buy a Varsity hot dog. I gave him a dollar and he went across the street to the gas station and bought a beer. That’s the last penny they got from me.
Whatizit
August 9th, 2012
3:02 pm
Ever notice how there are never any “hungry” people on the sidewalks approaching Turner Field when the Braves are not playing at home and there are no gullible baseball fans coming in from the suburbs?
Motocross Survivor
August 9th, 2012
3:05 pm
I have no sympathy for the dirt dobbers. Most are born bums who want no other life than the one they live. I felt sorry for a bum sitting in Crystal a couple of years back and gave him several hamburgers. Did he eat them? NO. He immediately left with them to trade for booze I have no doubt. To hell with them.
K-Ster
August 9th, 2012
3:06 pm
In DC, they just sit there in the METRO entrance with a sign. You never hear from them or interact with them other than their muted ‘Thank You’ if you tip. One time a guy was in an entrance providing musical entertainment (homeless, I assume). The most beautiful music/voice. I say all this because I’ve seen beggars try to earn their free handouts through politeness, entertainment, and by being a helping hand.
When I worked off of Mitchell near 5-Points, I would watch a homeless woman weed the back alley out of boredom. She’d sweep the parking area with a branch out of boredom. She’d also help the building maintenance guy take trash bags to the dumpster…Out of boredom. She worked for her keep. I’d gladly give spare change to needy folks like her. Hell, my dad gave a bunch of change to a guy who sang me happy birthday in the parking deck of the Varsity back in 1993 when I was a kid celebrating my birthday. You make my day interesting or give me a lasting memory, then sure! I’ll give you the $0.73 I have in my cup holder.
Rider Inman
August 9th, 2012
3:42 pm
K-Ster, I agree. The DC needy are a thousand times better than the ones running around MARTA here. I’ve been on the Metro quite a bit up there and I actually enjoy those that provide music or some sort of entertainment at the stations or in the tunnels. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure I’ve ever been approached for $ up there. What are they doing up there that makes their tourist areas so free from the agressive vagrants?
skipper
August 9th, 2012
3:47 pm
Hey bleedin’ hearts…..there is a difference between a legitimate homeless person and an aggresive a$$hole……I try to be generous in life but QUIT comparing these stinkin’ SOB’s on Atlanta’s streets with decent people………there is a d@mn difference!
Marlboro Man
August 9th, 2012
3:47 pm
Calling folks on the no call list and getting away with it because they are charities or politicians go hand in hand with pan handlers. No real difference. They get the same response.
K-Ster
August 9th, 2012
3:50 pm
Rider Inman, I wish I knew their secret!
Bernie
August 9th, 2012
3:55 pm
Sounds as though Mr.Bond is preparing and angling to replace Brother REED in the next election.
If one evaluates the difference between the panhandlers and Mr.Bond you will find a lot of commonality. The panhandling and pandering Mr.Bond does is not done on the streets, but in the halls and meeting rooms of Atlanta City Hall. Like as in the case of the panhandlers, Mr.Bond has been on the city’s payroll for years in a long line of LEGACY AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERS who are awaiting “MY TURN” and will say thing to the residents of North Atlanta to gain favor and support in his run for office.
To take such a archaic position demonstrates he lacks the wisdom and vision this City needs to move forward. Being the Son of one this nations most revered leaders in the Civil Rights Movement he should know better. But as with all spoiled children, they only think of themselves!
Jennifer
August 9th, 2012
6:23 pm
Could you have found a LESS credible advocate than Anita Beaty?