The 21's century version of the "Welfare queen in a Cadillac"? A big part of the cities' woes is the professionalization of panhandling. The old type of panhandler—a mentally impaired or disabled homeless person trying to scrape together a few bucks for a meal—is giving way to the full-time spanger who supports himself through a combination of begging, working at odd jobs, and other sources, like government assistance from disability payments. Some full-time panhandlers are kids—"road warriors" who have largely dropped out of society and drift from town to town, often "couch surfing" at friends' homes, or "street loiterers" who daily make their way downtown from the suburbs where they live. Some, like New Yorker Steve Baker, have turned begging into a full-time job. "If you're inside a bank, you're a doorman," he says from his perch inside a bank lobby. "You're not gonna rob from nobody or steal from nobody—you come in here and make a job for yourself."
People's generosity encourages the begging. About four out of ten Denver residents gave to panhandlers, city officials determined several years ago, anteing up an estimated $4.6 million a year. Anecdotal surveys by journalists and police, and even testimony by panhandlers themselves, suggest that begging can yield anywhere from $20 to $100 a day—though police in Coos Bay, Oregon, found that local panhandlers were taking in as much as $300 a day in a Wal-Mart parking lot. "A panhandler could make thirty to forty thousand dollars a year, tax-free money," Baker says. In Memphis, a local FOX News reporter, Jason Carter, donned old clothes and hit the streets earlier this year, earning about $10 an hour. "Just the quasi-appearance of being homeless filled my cup," Carter observed. That all the money is beyond the tax man's clutches adds to the allure of professional panhandling. Carter prepared for his stint on the street by surfing the Internet, where a variety of websites dispense panhandling advice. NeedCom, for example—subtitled "Market Research for Panhandlers"—offers tips from Baker and other pros on how to hustle. The website's developer, Cathy Davies, wants it to get people "thinking about panhandling as a realistic economic activity, rather than thinking that panhandlers are lazy or don't work very hard." [....] Yet even as cities experiment with new approaches, those traditionally opposed to restrictions on panhandling are fighting back—notably, civil liberties groups and some homeless advocates, who oppose any actions that might criminalize conduct by even a minority of the homeless. In 2003, San Francisco residents overwhelmingly passed a ballot proposition authored by then-supervisor (and now mayor) Gavin Newsom outlawing in-your-face panhandling. But the ordinance has been ineffective because scores of volunteer lawyers, many from the city's biggest law firms, have fought every citation. People cited for panhandling don't even need to appear in court. They simply drop their citations in boxes at various advocacy groups, and the lawyers pick them up and appear in court, where judges have ruled that cops must file lengthy reports in order to get a conviction. The courts are dismissing about 85 percent of all tickets handed out under the ordinance, frustrating police, prosecutors, politicians, and residents who voted for it. "If you had been here several years ago, before the ordinance passed, and came back today, you wouldn't see a difference in the level of panhandling. There's as much as ever," says supervisor Sean Elsbernd. -raghu. -- I have a heart of a child... in a jar on my desk. - Stephen King
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