Panhandling Ban: Whose Rights Should Be Protected?

Last week, a squeegee'r at the corner of Queen and Bathurst proceeded to work my windshield despite my clearly motioning that I wasn't interested. He nearly broke off my wiper, and then yelled and cursed when I told him I had no change. People shouldn't be intimidated into giving.

This is the most wishy-washy article on the homeless I've read in a while.

<em>I know that many homeless people choose to live on the street...</em>

What does that even mean? Do you have any statistics on how many people are living on the streets because they have nothing better to do? (Besides the ones you found in your gut.) I suspect that most homeless people have serious mental health or addiction issues. Where I live the people on the street don't strike me people with nothing better to do with their time. When I walk past a prostitute, I don't think she's selling her body because she doesn't like to pay taxes.

<em>So why does that mean I should give them my hard-earned money?</em>

Is some one forcing you to give them money? You can say no. The <b>vast</b> majority of pan-handlers will leave it at that. This stabbing was an aberration, not the norm. In the power dynamic between you and a homeless person, who do you think has all the power? If you call a cop, who do you think they're going to protect?

<em>Why should I be made to feel guilty each time I walk along a downtown street?</em>

Truly you have it rough.

Completely agree with you. I'm all for rights, but when your right to panhandle interferes with my right to walk down the street without having someone in my face... well... screw you ;)
People need to get over the thought that the world owes them something, get off their butts and get a job, because I surely am not giving any part of my hard earned money to someone who sits on a street corner all day. (That being said, I am all for charities, or institutions that are put in place to help said people)

Kari, you are so right. I mean couldn't that guy with all his teeth missing who approaches people in the Annex at least have bought the house around the corner from where he begs? He should know that working where you live is good for the environment!

And my god, he should totally be flossing otherwise he'll loose both of the upper teeth he's got left.

But if there were one thing I wish homeless people could do, it's take a bath. I mean c'mon, who doesn't soak for at least 45 minutes a day? And would it kill them to use some skin softener? I know I'd feel so much less guilty when I give them a tongue lashing for drinking to "ease the pain" if they were hygenic.

And what's the deal with people saying that so many homeless people have "mental health issues." Clearly you see through this transparent arguement, Kari. The beggers just don't like The Man.

This whole homeless thing is obviously just a fiasco where people who want a boot in the back of the head just layout on the sidewalk at night and get beaten up for free. Couldn't they just make sure their boss has enough money to not lay them off from their last job?? I mean what gives, I control every aspect of my life, why can't they?

And what gets me more than anything else is those homeless women. How dare they leave an abusive husband or father to be a burden on my streets. Someone should just tell them to grow a thicker skin and take it.

Oh and if we're talking about solutions, the best one is definately criminalizing the homeless. With all the police officers we'll have to hire and jails and courtrooms we'll need to build, the homeless will definately have better job prospects.

Yeah, Kari, you're right on top of this issue.

Q: So why does that mean I should give them my hard-earned money?
A: You don't have to give them your money.

Q: Why should I be made to feel guilty each time I walk along a downtown street?
A: You're Canadian. You have a guilt complex.

Q: And is it an accurate generalization that most squeegee kids are not permanent "residents" of Toronto?
A: Perhaps, but not conclusive. However, not all panhandlers are "squeegee kids".

"Also, what do you think the homeless buy with the money we give them? Drugs and alcohol. That's why they're on the street in the first place. I know this doesn't include all of the homeless people, but it does include a large chunk of them." - You don't know this. You're speculating because you live in a sketchy neighbourhood.

"People have the right to walk down the street without being harassed." - Case Ootes is an idiot. Also, nowhere in the Canadian Charter of Rights does it even imply this.

"Am I totally off my rocker for supporting this panhandling ban?" - Not completely. But you have demonstrated that you're somewhat narrowminded and judgemental.

And to address this idea that we should just lock up the homeless, the broke-ass city already doesn't have the resources to arrest and lock up real criminals, so where are they going to get the resources to lock up the homeless people? Never mind that most homeless people are only a danger to themselves.

Also, homeless people are more likely to be victims of violence than you or I. "A recent study he conducted at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health found that 36 per cent of homeless people reported they had been assaulted during the past year." -http://urltea.com/18nr

Every time something like this happens, someone says "well, assault etc. are illegal per se, it's not a panhandling issue" which is true, except the police seem unable to deter anti-social behaviour using the SSA and other legislation because if you can't pay the ticket you're not deterred by it short of imprisoning people for failure to pay.

Some people (a few of them maybe even commenting above, who knows) regard complaints about anti-social behaviour as invalid, that the issues are minor and to be absorbed out of some kind of pity. One see this kind of commentary in NOW magazine quite often. I disagree with this view, which I don't think is fair on the homeless person or the person who was assaulted or otherwise affected.

Streets to Homes is a good start although it's most likely to help the "soft homeless" most - those who are homeless mostly due to financial rather than mental health/addiction reasons. If the latter resist the solutions offered, in recent years we have moved away from enforcing solutions on them. Do we row back on the liberty front or are there solutions not yet tried?

Finally - a great deal has been made of the nationality of three of the homeless in question. Historically, Toronto and homeless advocates have resisted revealing or determining where Toronto's homeless originate from and I have no doubt that this issue will resurface at City Council.

You know, Canadians - Westerners, I think - have a lot of privilege and opportunities having been born and/or living in this country. Maybe we should just all shut up, do something positive to help others and be happy that we have a roof over our head compared to how a vast majority of the rest of the world lives. Maybe it's all relative and you may say it doesn't matter. Maybe you're right - but for me - I've seen the poverty and pollution in some poor parts of the world. We've got it pretty freaking fantastic here. Maybe a few panhandlers and people who need access to social programming really isn't that big of deal, considering...

However, I am the first to admit that support services are NOT that easy to access. As someone needing assistance, I have spent months trying to find and get help. I work, I'm a functioning adult. I can't imagine if I have had this much difficulty getting help, how enormous of a mountain climb it must be for some one who doesn't understand the system, know how to work within it or even to access it.

Um, since I wrote that I had 8 people view my site from here. I'm hoping it was them saying "That guys a funny guy, I want to check out his site", and not "What a douche bag!". I just want to state, for clarity, the above is a joke.

Although I fully support the notion that people have a basic right to go about their day without being harassed for money, a ban on aggressive pan-handling is at best a band-aid solution to a very deep problem.

Firstly, illegalizing something doesn't make it go away. We've seen this time and time again. Drugs are illegal and are still relatively popular. Prohibition in the U.S. certainly did not curtail people's drinking of alcohol. Prostitutes (or sex-trade workers for the more sensitive readers) are commonplace despite the fact that it is illegal to solicit sex for money.

Banning these symptoms of problems will not make them go away anymore than administering a local anaesthetic to mask the pain will get rid of a brain tumour.

There are myriad underlying issues that need to be addressed so that people can pull themselves out of the vicious circle of poverty and homelessness. As a start, we need far greater availability of mental health and wellness programs for all residents of our province. Emotional wellbeing is equally important to physical health and our government needs to wake up, take the big bucks out of enforcing useless, unworkable solutions and truly help people.

Instead of making criminals out of people who are just trying to get by, we should be making productive members of society out of them.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

emo - I don't know which is more ridiculous, your extrapolation of a population based on one comment thread (god knows what you'd think if you saw a Globe and Mail comment thread or a Toronto Sun letters page) or your expectation of homogeneity of views in a huge country thousands of miles wide with 30m people in it.

No one has any reason, beyond being a complete prick, to hate poverty-ravaged people for being in such a bad position that they're sitting on a street corner seeing if they can solicit enough donations of small change from passers-by to get a meal or place to stay for the night.

People do have a very reasonable problem with aggressive and even violent acts, both in this context and in just about every other context. Let's recognize that the context, panhandling, is not the issue that has thrown this all over the headlines - violence and aggression is. No one would propose a ban on black regent park youth when aggression and violence became serious problems in that context, and the scapegoating here is not all that different and reveals a lot of people to have a lot more hatred in them than is typically acceptable in society.

Aggressively demanding money from people and backing up that aggression with violence is very different from drawing up a cardboard sign and laying your hat out on the sidewalk.

One act heavily violates the rights of the passersby with the aggression directed their way, while the other is absolutely not anything that anyone should have the right to declare as an invasion of "their" sidewalk.

That sort of attitude is disgusting, and people leaping on some incidents of aggression in the context of panhandling to channel public concern into their hatred of poor people is disgusting. Especially when the police are quoted saying and every news outlet continues to use "panhandler/s" in every article that comes out on the crime!

The eagerness of people to take fear of violence and turn it into systematic violence against the weakest and in their eyes least valuable and least worthwhile segment of society disturbs me as much in this context as in any such attempt to direct government and police power against a weak demographic. This is the internet, so I know better than to stray too readily into parallels between scapegoating like this and certain early-20th-century fascist societal tendencies, but if I didn't I'd have another paragraph or two in here.

You have every right to expect people to leave you alone to whatever extent you decide, but those people also have every right to expect you to leave them alone whether you think they're clashing with "your" street corner's decor or not.

Anything that doesn't consider your rights as exactly equal to the rights of these people, no more and no less, is uncivilized and totally out of step with the principles our society is based on.

"Also, what do you think the homeless buy with the money we give them? Drugs and alcohol. That's why they're on the street in the first place." The way this article is written definitely leaves me with the impression that your announcing that this 'large chunk' is just a bunch of drug addicts is only based on whatever impression you have happened to acquired based on your experience living in, uhm, Parkdale. I wouldn't recommend going around making too many assertions like this without at least making some effort to check some actual stats, or research, or like any other type of properly-gathered information. Whether your claim is right or not, it's clear from itself that you've already decided to predetermine a conclusion... just like when you repeat a generalization that you've just randomly heard somewhere about squeegee kids - I know it's presented in the form of a question, but it's a question that's already very well set-up to be receiving an answer that's in line with an already-established premise, and is wrapped into the text in such a way to present itself as if its evidence towards supporting the ban.

You shouldn't pass off opinions as information in that way, I mean obviously your personal slice of experience with the world does hold plenty of relevant information and should play a significant role in how you form your opinions and make decisions about things, but when you're talking about supporting passing a law that will have an impact, directly or indirectly, on the majority of people in this city... all I'm saying is maybe it's worth at least checking the census to find some solid data on all those people you're advocating affecting?

Mark Dowling: Doesn't seem inappropriate in a thread where others are also painting populations with one brush. Besides, not every statement has to be completely literal. Is it *ever* possible to capture every single nuance of any nation, any group, and really, any individual?

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

What happened to all the comments that were on this page?

Main poinst - if you tolerate crap, it comes to you. US beggars deciding to live the street life in Toronto illustrates the point nicely. Ban, enforce, arrest, and crack down. Save the city. Please. Before its reputation gets any worse.

Part of the flaw in the article's argument is confusing homeless with panhandlers. They are not necessarily one in the same. I've lived in Toronto on and off since 1966, and there are some panhandlers you just need to avoid. But the typical Canadian guilt kicks in, and a good panhandler cna detect that in your eyes. (Don't believe me? I was told this by a success panhandler, back in the late 80s.)

Of the panhandlers you might encounter, not including squeegee "kids", there are actually several types:

(1) Mentally ill.
(2) Homeless and possibly but not necessarily mentally ill.
(3) Those on assistance, looking for a bit more $$ to supplement their meager existence.
(4) Burb kids angry at their parents, or bored for the summer, while school is out.
(5) Out of town punks, many from Montreal, sometimes from the US.

I know this because over the years that I lived in Toronto, I talked to many of them, bought them a drink or a meal, and let them tell their stories. Unless they were like the two punks from Quebec who started spewing racial epithets at me before I could offer them a meal.

As someone who has been both reasonably wealthy and scary dirt poor, and as someone who helped his friends but never enjoyed their help when I needed it, I try to be sympathetic, to a degree. You never know how close to the street you might be someday. Believe me, I know.

Personally, as hard as I've always worked for my money, I don't mind giving some of it out, but not to everyone that asks. If you're able-bodied and of reasonably sound mind, don't expect me to help you. If someone seems likely to buy drugs or alcohol, I offer to buy them a meal instead of giving them money.

All that said, despite my partial sympathy, I do feel like I have the right to walk down the street and be able to say I dont have change (I usually don't) and not being given the evil eye, verbally abused, or god forbid, physically assaulted - whether by panhandlers, squeegees, or glad-handing politicians. Whether this "right" is in the Charter or not is not the point. It's a basic right of anyone. And who is supposed to enforce this?