There’s a certain class of panhandlers you may encounter on
the streets of Portland that should not be classified as homeless. The reason is
simple: They have homes.
These are, for want of a better term, professionals … though
they probably aren’t registered as a small business or full-time worker subject
to withholding, and they may not pay taxes on their income at all.
I do not intend the term “professionals” in any sarcastic or
disparaging sense, but in a strictly neutral one . . . because this is what
they do. They ask you for money on the streets of the Pearl District, on
Broadway, and outside supermarkets week in and out, year after year, but they probably
go home at the end of each day.
There’s Larry, “the blanket man,” who tends to wander SW
10th and the South Park Blocks near the Portland Art Museum. There’s a second blanket
man, Mike, whose activities center more in the Pearl District and on the
streetcar between the west and east sides of the Broadway Bridge. And there’s
the tiny elderly woman who used to beg on her feet outside Art Media when it
was on SW Yamhill between Park and 10th in the 1990s and the turn of the
millennium; but these days she may be seen sitting in a wheeled walker along
the brewery blocks, on NW Couch between 10th and 11th.
[Note: None of the photos on this page depict actual street people, which would raise permission and privacy issues; they’re all of me pretending to be a homeless person in various commercial or indie film projects over the past seven years.]
Probably not homeless
The odds are high that every one of these individuals has a
permanent home, even if it’s only a hole-in-the-wall apartment in subsidized
housing. Why do I think so? Because I’ve seen them panhandling on the streets
of Portland for years. If they really were living on the streets, they wouldn’t
have survived this long; or they would have moved on to housing or care
elsewhere, with family, or something.
That’s not to say they are well to do or in good health, mental
or physical. Thousands of Portlanders live downtown in low-income housing, and
pay rent that’s a fraction of what the rest of us do, yet they remain teetering
on the edge of poverty, month after month.
These people don’t figure in the homeless statistics,
but they live perpetually on the verge of entering them. Lift Urban Portland,
the nonprofit my wife has worked with for more than a decade (both as a
volunteer serving weekly Meals on Wheels and the special Christmas dinner every
year at Temple Beth Israel; and as a sometime member of the board and organizer
of the annual fundraiser, coming up next week), serves the needs of this
particular population.
LiftUP provides supplementary food for families and
individuals in low-income housing, and teaches underprivileged citizens how to
cook and eat more healthy meals.
Longtime panhandler
styles
A small number of people in the low-income, housed population
have turned to begging. They can be straightforward about it or they may add a
twist. The many times over the years I’ve crossed trails with Larry the blanket
man, I can’t remember that he’s ever asked me for money directly; he’s so
obviously in need, that I imagine people volunteer cash to him without his
having to ask.
The same may be true of Mike, the other blanket guy, though
I mostly run into him aboard the Portland Streetcar when I’m in my official
branded gear and bright-yellow hazard vest, so I’m kind of official and he
wouldn’t want to put the touch on me.
At times he’s been pretty lucid when I speak with him, at
other times he’s constantly mumbling to himself and either experiencing or affecting
a regular head jerk. My streetcar colleagues and supervisors have theorized
that Mike may be a PTSD-addled veteran who goes on and off meds.
I’ve asked to see proof of fare from Mike several times, and
he usually has it among a wad of crumpled greenbacks he’s collected from people
. . . though I’ve also observed his routine when he steps on board, sets a
small stack of coins or bills on top of the fare machine as if preparing to
insert them, and mumbles absentmindedly to himself in front of the mechanism --
passing the time until his stop, when he gets off without paying.
The elderly lady on the brewery blocks, once erect and
almost elegant in a faded-streetcorner-Miss-Havisham sort of way two decades
ago, now painfully thin and bent over in her seat, always asks for money in a sweet
and gentle fashion.
Street performance
On the more canny side, for months in 2015 there was a heavy-set fellow who asked people for change outside the Safeway at 10th and Jefferson with a mumble, as if to imply he were physically or mentally disabled. But one day Carole happened to walk by and overheard him talking to a fellow panhandler. He spoke normally, and Carole heard him tell his colleague, “yeah, I’m making about seventy dollars an hour.”
On the more canny side, for months in 2015 there was a heavy-set fellow who asked people for change outside the Safeway at 10th and Jefferson with a mumble, as if to imply he were physically or mentally disabled. But one day Carole happened to walk by and overheard him talking to a fellow panhandler. He spoke normally, and Carole heard him tell his colleague, “yeah, I’m making about seventy dollars an hour.”
More than a decade ago, when I had a day job in the historic
Gus Solomon Federal Courthouse and a temporary U.S. Post Office was operating
on the ground floor, I noticed the old lady described above at the window,
asking to purchase a $200 postal money order.
I think of those people as performance artists. I don’t
begrudge them the money; it’s not easy work, by any means. And the woman is
looking pretty frail and decrepit these days. At least some of these people
could use counseling, proper mental care, and pharmaceutical mentoring.
But they are definitely not homeless.
The fourth and (perhaps) final category of street person is
the type we’re mostly talking about when we speak of “the problem of the
homeless.” And for the reasons I’ll describe in my next post, they really
shouldn’t be regarded as homeless persons.
Then we can talk about bigger picture: the nature of
Portland’s “homeless problem.”
NEXT: Category 4 –
Let’s Stop Calling these People “Homeless”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment