TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.4 KB | 149 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 14

New York City, U.S.A.

Shrugging Off The Homeless


The nation's toughest urbanites lose patience with the
down-and-out

By PRISCILLA PAINTON


    At 5 p.m. the rush-hour ticket line at New York City's Port
Authority Bus Terminal wove through the customary wretched
carnival of mendicants. One beggar twirled like a crazed
ballerina from commuter to commuter, caressing people's
shoulders and prodding their bellies with a beseeching hand.
Another rolled his wheelchair up against the commuters' feet
and tugged at their sleeves. A third stretched across a counter
in a weirdly feline gesture, trying to intercept the change
coming back to Mike Farrell, 50, of Ringwood, N.J. "No!" howled
Farrell, loud enough to make heads turn. "It's the only way you
can get through to them," he explained.

    New Yorkers, who pride themselves on having the nation's
thickest urban carapaces, are cracking under the tightening
grasp of the homeless. When then Mayor Ed Koch urged Gothamites
two years ago to stop giving to panhandlers because many "just
don't want to work for a living," residents shrugged off the
curmudgeonly remark as the latest from the city's
self-appointed curmudgeon. But Koch's sour mood has caught on
over the past twelve months, surfacing recently in cartoons,
editorials, dinner conversations and official campaigns to move
the city's vagrants out of its subway, bus and train stations.


    "People who maybe a year ago would simply have walked away
really snap back at panhandlers and homeless people who are
acting aggressively," says Robert Kiley, chairman of the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "Just in the past four
or five weeks, I've seen a couple of near physical
confrontations." Peter Harris, the MTA's director of research,
says his "eyes kind of bulged" in October as he listened to
the complaints of subway riders who participated in a focus
group. "One woman said, `I've spent my whole life in New York,
I've grown up on the Upper West Side, and I consider myself a
liberal. But I'm sick and tired of feeling guilty.'" Says
Harris: "This thing has really turned."

    This free-floating anger crystallized two months ago around
the case of Rodney Sumter, 39, who was charged with
first-degree manslaughter for beating to death a homeless man
on a subway platform after the stranger spat on him and punched
him in the head. Sumter who was traveling with his
three-year-old son and had lately worked in a program to train
homeless people in construction, had all the credentials of an
earnest victim. Civil rights leader Roy Innis rallied to
Sumter's defense, as did editorialists from the city's
newspapers. "How many subway riders, wary of the deranged
homeless who make the subterranean world so menacing, have not
fantasized responding to assault with violence?" wrote social
commentator Myron Magnet in the New York Times. Public wrath
at the homeless was so palpable that the Rev. George Kuhn felt
the need to admonish restraint at the funeral of Sumter's still
unidentified victim. "Homeless people are not wanted in our
country," said Kuhn. "We have to say, `I am ready to give my
all so that this does not happen again.'"

    Two weeks ago, a grand jury cleared Sumter of any
wrongdoing, a decision that was instantly interpreted as a
victory for the social contract over random violence and of
respectable citizens over society's lunatic fringe. "The torn
fabric of our society has been mended in a significant way,"
declared Mel Sachs, one of Sumter's lawyers. "This grand jury
has acted as a conscience of this community." Proclaimed
Simeon Greenaway, another defense attorney: "It's a victory for
the subway users of New York. The right of self-defense is
still alive, and we're grateful for that."

    Even before the Sumter case, frustration with the homeless
helped persuade New York to adopt stricter rules for its
railway and bus centers. Only passengers with tickets are now
allowed in waiting areas at Pennsylvania Station and Grand
Central Terminal. Last summer the Port Authority began
replacing its wooden chairs with narrow, plastic "flip" seats
suitable only for perching. And last October the MTA put into
effect Operation Enforcement to rout the homeless from the
subways by coaxing them into shelters and enforcing new rules
against littering, panhandling and lying down on seats.

    The crackdown left everyone unhappy. Advocates of the
homeless denounced the move as insensitive. The transit police
complained that it made them social workers. Officials conceded
that it affected only 20% of the homeless, many of whom
returned to their old haunts after the cops departed. In
January came another blow: Federal District Judge Leonard Sand
ruled that panhandling is a form of free speech protected by
the First Amendment and ordered a halt to the MTA prohibition
against begging in the subways. The decision was temporarily
stayed on appeal, but not before the New York Daily News
printed a cartoon of a subway platform overrun by beggars with
the caption: "It's really amazing how many federal judges you
see down here."

    The Port Authority, taking Sand's decision to the point of
absurdity, began issuing a limited number of "begging permits"
in February. In a lonely act of exasperation, James Benagh, 52,
a copy editor at the New York Times, posed as a beggar so that
he could snag a license and thereby shrink the number available
to Port Authority paupers. "I don't want to sound like some
right-wing beggar basher," he explained, "but you can't go
anywhere in this city without someone pestering you for money
anymore."

    Defenders of the homeless realize they face a growing public
relations problem. Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin had to
borrow from Jonathan Swift to arouse some sympathy on their
behalf, arguing in the satirical tradition of A Modest Proposal
that "beggars and bums" should become useful by renting
themselves to subway riders as human shields. (Some of his
readers took him seriously.) The founders of Street News, a
monthly tabloid sold since November by a sales force recruited
from shelters and benches, have found a way to circumvent the
public's eroding sense of charity by making the homeless appear
to work for their alms. "I tell them this is going to help me
get off the street and put me back on my feet," says vendor
Franklin Salcedo, who pockets 50 cents for every 75 cents copy
sold. "They tell me to keep up the good work."

    But in their uneasy negotiations with the public, the
homeless may be most harmed by the growing perception that they
have become a permanent fixture of urban life. A poll released
in February by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion found
that 76% of Americans believed the problem would worsen or
remain the same. Another problem is the catchall name homeless,
which throws together in one menacing bundle not only destitute
people who need shelter but also AIDS victims, the mentally
ill, drug and alcohol abusers, and street predators of all
kinds. "It is becoming harder and harder, whether you are on
the subway system or in the streets, to keep those distinctions
straight in your own mind," says Kiley. Even harder for New
Yorkers is the daily task of extracting compassion from a supply
that seems nearly exhausted.