Outlawing the Poor

Downtown Nashville is the Galapagos Islands of a Darwinian drama pitting the ambitious young professionals of luxury lofts and condos against the hard-luck denizens of heat grates and dingy back alleys. It’s not hard to predict which species will survive.

Police are cooperating by handing out hundreds of $50 citations for trespassing, public drunkenness and basically being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The city calls them “quality of life” violations, but street people say it’s their quality of life—pathetic as it may be—that’s actually violated. The homeless are sometimes rousted from their cardboard-box sleeping places in parking garages, handed citations and shooed away to fend for themselves in the freezing night. If they don’t pay the $50 fines, which they can’t do, they could go to jail next time.

Another triumph for the new urban lifestyle: Begging is now illegal everywhere after dark. During the daytime, it’s illegal at any bus stop, sidewalk cafe or school or within 25 feet of an ATM or bank or within 10 feet of the entrance or exit of any business or anywhere around any place with a “No Solicitation” sign. Got that?

The Metro Council passed that bill by a nearly unanimous voice vote in January, and the self-described “progressive” Mayor Karl Dean allowed it to become law this month without his signature, even though his law department says it probably infringes on the First Amendment and may fail to clear a few other little hurdles in the Bill of Rights.

Even before the law went on the books, downtown honky-tonks, restaurants and other tourist-dependent businesses slapped up “Please Help, Don’t Give” signs, telling tourists not to assist panhandlers because that’s a “lose/lose situation.” Here’s the advice offered on the handy palm-sized cards that the businesses are distributing:

• When you encounter a panhandler, always walk with certainty and confidence.

• Choose to respond politely, “If you dial 2-1-1, they can help you” or simply say, “no” or “sorry.”

The beleaguered panhandler, assuming he doesn’t happen to have his cell phone with him, would have to beg for 50 cents to make a pay phone call to 211. But if he did, he might be disappointed because he’d connect with a United Way referral service, which wouldn’t offer help but would instead suggest that he call somewhere else, which would require another 50 cents.

We also are assured, “...[Y]ou need not feel guilty when you say no to panhandlers.” That’s because “help is available”—a dubious claim that this article will examine in a moment. (I happened to be reading this on the sign on Lower Broad outside Jack’s Bar-B-Que as a mumbling woman with matted hair and obvious mental disorders stumbled by and approached a businessman. Frowning at her outstretched hand, he briskly strode around her. He didn’t look guilty. Maybe he thought she’d dial 211.)

The signs are the brainchild of the Nashville Downtown Partnership, a kind of mini-Chamber of Commerce that seems to have developed an Ahab-like obsession with driving beggars out of downtown. “It’s harassment of individuals walking on the sidewalk,” the organization’s executive director, Tom Turner, says of panhandling. “We’re asking people to redirect their generosity.”

Charles Strobel, who runs the church-supported Room in the Inn shelters for the homeless, laughs at that. “We’ve not received a penny from people saying, ‘I’m giving to you because those signs told me not to give to panhandlers.’ As a city, we’re saying, ‘Don’t give, don’t be generous, don’t be compassionate, don’t be caring.’ What kind of message is that?”

Next on the council’s action agenda is a special favorite of the new pioneers—a citywide ban on selling one beer at a time, an attempt to prevent drunks from buying 40s of malt liquor and littering downtown with bottles. The likely unintended consequence: Homeless alcoholics will buy mouthwash and drink it instead. Scope is already increasingly popular on the street.

The only worry for many council members is that downtown’s homeless will flee to other parts of town, say Donelson or Woodbine, prompting a new wave of constituent complaints.