The rise of panhandling

Been noticing a lot more panhandling in Bellingham these days and it is increasingly the single person sitting near an intersection holding a sign with a few variations on the text. Looks like it is not just a local phenom -- from City Journal:

The Professional Panhandling Plague
A new generation of shakedown artists hampers America�s urban revival.

Barbara Bradley, an editor with the Memphis Commercial Appeal, moved into the River City�s reviving downtown about a year and a half ago, loving its �energy and enthusiasm.� But a horde of invading panhandlers has cooled her enjoyment of city life. Earlier this year, she recalled in a recent column, as she showed some visitors around the neighborhood, �a big panhandler blocked the entrance to our parking area and demanded his toll.� Now a nervous Bradley avoids certain downtown areas, locks her car when fueling up at local gas stations, and parks strategically, so that she can see beggars coming before getting out of her car. �When I hear someone call out �ma�am, ma�am� anywhere in downtown or midtown, I run.�

She�s not alone. Cities have overcome myriad obstacles in revitalizing their downtowns, from lousy transportation systems to tough competition from suburban shopping malls. But nearly 15 years after New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his police chief, William Bratton, vanquished Gotham�s notorious squeegee men and brought aggressive panhandling under control, other cities are facing a new wave of �spangers� (that is, spare-change artists) who threaten their newfound prosperity by harassing residents, tourists, and businesses. Unlike their predecessors in the seventies and eighties, many of these new beggars aren�t helpless victims or even homeless. Rather, they belong to a diverse and swelling community of street people who have made panhandling their calling.

The article talks about how New York City dealt with the problem (brilliantly):

The city then extended the anti-panhandling campaign to other parts of the city, including beggar-dominated Times Square. Central to the crackdown was the Midtown Community Court, an experimental judicial body to which police could drag quality-of-life arrestees the very day they issued citations. Working with social-services providers who offered help to those needing it, the court acted with lightning speed, usually giving community-service sentences to those willing to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, so that someone arrested for panhandling in the morning could be cleaning the neighborhood by the afternoon. The immediate results gave police a strong incentive to enforce the city�s long-moribund quality-of-life statutes; previously, if an officer issued a quality-of-life citation, the panhandler had a month or longer to respond to the summons and often didn�t show up in court on the appointed day. As with the subways and the squeegee men, the campaign was a huge success.

And the sad problem is that the people who panhandle for a source of tax-free income are diluting the resources available to the truly indigent and needy.