Milpas on the Move by Sharon Byrne, as featured in the Santa Barbara Sentinel
Roger Dodger is a neighborhood treasure on Milpas St, the closest thing we have to a celebrity. He wrote this in his Monday Scanner Report:
I heard someone say ‘If you have any spare change at all you could make the day of a poor homeless person.’ I turned and there were five grown men who looked very healthy, I burst out laughing in their faces. I don’t have any spare change anymore and it’s not my problem that they are houseless. Some people out there are really hurting I wouldn’t hesitate to help someone I knew was down on their luck but these guys looked like a bunch of con men and they ain’t getting a dime outta me.”
Roger is onto something.
Last week, a panhandler was sitting under the old drive-thru window at the McDonald’s on Milpas, and a nice couple gave him money. I asked him please not to panhandle there, on private property. That earned me a holier-than-thou lecture from the couple. They just wanted to help him! How dare I ask him to move!
Translation: they just wanted to feel good about themselves. We all do. It’s human.
Minutes later, he jaywalked across Milpas to a liquor store, and spent their ‘donation’. He then shuffled into a residential area to drink his purchase. I am sure the families there appreciated him drinking on their corner, and his empty bottle on their sidewalk. I called the police on him, for drinking in public. They didn’t come, but if they had, they would just have written him a ticket. I know him, and he’s gotten tickets for inebriation on Milpas. When he eventually gets enough tickets, the restorative police will take him to restorative court, where he’ll hopefully go into a program. I don’t know what that magic number of tickets is. But we’ll get to deal with him continually until then.
He’s one of many that we see every day, racking up police time, getting inebriated in parks, near schools where the kids can see them at recess, on residential streets, in front of businesses, and so on.
That’s what panhandling creates for a neighborhood. I wish the charitable couple had stuck around to watch these activities, but they’d sped off in their car, probably to a neighborhood without panhandlers, righteous in their generosity, completely oblivious to the damage they’d just inflicted on the area.
Panhanding is a constant frustration on Milpas, and State. There’s no law against it. Anyone can stand on a sidewalk with a sign, protected by the first amendment. I totally understand the urge to give to panhandlers. You think ‘gosh, all that guy needs is a hot meal, or a few bucks to get him through, while he hunts for a job, or gets where he’s trying to go. I can help.’ I used to hand my child money to give panhandlers, to teach her to help those less fortunate.
One day, I realized I’d been giving some of the same guys money for years.
Clearly I wasn’t helping. My contributions had changed nothing in their situation. When I saw some of them drinking in my neighborhood, I realized I was making things worse because I was enabling this behavior. I was part of the problem.
Some homeless never panhandle. It’s an honor thing. Some panhandlers get in their cars and drive away. Not everything is what it seems, on first glance.
I see nice people on State freely handing over cash to the pit bull grunge set that lounges about on that RDA-sponsored concrete structure in front of the Habit. I think it was supposed to be public art or something. Now it’s outdoor furniture for panhandlers. The kids panhandle to buy cigarettes, weed, food, booze, and hang about all day, heckling passers-by that don’t give them money.
You can see people’s reactions to it. The police can’t stop it –free speech and all that. The city won’t rip out the RDA-public-art-nuisance thingy. No organization I’ve contacted seems to want to use it to hand out tourist materials, or do voter registration. It’s public space that’s lost to the public. At night, the grunge-youth-with-dogs amble over to the freeway encampment off Castillo and crash there, or jump the fence into Mission Creek to camp under the Gutierrez St bridge.
Naturally, there’s never an environmentalist conveniently nearby to protest.
But seriously, is this what you wanted to finance when you handed that donation to the panhandler?
Probably not.
Giving to a panhandler might temporarily reward your sense of selflessness and generosity, but when you understand the collateral damage it causes to surrounding areas, can you still hold on to that sense of feel-good?
If you really want to help, volunteer at a shelter. Serve dinner. Take time to get to know a homeless person, and encourage them to get sober, or come indoors. Give them socks, or some food.
Giving money may make you feel good temporarily, but if you’re not taking responsibility for what you’ve created, you’re not helping.
You’re hurting.
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Thought they were going to put more cops on State Street? Hard to believe this homless panhandling issues still havsn’t been addressed. My parents won’t come to visit SB anymore because of all the bad people on the benches along state.
Wasn’t there some campaign downtown to post “don’t give change to homeless” signs in businesses? As I recall, those small business owners most affected by the bums were shamed into removing them. The city should step up and add “don’t feed the bums” plaques to every bench.
There is a very real difference between genuine homeless people and the drug/alcohol-fueled street mendicants who inflict their sorry selves on us any time we venture downtown. When asked for spare change by the latter group, I simply look them in the eye and reply, “Change comes from within,” or “Do you have change for a twenty?” I’m sure this attitude will get me stabbed one day, but in the meantime I do enjoy screwin’ with these jerks.
Yes, genuine locals in need are provided for by the far ranging number of services our local tax dollars provide. Those spending their days harassing passersby on State are bums, yoaches and itinerant vagrants and should be rousted per longstanding loitering laws.
Sometimes you just need a beer?
And the 99 cents store is right there selling beer.
No beer at the 99 cents store.
Opinion articles like these are for people who don’t have real problems. It’s obviously a class issue and there’s no such things as the “restorative police” or “restorative court” in this country (lmao). And what is the damage caused by all of this exactly (impossible to quantify)? Damage to your little, insular bubble?
Matt,
The county of Santa Barbara administers restorative court and the city of Santa Barbara funds restorative policing. These have been discussed in local news stories.
Matt – maybe you should stop reading the Occupoo manual. Didn’t you read the article??? The neighborhood the city plunked the shelter into is predominantly Hispanic. Hardly some ‘insular bubble’ of the 1%, Matt, but loaded with families and kids. Back away from the computer at Casa Esperanza, and get on the bus back to wherever you came from.
Spot on!
The McDonalds’s might help the situation a little if they’d put up signs by the doors, outside, to not give to panhandlers. (Dog walking in the area, I’ve seen customers give to hands out.) I think they donate to homeless causes and if the restaurant pointed that out it might help.
And the TJ’s shopping center of your two lower photos should do the same. It’s really offensive to run the gamut of hands out and does not encourage shopping there.
I certainly hope none of you are ever in need. I know there are the drunk druggies, and they are a problem, agreed. But there are also the the “foreclosure families” who just need to survive. Pick carefully. It’s not hard to see who is who.
I have never seen a “foreclosure famliy” or any other type of family begging on the street. We have literally millions of dollars worth of safety net in this town, from Transition House all the way down to the dreaded Casa Esperanza. No family in need goes without a roof or a meal in SB…and no taxpayer should be driven from Main Street by abusive out of town bums.
Craig: I don’t think there’s any argument about that, as the previous posters have already said. It’s the lazy, shiftless beggars who are the problem. The “foreclosure families” don’t even enter this equation.
Sharon, have you posted this previously? I could swear I’ve read parts of it before. Or maybe the problems and the people are exactly the same.
Owen – Roger’s lead-in post came out on Monday morning on Edhat – you might have read it in his scanner report? I drafted the rest early this week, and turned it in Wednesday morning. The conversation on this topic has certainly been going on a long time, though, and some of the problem spots I mention have been troubling for years.
So what about that old guy who often sits next to the driveway entrance of the Post Office on Nopalitos Way (off Milpas south of 101)? He never bothers anyone. But is he truly needy and deserving of help? Does he fall into the undeserving “lazy shiftless beggar bum vagrant” category? Or is he in one of the favored categories like “foreclosure family”? How do you tell, do they have special tattoos?
Arroyo, the guy who sits by the post office, as he used to do by the Milpas post office, always reading, lives on/sleeps on East Beach with a woman. They’ve been there for years, near the toilets, bothering noone. She picks up cans, he collects donations. I don’t know where they go on rainy days, perhaps under a freeway? Life style choice, who knows? As you write, he bothers no one, unlike those with signs thrust, making eye contact as you enter or leave the TJ parking lot.
According to the homeless in sb blog, he was going into VA housing in LA 2 years ago, and then his backpack was stolen, with his id in it. Without it, he couldn’t get the housing. Santa Monica has a really tight partnership with the VA of LA County thanks to their county supervisor – something Santa Barbara could learn from.
Perhaps a better lesson we could “learn from” is not to throw out the welcome mat, so folks like Arroyo and most of the State Street crew would just stay in their own towns. I keep hearing how great Santa Monica is at handling the homeless…if so, why is he here and not there?
@el_smurfo
You have nothing intelligent to say and know absolutely nothing about me.
Not that it’s any of your business but I’m a SB native and have been employed in the Goleta tech industry since graduating from UCSB.
Thanks to both Anon’s for your info. I find it incredible that man is out on the streets and not in VA housing for a want of simple identification. Surely there must be some agency that can help get his ID?
That man? You mean yourself?
wasn’t there a field trip to Santa Monica to learn how to handle the homeless problem?
Indeed there was. We didn’t learn.