Rosie On Panhandling

No, no! Not the douche bag. Our very own Rosie Dimanno.......but in retrospect is it any surprise panhandling has got out of control when you look at how our city is being managed and Comrade Miller's Plan B.

Protect citizens from panhandlers
May 30, 2007
Rosie DiManno

Whilst on a dawn campaign stroll with Mayor David Miller last November, an accompanying reporter asked His Eminence about the problem of aggressive panhandlers.

"They're people too," the mayor admonished.

Taken aback by the condescending tone, the reporter mumbled: "And here I thought they were giraffes.''

Miller, acutely sympathetic to the destitute constituency, has done a great deal to alleviate their circumstances, most especially through the Streets to Homes initiative, with its emphasis on "social inclusion."

But in the process, this city council has turned a deaf ear to the complaints of exasperated Torontonians, particularly those who live and work in downtown neighbourhoods that are shared business and residential districts.

The issue is peaceful coexistence.

Mendicants do not have a superior claim to sidewalks and doorways, even with a Canadian charter that has interpreted public begging as "expressive conduct which conveys meaning relating to a person's impoverished condition and need for assistance," thus protected by freedom of expression.

There are, nevertheless, avenues for obtaining relief from unwanted and intrusive appeals for money.

A court challenge of Ontario's Safe Streets Act narrowly upheld the specific section that prohibits a person on a roadway from soliciting from a person who is in a stopped, standing or parked vehicle. At the very least, pedestrians should enjoy the same protections. What makes motorists so special?

Yet city staff legal advisers who were consulted on a task force proposal put to Toronto's executive committee this week began with the operating premise that a generic bylaw to curb panhandling wouldn't fly, constitutionally. Instead, the committee voted unanimously to launch a pilot project – from July 3 to September 17 – that would seek input from business people on addressing the conundrum.

This might result – don't hold your breath – in some kind of accommodation for tourist areas besieged by panhandlers, as these seem to be the primary areas of concern. It does nothing for ordinary Toronto residents who have to navigate entire stretches of the downtown core where panhandlers are a menace, sometimes threatening and routinely abusive.

Those with hyperactive social consciences – say, suburbanites who cluck their tongues at the sad existence of Toronto's poor and homeless and why doesn't somebody do something – will likely rise to the defense of panhandlers, so long as they don't pester them in their cars or come out to their nice, tidy communities.

The facts, however, as compiled last year by the city in a Street Needs Assessment, paint a much different picture of who's cadging and why: fewer than one in five panhandlers are homeless.

The vast majority takes to the curb ostensibly to make ends meet, some to buy food, some to buy drugs and some to buy booze.

There are ample, if perhaps insufficient programs, to feed the hungry. No city should allow any person to scrounge for food.

But if authorities wish to meet other needs – drugs and alcohol — they should say so frankly and not pass the buck (or quarter or dime) to pedestrians, to be repeatedly accosted by legions of supplicants. If tourists are to be spared, then why not the rest of us, who live and work here?

The city draws a distinction between "passive'' and "aggressive'' panhandlers, with Miller asserting the Safe Streets Act already exists to address the latter. This is a crock because police rarely act on such complaints.

In any event, if a panhandler is cited, what are the odds he or she will pay the fine? Attacking their wallets is silly, a useless rubric.

We all share the public space. Those who don't beg shouldn't be beggared for mercy from city hall.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. rdimanno@thestar.ca