NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- In cities across the country, parking-style meters collect loose change from donors in an attempt to cut down on panhandling -- a strategy that critics argue is wrongheaded and ineffective.
New Haven is among the latest to install the meters, which sit curbside and collect donations in the form of cash or credit cards for programs that benefit the homeless. The city has four brightly colored meters in areas where panhandling has been a problem, and it plans to install six more to support local nonprofit organizations.
"It's meant to generate supplemental funds for homeless services and steer well-meaning, generously donated cash away from the business of panhandling," Mayor Toni Harp said.
The first meters went up in 2007 in Denver, and other cities have followed suit. They were recently installed in Pasadena, Calif; Indianapolis; and Corpus Christi, Texas.
"We get at least one call a month from cities who are looking to replicate the program," said Julie Smith, a spokesman for Denver's Road Home, which runs the meter program in that city.
But some advocates for the homeless say the meters do little to stop the needy from requesting handouts. They also question whether it's worth the cost to install and maintain them.
People who need money will still ask for it, said Mark Horvath, a national advocate for the homeless and the founder of the advocacy group Invisible People. The meters, he said, reinforce the stereotype that all panhandlers are bums who want money for drugs or booze.
"It's a false stereotype. A huge percentage of people who are panhandling are in housing, but they can't afford to make ends meet," he said. "There are so many better solutions than putting up meters, like the permanent support of affordable housing and a living wage."
Smith and others acknowledge they have no data or studies to show the meters have reduced panhandling, but they say the devices are worth installing as part of larger efforts to stem homelessness.
Joe Drury, 57, was looking for change on a late December morning in Annapolis, Md., which has several downtown meters raising money to help defray transportation costs for people residing at a shelter.
"These meters just sit here all day, but nobody gives me nothing," Drury said. "I can sometimes go a whole day without eating."
In Dade County, Fla., a food and beverage tax provides about $24 million a year as part of a $61 million budget for programs to help the homeless. Meters, by comparison, bring in about $50,000 a year, said Ron Book, the chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust.
The program began a decade ago, and there are now more than 700 meters, many paid for by businesses and supplemented by larger donation boxes inside many buildings.
All of them, he said, help reinforce the message that there is a better way to address the problem of homelessness than throwing money into a panhandler's cup.
"Half the people, in my opinion, who panhandle in Miami and Dade County are not homeless; they have a place to go at night," Book said. Some of the homeless, he said, "I assure you, are not using that spare change to buy services, beds or food."
Orlando, Fla., has collected just $2,450.07 in donations since putting up a dozen meters in 2011. That includes about $181 this year.
Thomas Chatmon Jr., executive director of Orlando's downtown redevelopment board and community redevelopment agency, said officials did not anticipate the program would result in a financial windfall. There was little cost to install the meters, which were donated and are emptied by the city's parking services on normal rounds, he said.
"It's just a very small part of a comprehensive and robust approach to ending homelessness," he said. "It's offering people an option for giving" if they are "not be comfortable dealing physically with people who they don't know."
Denver has supplemented the meters with collection boxes near security checkpoints at the airport and recently began a program that allows people to text donations. Those programs bring in more than $100,000 annually.
Cities can increase the money raised by the meters by making them visible and recognizable, Book said. In Miami, an artist volunteered to design colorful meters to make them visible.
"And I can tell you that panhandlers don't like my meters because it gives people an alternative to dumping money into their buckets, cups and hats," he said.
Arkansas
In Arkansas, the Downtown Little Rock Partnership started a "Change for the Better" program in 2008 in which 25 collection boxes were posted around downtown to curb panhandling.
Sharon Priest, the executive director at the time, said the partnership regularly received complaints about people asking for money and harassing downtown passers-by.
Any money placed in the boxes is collected by partnership staff members a few times a year and then donated to various shelters in Little Rock.
"If people don't give the money, [panhandlers will] quit asking," Priest said at the time the initiative was started.
However, that hasn't really been the case. In the eight years since the collection boxes were installed, the Downtown Little Rock Partnership hasn't marketed the program much, and it's seen little success in collecting large sums of money.
Current Executive Director Gabe Holmstrom said he emptied the boxes a couple of months ago and that about $65 had been collected for the year. The office was closed Wednesday, and he didn't have exact figures on how much had been collected since 2008.
"The boxes are still up. Money is still being collected. That money is distributed at the end of the year to area homeless shelters. That being said, it's not a substantial amount of money to where you are going to see a big impact," he said. "Another way to look at this is this also gives people the ability to say when being panhandled, 'Hey, this is how I give. I gave this way.'"
Until a November ruling by a federal judge, it was illegal to ask for money on the street in Arkansas. However, a spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department said officers rarely enforced the "loitering for begging" law unless a panhandler got pushy.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas took the state to court over a portion of the law that states that a person is committing the offense of loitering if he "lingers or remains in a public place or on the premises of another for the purpose of begging." The prohibition is listed in Arkansas Code Annotated 5-71-213(a)(3).
U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson sided with the ACLU and issued an order in November prohibiting the enforcement of the statute, saying it violated the First Amendment by restricting freedom of speech.
"A statute that regulates speech based on its content must be narrowly tailored to promote a compelling government interest," Wilson wrote. "Banning begging in all places, at all times, by all people, in all ways does not come close to chinning this bar."
The attorney general's office could appeal the ruling.
Several Arkansas municipalities have their own ordinances on begging.
Little Rock, for instance, bans solicitation in medians -- which its attorney says is a prohibition of conduct and not speech. Medians are high-traffic areas, and the reason behind the ban is for safety, not to limit begging, the attorney said.
In September, Hot Springs passed an ordinance to ban panhandling in the public right of way.
Information for this article was contributed by Pat Eaton-Robb of The Associated Press and Chelsea Boozer of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 12/29/2016