The Worthy Poor
Kevin J. Mullen
The Ladies Protection and Relief Society would call attention to the increase of late, of street begging in the city. Some who are thus employed are known to be unworthy. We are compelled by experience to caution the public against indiscriminate charity.
-- San Francisco, August 1857
Voters in San Francisco recently [1994] enacted ballot measures intended to prohibit aggressive panhandling and loitering in front of sidewalk cash machines. Now they are getting ready to pass another proposition which will outlaw sitting or lying down on the sidewalks in just about every business or commercial district in the city. What has persuaded of traditionally tolerant San Franciscans to enact such harsh measures against those least able to care from themselves? Could it be that the people who must use the streets everyday, those who vote, have discerned that many of the "homeless" people who inhabit the city's streets are really members of the group once classified as the "unworthy poor?" Times were tough in the winter of 1893. The financial panic that year threw thousands of San Franciscans out of work. As a relief measure, the city offered free overnight lodging and meals in the recently vacated City Hall at Kearny and Washington streets to all who applied to the police.
In September, as winter approached, a city supported soup kitchen and hiring hall run by the Salvation Army was set up at 7th and Mission. The idea was that the city would fund temporary street sweeping jobs for those living in makeshift dwellings on the nearby sandlots. In November, Salvation Army Captain Joseph McPhee declared the operation a failure. "A very small minority of men" who inhabited the sandlots, "[were] worthy of help," he said. "It is simply a resort for loafers." The plan called for the employment of 80 men, but the captain was unable to get more than 20 of them out of bed in the morning, "the bulk of the men being able by begging or other means to keep themselves charged with liquor."
For a long time, homeless advocates have insisted that there were three things needed to solve the homeless problem: "housing, housing, and housing." In keeping with the current doctrine that elevates every type of social misconduct to the status of a disease, "the experts" refused to make a distinction between those who were genuinely disadvantaged and those who were playing the public for fools. Many more of us, they claimed, are just one paycheck away from being in the same fix.
But citizens forced to use the city's public areas saw something else. To all appearances, many of those confronting them looked a lot like the bums of an earlier time. And like the Ladies Protection and Relief Society in 1857 they saw the curse of "indiscriminate charity." It was evident that the homeless population was growing in numbers and aggressiveness in a climate of toleration. The public's suspicions were confirmed by studies which showed that a significant portion of the "homeless" population was made up of alcoholics, the drug besotted, and those who had simply opted out of the larger society.
One self-identified "bum" wrote a guest newspaper column in which he commented that "there is a part of me that gets a sense of satisfaction living outside of the boundaries of society and outwitting the various authorities that would try and force me to conform." Another homeless man, when asked why he continued to panhandle when other alternatives were available, replied "I'm doing this cause I feel like it. I don't know, I'm lazy. You get insulted, you get disrespect, but it's better than a job."
Many homeless advocates remain in denial. San Franciscans are as willing to help those in need as anyone, perhaps more so, and realize that the larger problem of homelessness will not be solved solely by the exercise of police power. But nobody likes to be conned. Hence the widespread support for the Matrix program. And to the members of the "homeless" community who have voluntarily contributed to their circumstances -- the unworthy poor, if you will -- San Francisco voters have said: if you want to live that way, that's fine, but we don't want you menacing people in front of automatic teller machines. And now we don't want you lounging around in the public streets, disrupting the very businesses which pay the taxes that support you in your leisure.
Examiner August 26, 1996