William Tasco sat quietly on a bench, enjoying a crisp, sunny, late Monday afternoon as government employees in business suits filed out of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami.

The diminutive 69-year-old Tasco pushed a small rolling cart jammed with several backpacks. He held a wooden walking cane adorned with a bronze duck.

The 10 or 15 workers hurrying past him didn’t seem threatened. Some gave him a smile or a nod. One man even complimented his cane.

Tasco panhandles to make a living.

“I lost all my papers,” he said, while a security guard darted around on a golf cart, watching the scene closely. “I’m just trying to get my birth certificate so I can file for my Social Security.”

Tasco bashfully displayed the surgery scars on his wrist — an old, but still painful injury that, he said, prevents him from working. In Massachusetts, where he’s from, he worked as a welder. Now he spends his days panhandling downtown. Most of the other panhandlers there are homeless, he said, and only collect between $10 and $20 a day.

Tasco said he volunteers at a local church to serve meals to the homeless.

If a new ordinance proffered by the city’s Downtown Development Authority — and passed unanimously on first reading Thursday by the City Commission — passes again next month, Tasco, and others like him who ask people for their spare change, could be arrested and fined up to $100 for panhandling. The maximum penalty would be 30 days in jail for a first offense and a $200 fine and 60 days in jail for subsequent offenses. Although the details of the proposal could be tweaked before the second reading, the ordinance currently does not provide for warnings to first-time offenders.  The ordinance is scheduled for second reading on May 22.

Punishing the poor

According to the city, the ordinance is the result of pleas from business owners who see the panhandlers as another problem in a blighted downtown. Although the city already has an ordinance on the books banning “aggressive” panhandling, the DDA and City Commission want to rid downtown’s Central Business District of panhandlers altogether.

“I would have fought this if it was an anti-homeless ordinance,” said Commissioner Tomas Regalado, a Homeless Trust board member.

Still, critics say the new measure will not just be ineffectual, but unconstitutional.

“The judgment has been made over and over again,” said Carlene Sawyer, chair of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “People in the city have a right to engage in the practice of living.”

Sawyer is right. Municipalities throughout the country, including Miami, have encountered that legal challenge.

City officials are adamant that the ordinance is not an action against the homeless; rather, it is intended to prosecute “professional panhandlers” who do have homes. But the issue may become broader than the curtailing of civil liberties.

“It’s just another charge under which to arrest someone,” City Manager Pete Hernandez explained Thursday.

“I have to stop and take a deep breath because I hear people saying things like ‘professional panhandlers’ and ‘professional homeless,’” said Ben Burton, executive director of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless, who spoke out against the ordinance at Thursday’s meeting. “The people that we are talking about are residents of our city…. One thing that this ordinance does is make criminals of them very, very quickly.” Burton added that, in a struggling economy that everyone feels, the city is seeking to “crack down on people that have the least.”

Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who was adamant in supporting the measure, recounted the emotional story of how his own brother is “on the streets — he’s been on the streets since he was 30 years old,” Sarnoff said. “He’s been through 33 rehab centers, should he go through 34? I don’t know. After about 30, we gave up.”

Unconstitutional?

Whether homeless or not, everyone, under the U.S. Constitution, has the right to free speech, which includes talking to someone on the street.

Because the affected area is “narrowly tailored,” said City Attorney Julie Bru, “I think we can sustain a [legal] challenge.”

Centered around Flagler Street, the proposed panhandling-free zone would be between Biscayne Boulevard and Northwest First Avenue from Northeast First Street to Southeast First Street. It would also include South Miami Avenue from Southwest 10th Street to Northeast First Street, as well as Brickell Avenue north of Southwest Eight Street.

Under the influence of businesses and DDA board members, commissioners added portions of Northeast Second Street to the zone, carefully leaving panhandling legal in 99.9 percent of the city.

“We know where this is going to start moving,” District 5 Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones said, referring to Overtown, an area she represents. “You push one problem to another district.”

Regardless of the zoning, Sawyer said the panhandling problem is bigger than the city is willing to realize.

“This is just not constitutional in my opinion,” Sawyer said. “And it does not address the causes of homelessness. As the economy gets worse, people get poorer. There are economical disadvantages, mental illnesses or addiction problems that have to be addressed, and those services are getting cut.”

Sawyer agrees that downtown patrons should feel safe when they visit the area and said a greater police presence there could help curb panhandling. “The city needs a trained police force in downtown,” she said, not simply to arrest those begging for change and cram more people into already overcrowded jails, but to address the issues that may arise from their begging.

“This is an ordinance-based PR campaign,” Sawyer said, citing Pottinger vs. the city of Miami, the 1998 ACLU lawsuit that now prevents police from arresting homeless people engaged in “life-sustaining conduct” on public property.
Bru said the ordinance is based on a 1993 Fort Lauderdale law banning panhandlers from some tourist areas. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld that ordinance, provided there are other areas in the city where panhandling is permitted. That controversial law set a legal precedent for pushing beggars out of tourist-heavy areas and, as Spence-Jones suggested, only shifted the problem to other neighborhoods.

For example, the St. Petersburg City Council banned aggressive panhandling citywide in 1997. In January this year, that City Council used the Fort Lauderdale ordinance as justification to expand its own panhandler-free downtown zone.

Through a panhandler’s eyes

Walking the streets of downtown Miami, it is clear what Sawyer meant about a PR campaign — the ordinance will lessen the appearance of a problem rather than provide a solution.

Many panhandlers quietly stand outside of big-name pharmacies and shops with heavy foot traffic. Some just mumble to themselves. One man in relatively clean clothes asked patrons of the CVS pharmacy on the corner of Flagler Street for money so quietly that they did not even turn their heads in recognition that they were spoken to. He illustrates the conundrum the city faces. People have a choice whether to even acknowledge a panhandler’s existence. When asked if he was panhandling, the man said “no, ma’am” and hurried away.

One woman outside of a Walgreens stood swaying and mumbling to herself unintelligibly. Shrouded in dark glasses, she smoked a cigarette, never making eye contact with patrons. No one volunteered their money.

“They’re quiet people. They just ask for money,” said Edgard Luna, president of Electroland Inc., an electronics shop located at 223 E. Flagler St. He echoed the sentiment of several other downtown business owners who say they have never had a problem with panhandlers.

“They [panhandle] because of old age, [addiction to] drugs; a lot of these people lost their minds,” Tasco said. “The state don’t do nothing for your mind.”

He admits that some people do take advantage. He recounted the story of one professional panhandler who played what he calls “blind games.”

“He pretended like he was blind when he wasn’t, and he was out here begging,” Tasco said. “Then he lost his leg. They cut off his leg because of diabetes,” he said, motioning to the top of his own thigh just below the hip. “Then I told him, ‘Now you got to be out here even more.’” Tasco said he hasn’t seen the man in two months, and that he was surely dead.

Tasco was not aware of the city’s proposed panhandling law, but it didn’t surprise or concern him.

“There was a suit against the city. It’s unconstitutional — it’s our civil liberties,” Tasco said. “I can talk to anyone, as long as I’m polite,” which includes asking for money, he said. “Not if someone is harassing someone. Then it is illegal, and should be illegal. Not if people are eating dinner. You don’t come up to them when they’re eating dinner. I hope they do go through with it. Then there will be another suit against the city, and someone will have to bring us each a thousand dollars again.”

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