What to do about panhandlers?

People standing on medians kind of freaks me out, so I’d be perfectly happy if Tampa didn’t allow any kind of solicitation from those medians or traffic islands.

However, I think Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe’s suggestion that we fine charitable souls who give money to panhandlers is absurd. Nor do I support banning street solicitations like St. Petersburg did (or like some in Tampa want to do).

That said, I’m not sure what the best solution might be. I’ve lived in enough cities to know that urban homelessness (and I mean the chronic homeless, not the majority that you never see begging on the streets) can be a serious problem. But, I’m also enough of a humanist that I think we should work to solve the problem. We shouldn’t abdicate our responsibilities to our fellow humans (no matter how obnoxious, drunk, potentially violent, or smelly). And pushing the problem onto other cities (like St. Pete has done) doesn’t help solve the problem.

So, what is the solution?

Permanent supportive housing is the reasonable, responsible, and cost-effective solution. But given that Florida is not particularly interested in paying for schools, or libraries, and has never had much foresight or capacity for long-term vision, it seems likely that we will continue debating the problem and paying exorbitant costs for short-term solutions; jailing and hospitalizing the chronically homeless.

Seattle uses a form of permanent supportive housing in its Housing First program. Researchers recently published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) a study of Seattle’s Housing First project and found that:

“…providing housing to individuals who remain actively addicted to alcohol, without conditions such as abstinence or treatment attendance, can reduce the public burden associated with overuse of crisis services and reduce alcohol consumption.”

So, here’s my question to Mark Sharpe and his supporters. Why is your solution to create more laws, criminalize more behavior, and increase the burden on an understaffed and underfunded police department, instead of looking to municipalities that have actually implemented programs that reduce costs and get the chronic homeless off the streets?