New tactics for handling panhandlers

With a glittering $783 million Convention Center expansion to showcase, downtown hotels and other stakeholders in Philadelphia's hospitality industry have partnered with city agencies to deal with a highly complex, though hardly new, issue:

How to curb aggressive panhandling and encourage the homeless in the Market East district to seek shelter and treatment services.

"We need to make the area around the Convention Center more visitor-friendly," said Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. "There's a difference between those who are homeless and professional panhandlers harassing both residents and visitors alike."

Said city Managing Director Rich Negrin: "We need to show the world the city's best face."

The effort to clean up Market East, which began in December, is one of four pilot programs under PhillyRising, a year-old project targeting neighborhood "hotspots."

Its newly raised profile among conventioneers and tourists is just part of what put Market East, the only purely commercial district among the four, on PhillyRising's radar. Among the other criteria cited by the Police Department in nominating the neighborhoods were the number of license and inspection violations, vacant housing, litter, and other quality-of-life issues, said Deputy Managing Director John Farrell, who is spearheading the project.

(The other neighborhoods, Farrell said, are Hartranft, a small but violent area between Sixth and 10th Streets from Lehigh Avenue to York Street in North Philadelphia; a section of West Philadelphia near the Haddington Library, and the "immediate vicinity" of Aria Health's Frankford Hospital.)

Negrin said he hoped to expand PhillyRising based on the success of the pilot programs. In the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, he is asking for about $570,000 to take the program citywide.

PhillyRising's Market East effort is focused from Broad to Eighth Streets, bounded by Chestnut Street on the south side and Arch Street on the north. Including the Convention Center extends the northern border to Race Street between Broad and 11th.

"The midterm goal on Market Street East is to redevelop . . . so that it can better serve the expanding hospitality industry and the growing Center City residential population," said Paul R. Levy, president and chief executive officer of the Center City District, which provides security, cleaning, and promotional services that supplement basic services provided by the city.

There are significant vacant parcels and many underdeveloped sites, particularly on the south side of Market Street, Levy said.

PhillyRising will emphasize code enforcement regarding illegal signs and vending, blaring speakers, and deteriorated storefronts; coordinate an on-street entertainment program called Market East Live! that began March 19; and focus on quality-of-life issues such as panhandling and mentally ill homeless individuals through increased and improved outreach.

Sister Mary Scullion, executive director of Project H.O.M.E. - a housing and support service for the homeless - said she had been in contact with Market East business and civic leaders since November about the pilot program.

"The good news is Philly is rising," she said Friday. "We hope that this will lift all people. The devil is always in the details, and we will work closely with people who are experiencing homelessness to ensure their civil and human rights.

"We know that we can end homelessness in our city through jobs, education, and affordable housing," Scullion said. "We look forward to working with the city, the business community, and the people who are experiencing homelessness to really end it in our city."

For the 44 Center City hotels, there is a lot at stake.

"We're not trying to bully homeless people out," Grose said. "But we can encourage the city to enforce sidewalk-behavior ordinances. We're trying to curb aggressive panhandlers because that really makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

"Most hotels in the city have had negative experiences with people being overaggressive in their lobbies, panhandling and disrupting the guest experience," he said.

The issue is so sensitive that none of the hotels wanted to be identified in this article as having a panhandling problem - out of fear of losing business.

Among the strategies being discussed to deal with panhandlers, Farrell said, is a campaign to stop people from giving money to them directly, donating instead to outreach programs that provide services.

"It's about supply and demand, and we want to engage the hotels to dry up the supply," he said.

Danielle Cohn, vice president of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, which books space at the Convention Center, said the newly expanded facility is being viewed as a major investment that has to be protected.

The goal is to "create long-term solutions that can ensure the largest return" on that investment, she said.

With Market Street Live!, Negrin envisions creating the feel of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and its droves of shoppers, restaurantgoers, and street acts in a center courtyard.

The effort here, being tested through June, features live bands, street performers such as clowns, and other entertainment.

"The goal is to make folks feel better when they leave the Convention Center, and not through a sleight of hand, or whitewashing or hiding the problem," Negrin said.

But some say that is exactly what the city is attempting.

Street musicians Jesse Andrus, 54, of Southwest Philadelphia, and David Buckery, 39, of South Philadelphia, play fusion jazz at 12th and Filbert Streets, in front of the Reading Terminal Market and across from the Marriott Hotel, a few times a week. Passersby put bills and coins in a box next to Buckery's foot as they jammed Wednesday.

"We never ask for money," Andrus said. He played the saxophone as Buckery played an Egyptian drum called a darbuka and balanced a tambourine on his left foot.

Andrus said his support of the effort to move the homeless "depends on where you put them. I mean, if there's no other place for them to go, are you going to give them housing and treatment?"

He added that he is trying to develop a music program for the homeless with a city nonprofit.

Peter Murphy, 42, who lost his job as a cook about a year ago and has been homeless since, said he just wanted a chance. He is staying at the Sunday Breakfast Mission at 1302 Vine St.

"My mission in life is to get a job and become a productive member of society," he said as he stood outside the shelter last week. "I just need someone to believe in me."

Murphy said he made money by selling candy and never begs. He said he understood the city and the hotels' push to curb panhandling around the Convention Center, just 21/2 blocks away.

"People come to the Convention Center for the Flower Show and the Auto Show, and oftentimes, they bring their families," he said. "They don't want to be bothered."