French poet, journalist, and novelist Anatole France once said, “It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.”



Those words might be worth considering in Puyallup, where city officials have voted to take a stand against aggressive panhandling. This week, council members passed into law a measure that makes it more difficult for poor people to ask people of more significant means for money. The law mirrors those passed in other regions, which jacks up fines for people who ask for help at particular locations, including cash machines, car washes, vehicles stopped at traffic lights and others. The ban comes in response to increasing citizen complaints about panhandlers, who seem to be migrating to Puyallup in increasing numbers.



“It started with complaints to the police department,” says Puyallup City Council member John Knutsen, “I’ve experienced some aggressive panhandling myself. The last two have been people coming up with gas cans. They asked for gas, saying they can’t get home. I said no, and they didn’t let up.”



City Council members aren’t the only ones being hassled. In support of their decision, city officials trot out elderly citizens, for example, who say they have been accosted by beggars who seem to have trouble taking no for an answer. Of course, no one would deny that people of any age have the right to go to the store without being harassed.



But let’s be frank — it’s downright irresponsible and lazy to end the conversation there.

Consider this, for example: Knutsen and other decision makers in Puyallup openly acknowledge that bans in other communities have contributed to the problem in Puyallup. It is an unfortunate and undeniable consequence of such laws — removing desperate peoples’ means of survival forces them to go elsewhere. Knutsen characterizes the policy move as an attempt to align with other cities and Pierce County, which have passed similar bans during the past year.



“Our intent is not to push this on to somebody else,” adds George Dill, deputy mayor and council member. “And I don’t deny that these are probably all good people. But there are facilities out there to help them. They just refuse to take advantage of them. It’s easier to just stand on the corner with a sign and ask for money.”



Of course, it would be cynical to suggest that Puyallup officials are simply joining a growing game of pass-it-along, ensuring that they’re not the ones left holding a bag that is nearly bursting with people who can’t afford to feed and shelter themselves.

Panhandling bans and other laws targeting the poor receive support based on the assumption that giving money to poor people facilitates drug use, drinking and other unhealthy habits, for example. Just walk through the dirtiest homeless encampments, where only about one percent of homeless populations live, and see for your self. If you really want to live guilt free, it helps to extrapolate from there, projecting the image of the most desperate and depraved onto the whole population. If you still feel guilty, give the money to service organizations, which will simply take care of it for you. If that doesn’t work, try giving them a pair of socks. They can always dig through a garbage can for food.



There are a couple of problems with these seemingly naive suggestions.



First, various studies indicate that only about half of people begging for money spend offerings on drugs or other contraband.



Lawmakers also ignore the fact that social service agencies in Pierce County are terrifically overburdened. Local agencies only have a few dollars for every 10 they need. They’re also dealing with 30 years of housing cutbacks, a growing gap between the cost of housing and people’s ability to pay for it, and a sudden and dramatically growing burden thanks to a worsening financial crisis. Not taking into account that our region is facing record job loss and housing foreclosures, Pierce County is currently short about 30,000 units of affordable housing. A recent Pierce County commission report describes as approaching crisis proportions. New efforts at providing housing and treatment under federal, state and local programs such as Housing First have fallen short of goals, and have been plagued by problems that typically haunt new government programs.

These deficits are certain to grow as we wade through a historic economic crisis.



Meanwhile, it would seem that citizens and policymakers — if they’re truly motivated by a desire to help the poor — would at least get these programs up and running before they criminalized other, primary means of survival. It is telling that first efforts seem to consist of aggressively displacing the poor, followed by limp, last-minute attempts at housing a very small percentage of the most visible and icky members of the homeless population.



It seems the alternative is to criminalize their way of life in hopes that they’ll go somewhere else.