New York City, U.S.A. Shrugging Off The Homeless

By PRISCILLA PAINTON

At 5 p.m. the rush-hour ticket line at New York City's Port Authority Bus Terminal wove through the customary wretched carnival of mendicants. One beggar twirled like a crazed ballerina from commuter to commuter, caressing people's shoulders and prodding their bellies with a beseeching hand. Another rolled his wheelchair up against the commuters' feet and tugged at their sleeves. A third stretched across a counter in a weirdly feline gesture, trying to intercept the change coming back to Mike Farrell, 50, of Ringwood, N.J. "No!" howled Farrell, loud enough to make heads turn. "It's the only way you can get through to them," he explained.

New Yorkers, who pride themselves on having the nation's thickest urban carapaces, are cracking under the tightening grasp of the homeless. When then Mayor Ed Koch urged Gothamites two years ago to stop giving to panhandlers because many "just don't want to work for a living," residents shrugged off the curmudgeonly remark as the latest from the city's self-appointed curmudgeon. But Koch's sour mood has caught on over the past twelve months, surfacing recently in cartoons, editorials, dinner conversations and official campaigns to move the city's vagrants out of its subway, bus and train stations.

"People who maybe a year ago would simply have walked away really snap back at panhandlers and homeless people who are acting aggressively," says Robert Kiley, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "Just in the past four or five weeks, I've seen a couple of near physical confrontations." Peter Harris, the MTA's director of research, says his "eyes kind of bulged" in October as he listened to the complaints of subway riders who participated in a focus group. "One woman said, 'I've spent my whole life in New York, I've grown up on the Upper West Side, and I consider myself a liberal. But I'm sick and tired of feeling guilty.' " Says Harris: "This thing has really turned."

This free-floating anger crystallized two months ago around the case of Rodney Sumter, 39, who was charged with first-degree manslaughter for beating to death a homeless man on a subway platform after the stranger spat on him and punched him in the head. Sumter who was traveling with his three-year-old son and had lately worked in a program to train homeless people in construction, had all the credentials of an earnest victim. Civil rights leader Roy Innis rallied to Sumter's defense, as did editorialists from the city's newspapers. "How many subway riders, wary of the deranged homeless who make the subterranean world so menacing, have not fantasized responding to assault with violence?" wrote social commentator Myron Magnet in the New York Times. Public wrath at the homeless was so palpable that the Rev. George Kuhn felt the need to admonish restraint at the funeral of Sumter's still unidentified victim. "Homeless people are not wanted in our country," said Kuhn. "We have to say, 'I am ready to give my all so that this does not happen again.' "

Two weeks ago, a grand jury cleared Sumter of any wrongdoing, a decision that was instantly interpreted as a victory for the social contract over random violence and of respectable citizens over society's lunatic fringe. "The torn fabric of our society has been mended in a significant way," declared Mel Sachs, one of Sumter's lawyers. "This grand jury has acted as a conscience of this community." Proclaimed Simeon Greenaway, another defense attorney: "It's a victory for the subway users of New York. The right of self-defense is still alive, and we're grateful for that."

Even before the Sumter case, frustration with the homeless helped persuade New York to adopt stricter rules for its railway and bus centers. Only passengers with tickets are now allowed in waiting areas at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal. Last summer the Port Authority began replacing its wooden chairs with narrow, plastic "flip" seats suitable only for perching. And last October the MTA put into effect Operation Enforcement to rout the homeless from the subways by coaxing them into shelters and enforcing new rules against littering, panhandling and lying down on seats.

The crackdown left everyone unhappy. Advocates of the homeless denounced the move as insensitive. The transit police complained that it made them social workers. Officials conceded that it affected only 20% of the homeless, many of whom returned to their old haunts after the cops departed. In January came another blow: Federal District Judge Leonard Sand ruled that panhandling is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment and ordered a halt to the MTA prohibition against begging in the subways. The decision was temporarily stayed on appeal, but not before the New York Daily News printed a cartoon of a subway platform overrun by beggars with the caption: "It's really amazing how many federal judges you see down here."

The Port Authority, taking Sand's decision to the point of absurdity, began issuing a limited number of "begging permits" in February. In a lonely act of exasperation, James Benagh, 52, a copy editor at the New York Times, posed as a beggar so that he could snag a license and thereby shrink the number available to Port Authority paupers. "I don't want to sound like some right- wing beggar basher," he explained, "but you can't go anywhere in this city without someone pestering you for money anymore."

Defenders of the homeless realize they face a growing public relations problem. Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin had to borrow from Jonathan Swift to arouse some sympathy on their behalf, arguing in the satirical tradition of A Modest Proposal that "beggars and bums" should become useful by renting themselves to subway riders as human shields. (Some of his readers took him seriously.) The founders of Street News, a monthly tabloid sold since November by a sales force recruited from shelters and benches, have found a way to circumvent the public's eroding sense of charity by making the homeless appear to work for their alms. "I tell them this is going to help me get off the street and put me back on my feet," says vendor Franklin Salcedo, who pockets 50 cents for every 75 cents copy sold. "They tell me to keep up the good work."

But in their uneasy negotiations with the public, the homeless may be most harmed by the growing perception that they have become a permanent fixture of urban life. A poll released in February by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion found that 76% of Americans believed the problem would worsen or remain the same. Another problem is the catchall name homeless, which throws together in one menacing bundle not only destitute people who need shelter but also AIDS victims, the mentally ill, drug and alcohol abusers, and street predators of all kinds. "It is becoming harder and harder, whether you are on the subway system or in the streets, to keep those distinctions straight in your own mind," says Kiley. Even harder for New Yorkers is the daily task of extracting compassion from a supply that seems nearly exhausted.