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 ew
York City is appealing a judge's ruling that forbids the police
from picking up homeless people sleeping on the steps of the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church in midtown. Before working up a righteous
indignation at the city's Scrooge act, I ask you to consider the
following scenes from midtown Manhattan, circa late fall, early
Winter 2001: Strolling down Broadway, 8:15, on a Wednesday night,
I pass a man leaning into a green trash bin. His two feet are off
the ground. He's flinging trash out behind him, onto the sidewalk,
scouring the refuse for bottles and cans. He stops long enough to
ask if I can help him out, and when I say "Sorry," he
returns at once to his search. In the distance, half a dozen black
garbage bags are torn open, their contents strewn from the curb
to the plaza of the high-rise office tower.
Rushing to
catch the N Train at 34th Street, 4:30, on a Sunday afternoon, I'm
halted by a crowd jammed back six deep at the subway entrance. The
stairwell is divided by a metal banister; it's supposed to separate
commuters exiting from commuters entering the station, but the entire
right half of the stairwell is taken up by a woman lying across
the third step from the bottom, holding out a paper cup for change,
moaning, "Pleeeeeease."
Stopping for
cash at a bank on Madison Avenue, 10:15, on a Tuesday night, I'm
let inside by a disheveled man; he half-heartedly asks for change
but then hustles past me before I can even shake my head. The reason
for his haste becomes immediately apparent. He's defecated in front
of the first ATM machine.
Now of course
it's considered bad form to criticize people down on their luck
— though the very phrase "down on their luck" assigns
a far greater role to chance than the evidence bears out. Even the
Coalition for the Homeless, who for years insisted that you and
I were only one missed paycheck away from living on the streets,
now concedes that 40% of their clientele are mentally ill; according
to the Doe Foundation, another advocacy group, at least 70% of the
homeless suffer from drug or alcohol dependency. This isn't the
Great Depression. People who've been reduced to panhandling . .
. well, they're not just like you and me.
The question
must therefore be asked: What rational purpose is served in permitting
such people to "support" themselves by inconveniencing,
intimidating, and even appalling the rest of us?
It's the ultimate
politically incorrect question. You're liable to be called a fascist
just for asking it, or confronted with rhetoric along the lines
of: So what should we do? Put them to death? The more temperate
reply is that all people have a right to use public spaces as long
as they're not harming themselves or others.
Perhaps.
But harm
can be psychological as well as physical. The courts, for instance,
recognize mental anguish as a rationale for second trimester abortions.
The Internal Revenue Service lets us deduct psychotherapy bills
from our taxes. Insurance companies cover antidepressant drugs.
Yet the reality of psychological harm seems to evaporate, at least
in many people's minds, when weighing the rights of the public versus
the rights of public nuisances. Even granting that only one in a
thousand panhandlers would ever, say, crush the skull of a passerby
with a brick, the possibility that the obscenity-muttering, filth-encrusted
guy on the corner might just be that one is a source of palpable
tension.
Civil society,
moreover, is founded on the principle of reciprocal obligations.
In exchange for the benefits and protections of the state, individuals
surrender certain liberties to the collective good. For example,
though on occasion I might want to drive 100 miles per hour, I know
I cannot — the loss of this liberty is compensated by my not
being endangered by other people driving 100 miles per hour.
Likewise, my
liberty to use a public space is contingent on my not unduly hindering
the use of the space by others. Thus, I'm perfectly free to sell
my wristwatch on the corner because the inconvenience to passersby
is minimal; I cannot, however, drag my sofa onto the sidewalk and
auction it off because I'd drastically obstruct pedestrian traffic.
Panhandlers,
no more or less than mailroom clerks or corporate executives, are
implicitly bound to observe common-sense standards of conduct in
public spaces. The argument that they cannot recognize such standards
owing to their diminished capacity is, in effect, an argument for
their forcible removal — and, in any event, the suggestion
that they shouldn't be blamed for behavior that would be blameworthy
in housebroken pets serves only to dehumanize them further.
It's time for
civil society to demand civility.
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