A woman with an easy smile and a worn cardboard sign
reading,
”
Lost Home, God Bless,
”
reached out to accept a few coins from a man stopped at the red
light on Camino Arroyo, near Panera Bread. She put the coins in her
pocket, hoping to collect enough by lunch time to buy a sandwich at
the nearby eatery.
A woman with an easy smile and a worn cardboard sign reading, “Lost Home, God Bless,” reached out to accept a few coins from a man stopped at the red light on Camino Arroyo, near Panera Bread. She put the coins in her pocket, hoping to collect enough by lunch time to buy a sandwich at the nearby eatery.
Her corner may be one of the most lucrative in Gilroy, allowing her to collect $30 to $60 per day, but a new city ordinance could make it illegal for panhandlers to stand on medians or in roadways. Under the possible ordinance, police could issue a traffic citation for panhandling, effectively cutting off many homeless individuals’ most reliable source of income. Police Chief Denise Turner, who said the ordinance is born of issues of public safety and city image, is researching ordinances in nearby cities such as Santa Clara and Milpitas. She plans to present her findings to the City Council in March, she said.
“If I see that it’s illegal, I probably wouldn’t do it anymore,” the woman panhandling on the corner said. “I don’t want to go to jail.”
However, the ordinance is “going to hurt a lot of people that depend on it,” she said.
Carrying only her purse and a black milk crate, the woman caught a bus down to Gilroy from San Jose Monday morning and settled into place on the familiar median she frequents a couple days each week.
“People aren’t as generous in San Jose,” she said, her black beanie and tattered gloves protecting her against the brisk morning air. “Also, I wouldn’t want my kids to drive by and see me. They don’t know I do this.”
For that reason, she declined to give her name. At 45 years old and with four children, the woman never thought she’d have to turn to panhandling to put food in her stomach or a roof over her head. Out of work after a rocky stream of retail and fast food jobs and unable to pay her rent in Morgan Hill, she spends her nights on friends’ couches and at the Gilroy National Guard Armory on Wren Avenue. Her children live with foster families in San Jose.
“It’s humiliating,” she said.
Making it more humiliating, passing drivers often have unkind words, including racial epithets, for the woman, who is black.
“People tell me to get a job,” she said. “It hurts my feelings. But I’ve gotten used to it. The first time, I was really embarrassed. I used to hide behind sunglasses. But now, I just say, ‘Oh well.'”
At last count, South County was home to 1,063 homeless people, Turner said. When the Armory opened in December, Gilroy experienced a surge in its homeless population. Every morning at 6 a.m., those men and women who spent the night at the Armory must leave and “many of those people take to the streets and parks of Gilroy until that evening when the shelter reopens,” Turner wrote in an e-mail. “With this population we see an increase in quality of life calls for service and we see a frustrated community.”
Panhandlers populating street corners “doesn’t add to the character of Gilroy” and poses a threat to public safety by distracting drivers and slowing the flow of traffic, Turner said Monday morning.
And unlike the woman perched on the milk crate near Panera who hoped to eventually save enough to get her own place, many panhandlers are not using the money they collect to turn their lives around, Turner suspected. Turner said she’d rather passing motorists hand out literature on regional resources instead of money.
While most people ignored the woman Monday morning, staring straight ahead or even veering into another lane to put a few extra feet between the woman and their cars, some motorists rolled down their windows to pass her a dollar or some loose change.
“There are a lot of reasons why people (panhandle),” St. Joseph’s Family Center Executive Director David Cox said. “Number one, it’s successful. It must be worthwhile to stand out in the rain in the cold. I’m assuming that the payoff is worth it.”
Some days, the woman will collect enough for a night at a cheap hotel in Sunnyvale. At Christmastime, she was bowled over when one generous shopper pressed a $20 bill into her hand.
To get her place on the median near Panera, the woman often must arrive as early as 7:30 a.m.
“This is the spot people fight over the most,” she said. “I guess it’s the one people get the most money at.”
The rotation is typically a peaceful one. But a few people are territorial, defending the best corners. There’s one man in particular that she always avoids.
“Some of the places people panhandle do strike me as dangerous,” Councilman Bob Dillon said.
Although he said he’s never gotten a complaint from a constituent about panhandling in medians, he recognized that homelessness is a major issue in Gilroy. As long as the ordinance doesn’t violate homeless individuals’ First Amendment rights, Dillon said he would vote for it.
“I don’t know how to address it,” he said. “And I suspect there are six other people on the Council that feel the same way.”
Organizations like St. Joseph’s aim to provide support services to homeless and struggling individuals in South County, but permanent shelter is always in short supply, Cox said. In the past year, St. Joseph’s and the city’s Homeless Outreach Committee successfully placed 11 chronically homeless men and women into permanent housing. Yet, that’s a drop in the bucket when considering the region’s staggering homeless population, Cox said.
“It’s one of those situations that’s so hard to deal with,” Turner said. “I just don’t know what the answer is.”
She hopes the panhandling ordinance is a step in the right direction.
“As frustrating as this subject is for everyone in our community, we still try to do what we can, one person at a time,” she said.
Although the woman with the sign on Camino Arroyo doesn’t expect anyone to solve her problems anytime soon, she is grateful to everyone who does spare an extra dollar or some change.
“I do appreciate it,” she said. “I just want people to know that I’m a person too and some of the people doing this really need help. They really do.”
