More people asking for handouts, downtown Orlando leaders say
“Aggressive” panhandling is on the rise in downtown Orlando, leaders say, driven in part by a change in the city ordinance that once restricted begging to a couple dozen blue squares painted on the city’s sidewalks.
“I can tell you from where I sit … never has the outcry from the public within downtown been as high as it’s been over the last six months for us to do something about aggressive panhandling,” Thomas Chatmon, executive director of the Downtown Development Board, testified at a recent Community Redevelopment Agency meet-
ing.
The complaints, he said, have come from business owners, residents and tourists alike.
City Commissioner Jim Gray concurred, saying he feared the increase is already affecting restaurants as office workers decide to stay in for lunch so they aren’t “hassled” on the streets.
“As someone who has spent their entire professional career downtown — I’ve spent 30 years [working] downtown, and I’ve been in five different office buildings — I have not seen the aggressive panhandling as bad as it is today,” Gray said. “It’s the nuisance factor.”
In July 2017, after a series of court rulings found antipanhandling laws elsewhere in the nation to be unconstitutional, Orlando overturned its 2000 ordinance that limited solicitation to a series of boxes outlined in blue paint. It also overturned the ban on nighttime panhandling, passed in 2007.
In its place, the city passed a new law that prohibited soliciting handouts from cars stopped at intersections.
And under a section of law it titled “aggressive panhandling,” the city forbid the solicitation of anyone using an ATM as well as those who are “captive audiences” — waiting for an event or a venue they can’t leave. Also, panhandlers cannot ask for money a second time if they have been rejected.
Data from the Orlando Police Department show only six arrests for aggressive panhandling between November and May 1.
“I think what [people are] talking about is mostly legal activity,” said Orlando police spokeswoman Michelle Guido. “You’re allowed to ask for money. It’s following you down the street or in some way making you feel unsafe that’s against the ordinance. They’re likely to get a warning, but only if it escalates. I heard people saying that downtown businesses are affected by it, and people are getting annoyed, but we’re focused on the statutes.”
Chatmon and others hope a new downtown “ambassador” program to be launched in the fall will ease the problem. Among other duties, the ambassadors will give panhandlers information about where they can get food, medical care or other services. The city approved the two-year pilot program in late May.
“One of the goals will be to address panhandling, but we have to be careful that we manage the expectations,” Chatmon said. “We are in the process of researching other cities and other downtowns, and I can tell you the problem [of panhandling] is fairly universal, and there are no silver bullets.”
Shelley Lauten, CEO of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, said her agency is also working with the city on an education campaign for residents, hoping to drive home the message that giving panhandlers money does not solve their problems and only encourages more panhandling.
“I know the urge to give, and it’s well-intentioned,” Lauten said. “I can leave my [downtown] office and in three blocks be asked for money a half-dozen times. … But what we want is for people who are truly homeless — and not all panhandlers are — to get connected to long-term help.”
Lauten’s predecessor, Andrae Bailey, who now runs a nonprofit called Lead Homelessness, said cities around the nation are struggling with the same issue. This month, 50 leaders from Broward County will join Bailey’s agency in Orlando, in part to discuss the problem.
“We’ve seen some real clarity on what courts say about panhandling,” he said. “So you can no longer arrest your way out of this. You can’t force people off the streets. I think everybody is looking for what that new solution is.”