Taking a stand on sidewalks
Restaurants try to defuse conflicts between outdoor diners, the homeless
NEW YORK — When Stephen Werther, co-owner of the West Village restaurant and market Suprema Provisions, opened his business for outdoor dining in the summer of 2020, he noticed people aggressively panhandling his customers.
Werther, who is also the chef, hired security guards, but he concluded after a couple of months that the strategy wasn’t working. So he found a better solution.
“We make them food,” Werther said. He lets the panhandlers order whatever they want, and each one has developed a go-to: a hamburger, pasta Bolognese, spaghetti pomodoro. “It’s created more of a community relationship with homeless people and the panhandlers, rather than an adversarial one,” he said.
Economic disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has worsened already increasing levels of homelessness across the country. And in New York City, where nearly 12,000 restaurants have been approved to offer outdoor dining, reports of diners being approached for money have become more widespread.
Incidents involving people believed to be homeless and restaurants aren’t categorized and tracked as such by the New York Police Department. But many restaurant owners, their employees and homeless-advocacy organizations said in interviews that such disputes have increased as more people have become homeless and thousands of restaurants have expanded dining to the streets and sidewalks.
Many of these encounters between the haves and have-nots are brief and amiable. But others become contentious, and restaurants are trying various ways to defuse them, including hiring security guards, regularly calling the police, relying on employees to handle the situation or, like Werther, helping those seeking aid.
Kate Smart, a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, said his administration has increased the number of beds for homeless people and tripled the ranks of outreach workers since 2014, to more than 600.
Homeless people want access to permanent and affordable housing, a need the city government hasn’t been able to meet, said Jacquelyn Simone, a senior policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless. Many homeless people avoid staying in dormitory-like shelters.
“There’s a lot of feeling that this crisis of homelessness is not being approached with the urgency that it needs,” Simone said.
But many restaurant owners said they’re still trying to tamp down conflicts daily.
At Tavola, a pizzeria in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, co-owner John Accardi said one of his staff members was slashed on the hand and his son was almost stabbed in disputes with people Accardi said were homeless. He said he tells employees to avoid such confrontations rather than risk injury. “I’d rather have someone break my table or chair,” he said.
At Tribeca’s Kitchen, employees are instructed to give food to anyone in need. Owner Andreas Koutsoudakis Jr. recalled a day this past summer when a man went table to table asking for help. Koutsoudakis said he offered him something to eat.
“The customers that saw me speaking to him, they actually looked at me and gave him money, and said, ‘What you did was amazing,’ recalled.