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Lois Henry: Giving to panhandlers isn't helping

Family homelessness growing in Kern

The Bakersfield Californian | Tuesday, Aug 04 2009 07:56 PM

Last Updated Tuesday, Aug 04 2009 08:27 PM

I wonder if everyone is as torn as I am when I see people on the side of the road holding cardboard signs begging for help.

I'm not heartless (not totally, anyway). I want to help.

But then, I can't help thinking: What happened to all the "Homeless veteran, please help!" people who seem to have been replaced by "Foreclosed family, please help!" people?

Did the "homeless vets" all find homes? Did the "foreclosed families" muscle them out in a turf battle?

Or have savvy panhandlers simply switched marketing tactics to prey on our sympathies and, let's face it, our fear that we'll be making our own cardboard signs soon in this never-ending dump of an economy?

The cynic in me suspects the latter which, in turn, causes my sputtering social conscience to look for solutions.

The thing is, foreclosed families are a very real and frightening phenomenon whose numbers are increasing at crisis rates. Though most aren't begging for change on the side of the road, they are in dire need.

"Families are one the fastest-growing segments of the homeless population," Louis Gill, executive director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center told me when I called asking about how to handle these "foreclosed family" panhandlers. "People would be shocked to know how many families are living in vehicles in this town."

If Dorothea Lange were alive today, he said, and knew where to look, she could make photos strikingly similar to her haunting images of Kern County during the Great Depression.

To get a sense of how quickly things have gone from bad to worse, he said the homeless shelter gave needy families $8,425 to assist with utilities and $29,331 to assist with rent and mortgage payments between February and June this year.

Then in a six-week period between June and July, it gave out $5,422 in utility assistance and $27,242 in rent/mortgage assistance. Yowser!

"The need is accelerating," he said.

I asked Gill what he thinks of the panhandlers. His advice was to approach everyone in need with kindness and respect, but to consider giving information rather than cash and to support helping agencies, such as his. Or perhaps your church or business has a charitable arm that could help.

"People can print out little cards with phone numbers and addresses and give those out instead of cash," he suggested.

Everyone I talked with in the social services realm noted those same factors: needs are increasing exponentially, and the community can do far more by banding together than dropping a couple of bucks on random panhandlers.

There are 240,000 Kern County citizens on some form of assistance right now, Human Services Director Pat Cheadle told me. That's a third of our population.

"This is a whole new population coming to us," she said. These are people who until recently had never been out of work, always paid their bills and never needed help.

In just one month, she said, 4,000 people who never applied for any kind of services before walked through her doors.

"We all know someone, a relative or friend, who's been touched by this economy," she said.

Because of the unprecedented need, Cheadle is considering new resources, possibly even forming a partnership with faith-based groups such as Kern Leadership Alliance.

I know everyone might not like a religious organization mixing with taxpayer money, but I think this could be a fantastic private-public partnership.

The Alliance was formed late last year and includes a couple of dozen churches of all denominations that marshall their forces to provide whatever is needed.

"Our dream is that we can have the Department of Human Services, or anyone, come and explain what their needs are, and then we coordinate among our churches and move forward to meet those needs," said Shannon Grove, who serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance.

"The people who need help now, they're you and me," Grove said.

It's serious and it's getting worse. Which makes me wish the professional panhandlers would stop using their misery to make a buck and just be honest, as was one man whose recently spied sign read: "Why lie? I need a beer."

Don't we all.