I work at The Salvation Army, but I’ve been in Knoxville for less than a year, so I am still learning. One thing that surprises me is that, of all the people I have met, the ones who have the least patience with the transient population are the ones I work with who have come off the street, gone through our programs and gotten their lives straight. The one thing I hear from them over and over again is “They don’t have to be out there. They could come in any time they want.”

It is true, the majority of those we classify as “chronically homeless” suffer from addiction or mental illness.

I really have no idea how you would “move them” out of downtown, where you “put them”, how you would sustain such a community or enforce such a policy.

There are a variety of options available to citizens to help out those in need. Handing out money only exacerbates the problem by encouraging continued pestering of the citizenry.

But you don’t have to buy that vibe. As CK implies, if nobody supported this industry here, it would shrink. It’s okay to say to a panhandler, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to give you any money.” If they persist, ignore them and keep going.

It’s fine if you want to tell them about the services available to them, but in my experience downtown panhandlers are almost never interested in that information. Why should they be? They’re there to sell their vibes.

I work for The Ten-Year Plan office and I hear a lot about panhandling. We think one of our messages to the public needs to be built around good ways to confront the issue. I’d be very interested to know what anyone thinks about that.

Concerning homelessness, it’s probably true that people who bump into trouble with the law in some of the areas surrounding Knoxville get put on a bus and exported to Knoxville. It would be hard to know how much of this goes on because people who do this kind of exporting probably aren’t going to admit it. It’s also probably not something that happens a lot. It’s hard to say.

There’s a persistent myth here and probably in every other community that offers services to homeless people. That myth is that all these homeless people come from somewhere else, and are even deliberately shipped here by other communities’ law enforcement arms. I’ve never once seen this substantiated, and I seriously doubt its veracity.

Many homeless people are transient, and many of Knoxville’s homeless people come from other places (as do many of Knoxville’s people who are not homeless). Over half of them do come from Tennessee. I’d be willing to bet that if you looked at any other city like ours, you’d see pretty similar demographic tendencies. We get a lot of people from the outlying counties because we’ve got the infrastructure here to support them.

Dr. Roger Nooe does a study every two years of the homeless population in Knoxville. It’s got good demographic details. For instance, it contains a count of people who are homeless, and percentages related to chronic homelessness. I’ve posted the latest one (2006) at tenyearplan.org. I’d be interested to know if any of you find that helpful, and if there are other ways we can facilitate good communication around the issue of homelessness, especially the chronic kind.

the original question in this article addresses issue two: panhandling is a practice that illegal and annoying. many times it might be someone who is merely poor, not actually homeless. the point is that while homelessness and panhandling are linked, you can’t say that we will stop panhandling by getting rid of the homeless. you stop panhandling by stopping panhandling. if we as a community have decided that this is something we don’t want, and we make laws against it, then the police need to enforce it. and it takes two to tango in this crime. we need to not encourage panhandling by giving out money. i think it would be interesting if the law came with a fine for anyone caught giving money out. people would stop accommodating panhandlers right quick, and the panhandlers would get the message: no easy money in knoxville. in all these discussions i keep here the same thing: “in much larger cities with more homeless i don’t get hassled this much.” regardless of whether our homeless population is disproportionate, the panhandling here is definitely disproportionate. basically what we need is good ol’ crackdown.

You should really use your actual name. Anonymous usernames are so Web 1.0.

But seriously, I think it might be best to confirm where the crimes are coming from instead of blaming the homeless. You still aren’t providing any evidence of your accusations.

The solution, IMHO, is to research the real numbers of the homeless in Knoxville, how they became homeless and their behavior (begging, crimes, etc). Then we can put together a rehabilitation plan funded by a combination of grants and government funding.

The answer is definitely not shipping the homeless to another city, which I still think is too farfetched to be true. And if it is, the local media needs to add this to their story budget ASAP.

So, do we just complain or do we do something about it? Well, I called the city attorney in Asheville, who cited Orlando as another successful legislative effort to help boost the resident and visitor experience in their Downtown Zone District, officially defined their municipal code, sections 43-86,87, and 88. Go to http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?sid=9&pid=13349 and scroll down to chapter 43, sections 86-88, which deal with an effective ban of active solicitiation within defined boundries, allows for very specific types of reasonable soliciation, and also overlaps Knoxville’s ordinance to point. However, the Downtown Zone District ban goes that one extra step for those living in or visiting their most competitively challenged pedestrian area. Agree or not, let your city leaders know what you think, as I have, and post your opinion in the KnoxBlab.com forum under Downtown Knoxville Panhandling, if you like.

Obviously on a larger scale, downtown Orlando competes with Disney, Universal Studios, and dozens of other competitive destinations. As for us, Knoxville has a modern shopping experience at Turkey Creek, amazing tourist and convention meccas just one county away, and now two perfect “downtown” communities are being built to offer the feel of downtown in the suburbs. Throw in a variety of other competitive forces here, and from other towns like ours, and what we are left to reasonably control are current quality-of-life issues in our own downtown “zone”. We need to, one by one, take down the list of excuses and percieved reasons many neighbors of ours have for not shopping, dining, living, working, and/or investing in our original downtown. After consulting law enforcement and chronic-homeless advocates, the time is now to stop these opportunists and any associated criminal activity downtown and offer greater support for law enforcement by citizens with a simple message for panhandlers - “I’m not going to help you break the law.” Brad

I have evidence from a Johnson City officer who is my cousin- but I don’t want to say his name and get anyone in trouble. He didn’t do it, but knew others on the JC force who did.

I’ve also heard of people from neighboring states shipping homeless to us via greyhound- but i have no hard evidence on that.

Using the police force to control the homeless population like Philly did is an excellent idea, i see where you are coming from but controlling the homeless population does in turn decrease crime rates. Philly’s Old City became a place you can actually live because the homeless were removed, and car break-ins, porch theft and home break-ins were greatly reduced. our problem isn’t just panhandling- its crime. on the Sunsphere is not a wigshop the other day one of the contributors wrote how their vehicle was broken into a few days ago, and i’ve known many friends who have had their car broken into while at barleys (muddy footprints and change stolen- sure sign). this is a crime issue and it needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand. i’d like to know where my tax dollars are going, if the police can’t even control the homeless breaking into cars, which happens constantly and could be an easy thing to stop.