The beggar's opera

Panhandlers find survival increasingly tougher during the summer

by PHILIP PREVILLE

The arrival of summer brings with it many transformations of the urban landscape. Awnings are opened to provide shade from the sun, merchandise finds its way out onto city sidewalks, terraces are opened and people of all shapes and sizes crawl out of the woodwork and crowd the city streets.

And so do panhandlers.

Summer's warm weather does not necessarily mean that panhandlers in Montreal become more numerous, but it does mean they become more visible. It also means an increase in complaints from pedestrians and merchants about both the eyesore and nuisance they pose to city life.

But panhandlers and the homeless have a very different perspective on summer in the city.

For one thing, many panhandlers agree that people are more generous during the winter months. "Maybe it's because people feel more sorry for me during the winter," said Richard, a homeless man seeking spare change outside Schwartz's on St-Laurent last Sunday. "Life is cheaper in the summer because I can sleep outside, I don't have to spend $3 to stay at the Salvation Army. But people are still less generous."

Gérard Giroux, an unemployed man in his 30s who sells the Journal l'Itinéraire--a magazine sold on the streets by low-income earners and the homeless as an alternative to panhandling--on St-Laurent and Pine, says "I had a merchant call the cops on me, even though I was just quietly selling magazines. Journal l'Itinéraire even has an agreement with the cops--I'm allowed to do this. But they ticketed me anyway. I had to go to court to get them to cancel it."

Despite these spring run-ins with the police, MUC spokesperson Yvan Goyette says the force intends to take a very different, hands-off approach to panhandlers this summer. "We will only intervene in situations in which panhandlers are a nuisance to the public, where they are being aggressive or are disturbing public order on the street," he says, noting that this is the first time the MUC Police have instituted such a universal policy for dealing with panhandlers.

Shirley Roy, a UQAM professor and director of the Groupe de recherche sur l'itinérance (GRI), says she is pleased with the MUC's new policy; last summer, GRI organized a conference on homelessness in which many people called for a more tolerant approach to the issue. However, she doubts that the policy will be applied across the board.

She raises the spectre of last year's confrontation between youth and police in Parc Émilie-Gamelin (formerly Berri Square, the park outside the downtown bus station where street kids tend to gather at night) and wonders if things will be much different this year. "What was the police's problem with the situation at Berri Square anyway? Isn't the city better off when most of these kids round themselves up in the same place at night? The bylaw says you can't sleep in the park, but the police were enforcing it blindly, without thinking of how best to handle the situation."

"Right now, 25 per cent of Montreal's population lives below the poverty line. That's the highest percentage in all of Canada," she says.

With so many factors worsening the situation, little can be done to hide poverty's presence on Montreal streets. "The fact is, there's a lot of misery in Montreal right now," says Michel Prescott, city councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district on the Plateau.

"There are a few cities in France that have recently outlawed panhandling altogether," says Prescott. "But they all happen to be run by [French fascist Jean-Marie] Le Pen's Front National. I think we have to have at least a minimum degree of compassion with respect to these things."