Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard sought to rid the downtown
sidewalks of panhandlers for economic reasons, but instead
found the city embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Cities spend a lot of time and money sprucing up their streetscapes, and, of course, hire landscape architectural firms to design those improvements. Such redevelopment is undertaken to keep downtowns thriving economically, drawing local residence, tourists and convention goers.

But despite efforts to put their best face forward, many downtowns have persistent problems with panhandlers. Charity begins at home, goes the homily, but Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard sought to rid the downtown sidewalks of panhandlers, saying their presence was costing the city about $6.3 million in visitor spending each year. The city's only existing city ordinance regarding panhandling was limiting it to daylight hours.

In trying to clear the sidewalks of people begging for money, the mayor instead precipitated an ACLU federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of panhandlers. The suit alleged city police were trying to drive them off the sidewalks, even though the panhandlers were complying with existing ordinances. The ACLU asserted the police were violating panhandlers' First Amendment rights. The ACLU logic was that if someone has the right to come up to you and ask you to contribute to a charity, they have the right to come up and ask you to contribute to them.

Indianapolis and the ACLU have now settled that lawsuit. Basically, the agreement is that it's not okay to beg for money from motorists, but it's okay to do so with pedestrians on the sidewalk, as long as it isn't aggressive.

Mayor Ballard can't be happy with this compromise. Ballard asserts that studies by the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention (CHIP) of Greater Indianapolis www.chipindy.org found that almost none of the downtown panhandlers holding "homeless" signs were actually homeless. CHIP estimates that "as many as 4,800 to 8,000 people are experiencing homelessness in Indianapolis." A 2011 CHIP study finds the chronic homeless in Indianapolis constitute between 10 and 20 percent of the homeless population, but use over half of the available resources for the homeless population in general.