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GENESSA POTHAs the city considers banning solicitors from public roads, homeless residents say the new rules would further limit their options.
ST. PETERSBURG - It's a Monday morning rush hour, and cars line up on the 22nd Avenue N exit ramp off Interstate 275. Beside the queue a man holds a wrinkled cardboard sign: "Need Help Homeless Vet God Bless."
Some drivers and passengers gaze curiously. Others apply lipstick or idly twiddle their radio dial and try to avoid eye contact.
The man holding the sign is Carl Teets, a 42-year-old Desert Storm veteran who started living on the streets during the Christmas season.
On a good day, Teets said he collects about $25. Most of the time, however, Teets pockets less than $10. He often spends his earnings on food, cheap cigarettes and Natural Light beer. Occasionally, he'll save up enough to rent a motel room for a night.
His days on the curb might be numbered. With the police department receiving about 90 complaint calls a week from local neighborhoods about beggars, the City Council is considering an ordinance that would ban panhandling.
Teets and his homemade sign are just one example of the growing wave of panhandlers trying to survive on the generosity of passing motorists. But he is more public and persistent than most. Until recently, he had been there every afternoon, weather allowing, from about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
On June 17, the City Council told legal staff to draft rules that would ban solicitors from public roads every day of the week. The proposal will come before the council on July 8.
The ordinance would make it illegal to receive donations or vend anything from a median or the traveled area of a roadway. It would also ban handing out things to or receiving things from passing motorists.
Teets became homeless after his employer, an Ohio trucking company, filed for bankruptcy. Teets says he was driving through Lakeland when the police came holding bank papers ordering them to repossess the company truck he was driving. "After that, I really just didn't have a way back home," he said. "I don't have any family."
With the increasing number of panhandlers in the area, Teets said that after his morning beer he often finds himself traveling in search of an intersection that isn't already taken.
"The other day, I was out there and got only $4," Teets said. "The competition is stiff. There's a guy on every corner nowadays."
Of his few belongings, one in particular stands out, a black baseball cap decorated with pins: a snowman; one that reads "7941 South Bloomsburg, Ohio Battalion;" a P.O.W. pin; one commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and his favorite, a white teddy bear pin given to him by a passing motorist.
Some motorists are not as empathic. "The other day a guy drove by in his brand-new truck and shouted, "Get a job.' You know what I did? I pointed to my sign and said I'm a vet, I've done my job," Teets said.
"These people driving their fancy cars don't understand that it's hard to get a job when you don't have nice, clean clothes, you can't shave or shower. It's hard."
Homelessness has increasingly become a problem in St. Petersburg said Mark Winn, St. Petersburg's chief assistant city attorney.
Early this year, the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless counted more than 4,000 homeless. Volunteers, police and Pinellas County School staff combed motels, schools, day labor sites, homeless service agencies and the streets for people who could be identified as homeless. A person was counted as homeless if he or she was living on the streets or a similar location such as in a car, beach or park. According to the coalition's final report, 76 percent of Pinellas County homeless was counted in St. Petersburg. One in five was a child.
Those counted at homeless service agencies were asked to complete a survey. According to the results, nearly four in 10 of those surveyed said that they became homeless because of unemployment.
The city's Social Services manager, Virginia Rowell, said the city has made an arrangement with St. Vincent de Paul to provide food and restroom facilities to help the homeless. Teets said he doesn't like rules, so he prefers to make camp with some of his homeless buddies under some trees by the railroad tracks behind a local convenience store. A shady bed of grass is where he calls home. A beat-up plastic bucket has become his recliner, an early passing train his alarm clock, an old camouflage T-shirt his new uniform.
After a day of collecting, Teets usually headed to the nearest convenience store to get some lunch and then back to the railroad tracks, the homeless community's super highway. As dusk approached, Teets departed from the trails of exhaust and returned to camp. His homeless peers awaited him, beer in hand. People are always coming and going. Joe Brown, 59, said he has never held up a sign and never will. A Vietnam veteran awaiting a knee operation, he is living at St. Vincent de Paul's transitional housing unit. He said panhandlers such as Teets give veterans like him a bad name. "It's a game and people get good at it," said Brown, who attributes the practice to laziness. If they really wanted help they could get it, Brown said. The panhandlers are usually looking for booze or drugs, he said. A recovering drug addict, Brown attends a relapse prevention class held by St. Vincent de Paul on Wednesday nights.
"Don't go to the bar or hang around your old friends in drug-infested areas. If you go to the barbershop you're going to get a haircut," Brown said.
He said there is help out there for vets, even if you have to wait in line.
Rob Peters, a local pest control technician, frequently sees the homeless holding signs in his travels.
"I tried to give a homeless guy a sandwich once and he threw it at my truck as I drove away. Ever since, I've never believed the signs. They just want your money," Peters said. But Teets says that his sign isn't asking for money. "All I need is a little bit of help," he said.
Last week, Teets wasn't at any of his usual spots. A friend at his homeless camp said Teets had been in a fight and had left for Mississippi.
City rules already ban panhandling near ATMs, bus stops and sidewalk cafes as well as areas with high concentrations of tourists like Beach Drive and BayWalk. Proposed changes would tighten things still more.
Sherman Smith, legal adviser for the St. Petersburg Police Department, said the department doesn't keep track of homeless arrests and that so long as the person isn't panhandling in the street obstructing traffic, it's legal.
Teets disagreed. "The police harass me all the time," Teets said. "At least I'm not out there breaking into people's homes or cars. I want off these streets. I just want a job, a roof over my head, just to be able to sit down like a normal person and watch TV. I'm not out here because I want to be. I'm out here because I have to be. There's only one thing that I'm asking for and that's a little bit of help."
- Genessa Poth is a reporter for the Neighborhood News Bureau, a program of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.