Letter To The Editor

Thu., April 2, 1998

Panhandlers face alcohol problems

I’m writing regarding the letter “Panhandling foes should aim at poverty” (March 19, South Side Voice) by Jota L. Borgmann.

The tone heard from our protest was frustration and exhaustion from dealing with panhandlers on the lower South Hill, not poor people on the lower South Hill. Don’t confuse the two.

We are trying to educate people, who give money from their car windows, that their compassion is well meaning but misplaced.

Instead, anyone truly wanting to help these people will donate their hard-earned money to the Union Gospel Mission or places set up to deal with the severe drug and alcohol problems these people have.

It’s truly a shame to see some of these panhandlers stagger toward car windows and drunkenly accept money from passers-by. There’s no question where these well-meaning gifts will go.

These are hard-core alcohol- and drug-addicted people who make more money in one day panhandling than you probably do in one week. At least two different men told my neighbors that they make about $150 to $300 per day.

Poverty is not the problem. Drugs and alcohol are.

Not only are we finding litter, but we’re finding old mattresses and human excrement along with bottles in the field between Maple and Walnut streets, where the panhandlers flop when they’re too drunk to beg. When a neighborhood allows this to happen and let filth and graffiti to pile up in its streets, it sends an invitation to drug dealers and other low-life scum that our neighborhood doesn’t care.

If it were only the poor we were dealing with, then it would be completely different. Don’t misunderstand our neighborhood’s attempt to clean itself up. Janet M. Boyington Spokane

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