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Uploaded: Saturday, June 9, 2007, 7:40 PM
Palo Alto anti-panhandling effort kicks off
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| "I'm going to be a panhandler," Palo Alto Yoriko Kishimoto told a crowd gathered at a downtown street fair Saturday afternoon.
Shortly after that, Kishimoto and other city officials fanned out to stand on street corners to collect donations for non-profit agencies.
At the same time, the officials explained to passersby that giving to non-profits that help homeless people is better than giving directly to panhandlers.
The response to the effort was encouraging to Eileen Richardson, director of the Downtown Streets Team. The team members, formerly homeless, receive food and housing vouchers in exchange for cleaning up downtown.
"I don't know if collecting money is as important as much as people knowing (about the effort)," Richardson said. The collection cans for "Don't Give Outside, Give Inside" donations will be on counters of downtown stores next week.
The money will go to the Downtown Streets Team and InnVision, which runs the Opportunity Center with its 89 low-cost apartments and two drop-in centers for the homeless.
Former Mayor Vic Ojakian, who helped collect donations, said studies have consistently shown that about 35 percent of homeless people have serious mental-health problems.
"Giving them money directly isn't going to help them," he said.
The accompanying street fair by the Downtown Boutiques Association included a fashion show that drew a large crowd.
— Don Kazak Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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| Comments
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Posted by a palo alto homeless guy, a resident of the Professorville neighborhood, on Jun 13, 2007 at 9:36 pm 1. Eileen Richardson allocated $90,000 per year for herself in her recent "Streets Team" funding proposal to the city. The indigent trash pickers she hires haven't been even getting minimum wage.
2. One of the councilmembers commented in the recent sit-lie ordinance discussion last week that many of the panhandlers are not homeless.
3. Not all people who might have to panhandle are drug or alcohol users, or nut cases like that guy next to the Whole Foods parking lot.
4. Two of the three homeless deaths last December were probably contributed to a police raid in the lower levels of the downtown parking lot, where it was 30 degrees warmer than at street level where it dropped down to 25 degrees at night, about the time they found the body of Lindi Lawrence.
It may have been appropriate to name it the "Sit-Lie" ordinance. Bureaucrats sit on their butts and lie to the voters and donors.
It's certainly a shame that because of the city's failure to effectively deal with the substance-abusing panhandlers that the freedom of others has been suppressed by the sit-lie ordinance. Girl Scouts can't set up a table and chairs to sell their cookies, and people with meritorious causes can not set up an ironing board and a chair with their literature.
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Posted by a palo alto homeless guy, a resident of the Professorville neighborhood, on Jun 13, 2007 at 10:37 pm I wrote above "contributed to a police raid" which should be corrected to:
"contributed to by a police raid..."
for clarity.
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Posted by Walter_E_Wallis, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jun 14, 2007 at 12:50 pm It is just a matter of time before the street folk get a good attorney and we have to pay back wages, medical, workmans' comp and, yes, lawyer's fees. My letters to the council on this have been routinely ignored.
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