Six months after Atlanta business leaders set up parking meter-like machines to accept spare change donations and discourage panhandling, just $500 has been deposited — not much help for beggars who say they can sometimes raise $300 in a day on their own.
Despite the program's dismal beginnings, Atlanta leaders are encouraged. They are installing more of the "giving meters" and using signs to make more people aware of the machines. In other cities, like Denver, thousands of dollars have been raised to help the needy.
But some in Atlanta believe the money is better off directly in the hands of the homeless.
"If someone is on the street now, they're hungry now," said Shirley Zanders, who recently gave 37 cents to a homeless man downtown. "How will a meter help?"
An Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau survey shows that panhandling is second only to traffic among visitors' biggest complaints about the city. Beggars have besieged Atlanta for years, lingering outside hotels, near fast-food drivethru windows and alongside highway on-ramps.
As springtime brings out more beggars, city leaders are trying to target people like Zanders with the message that ending panhandling starts by closing your wallet.
"We have to change folks who feel like this is the right way to give," said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a revitalization group spearheading the "giving meters" campaign.
Posters encourage passers-by to drop their spare change into one of 12 yellow, parking meter-like devices scattered across downtown. The money will then be put toward programs that help the needy, officials say.
Similar meters are in St. Louis, Baltimore, and Denver, where $15,000 in coins has been generated since 2007. That's far from the collections in Atlanta, a city known for its homeless problem.
The new program has had several problems, including confusion. Pedestrians have mistaken the new machines for regular parking meters. Atlanta also has far fewer than the 86 meters Denver had when that city started.
"We've got new signage coming, we've got little stickers to make sure people know these are not parking meters," Robinson said. "We didn't do a real good job in the beginning."
Robinson said more than half of those downtown who were polled in a February street survey wanted to see more done to curb panhandling, but only 7 percent had noticed the meters.
"We've still got a ways to go," Robinson said. "There are still folks giving to panhandlers."
A city panhandling ban lets police arrest aggressive "spangers" — slang for spare change beggars. So far, 213 have been arrested, according to police records.
But Atlanta police acknowledge spangers are usually back on the street the next day.
Recently, on a downtown corner, Sylvester Glenn shook his empty hat.
He spends his days cajoling passers-by into donating — a "blessing" he calls it that will buy a sandwich or help him one day travel back home, to Tallahassee, Fla.
While he says he sometimes makes $300 a day, earlier this week he wasn't doing so well: He had raised maybe 25 cents and it was past 5 p.m.
"You ever heard of a blue Monday? It's a blue Tuesday," he said, as women toting Louis Vuitton purses and men on cell phones hustled past.
Then Zanders walked up and dug into her pocket and fished out 37 cents.
"I call it helping someone in need. Shouldn't be a law against that," said Glenn, who bristles at being called a panhandler.
Glenn has been working Atlanta streets for more than a decade.
He's personable, and at 48, young enough to work. Asked why he doesn't, he mentions vague health problems and a dry skin condition he says resulted from handling chemicals in a factory years ago.
Thirty minutes after Zander's donation, foot traffic was heavy, but the donations were still slow.
Another panhandler, a man using a wheelchair, had diverted would-be donors. Glenn was giving up for the day.
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On the Net:
Central Atlanta Progress, http://www.atlantadowntown.com/
