‘Chronic’ downtown Orlando panhandlers mostly sick, homeless, addicted, study finds

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Most of downtown Orlando’s panhandling problem comes from a persistent group of 61 people with sometimes-severe mental illness, a high rate of drug addiction and the inability to remain in housing even when it has been provided for them, new research finds.

And despite perceptions that many are “professional” panhandlers who aren’t actually homeless, the 61 individuals — nearly all men — have lived on the streets for an average of nearly 12 years.

“I know these are the people that a lot of the public just find annoying, but I was struck by how really vulnerable they are,” said Amy Donley, director of the Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Central Florida, one of the researchers. “They are suffering with a lot of conditions and they're just walking down the streets of downtown because they feel they have no other option.”

The 16-month study — “Understanding Panhandling,” slated for release Monday — was triggered by complaints from downtown Orlando business owners over a perceived rise in aggressive panhandling since July 2017, when the city dropped its 2000 ordinance that limited solicitation to a series of boxes outlined in blue paint and banned it altogether at night.

The decision followed a series of court rulings that found anti-panhandling laws elsewhere in the nation to be unconstitutional.

In its place, Orlando passed a new law against “aggressive solicitation,” including asking for money from people using an ATM or from those waiting in line for an event or venue. The city also made it illegal to ask for money a second time after being rejected or to solicit handouts from cars stopped at intersections.

Though a few hundred panhandlers in the course of a day may target downtown Orlando, from Lake Eola Park to Camping World Stadium, the 61 people researchers came to focus on were notable for their frequency. They spent at least five hours a day, five days a week begging for money, bus tickets or anything they could trade for money, and used the bulk of it to buy alcohol and drugs, the study found.

“Before now, we didn’t really have any data on who the panhandlers were,” said Andrae Bailey, the former CEO of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, who now leads the national consulting firm Rethinking Homelessness. “What was shocking to me, when we identified this group of chronic panhandlers, was how uniform the profile of the person was. … These people have been on the streets of downtown Orlando for over a decade. They aren’t from Arkansas. They didn’t get off the bus from New York yesterday.”

The study makes a series of recommendations to address the problem, including educating the public on how money they give to panhandlers is spent, increasing the availability of drug and alcohol treatment programs and a new type of housing for this population. Bailey met Thursday with city officials and local nonprofits that serve the homeless.

Bailey’s firm coordinated and helped to pay for the $57,000 study, an expense also covered by downtown business owners. More than 50 researchers — including those from UCF, national authorities on homelessness and outreach workers for the Health Care Center for the Homeless — participated in the effort. They interviewed panhandlers as well as the people being solicited, examined jail records and matched up data used by local homeless service providers to arrange housing for the most vulnerable.

“I never thought through who they were before,” said Steve Garrity, vice president of Highwoods Properties, which owns seven office towers in downtown Orlando — about 30 percent of the market. “My goal was to really find out the data associated with these people, get to understand them and find out what we need to do to improve the lives of these people along with improving the downtown experience.”

Garrity said both he and his company helped to finance the work, though he declined to give a dollar figure.

The study found that 90% of the most-persistent panhandlers are male, half are white, another 42% are black, most are single or divorced, and they range from 24 to 69 years old with an average age of 49. Also, on average, they have an 11th-grade education, though seven of them attended college, at least briefly.

Nine of them have children.

Some 58% have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, while 92% are addicted to alcohol, drugs or both. Crack cocaine and the newer K2/spice — both relatively cheap and producing intense but short-lived highs — were the drugs of choice.

While less-frequent panhandlers may use the money they get to cover shelter entrance fees or to buy food, the “chronic” panhandlers spend most of it for the next drink or fix, Bailey noted.

Fifty of the 61 are currently homeless. That includes 27 people who are eligible for what’s known as permanent supportive housing – typically, subsidized apartments that come with counselors, social workers and medical care to help stabilize people so they remain housed.

But 16 of them refused the housing, often because they are too mentally ill to cooperate or communicate, and others were still stuck in the application process, largely due to their lack of a government-issued identification card, a proof-of-income letter or a certification-of-disability letter signed by a doctor.

“A handful of the 61 are now in supportive housing, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stay in it,” Bailey said. “One of them got into permanent supportive housing in the last few months and has yet to set foot in that apartment. This is a young man with severe schizophrenia who believes the outreach workers are part of a secret entourage trying to kidnap him for the aliens.”

But Bailey and others said the finding doesn’t undermine the success of permanent supportive housing. On the contrary, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer noted that over 95 percent of the 600 formerly homeless people who have been housed within the city of Orlando over the past four years have remained in housing.

Most are not panhandling or addicted to drugs, Donley said.

“These 61 are really the sickest and most disabled of the chronically homeless, who are the sickest and most disabled of the homeless,” said Martha Are, executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “And the research suggests that, without the housing strategy that we’ve implemented, we would have even more of these chronic panhandlers.”

For privacy reasons, the researchers kept the names of the panhandlers confidential. But jail officials see them regularly.

“They’re going in and out of jail with extreme frequency,” Donley said. “There’s at least one who has been arrested over 100 times. The arrests are for little things generally, so they’re getting out really quickly and then they’re back in really quickly” – and often accumulating fines they can’t pay, even through panhandling.

But the report said there are programs that could successfully house the chronic panhandlers, or at least many of them, and keep them off the street.

“There’s a type of housing that we don’t have here that they have in Miami and Houston and Salt Lake City, where it’s a more intense level of involvement,” Bailey said. “We’re sending these people to apartments scattered throughout the region. What they need is congregate housing with a single, controlled entrance, and extensive intervention.”

Getting the chronic panhandlers to enter such a facility may prove challenging, officials acknowledge.

“But I am optimistic that will happen,” Garrity said. “We have a wonderful community here, and we’re a cohesive community. And I think the key right now with this data is that we can understand the nature of these homeless people and what services they need – and where we are lacking in those services. Quite frankly, I think that only speaks to the need for more mental health services and drug rehabilitation services.”

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©2019 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)