For you and me

Downtowners push back against panhandlers by design

Everyone who frequents downtown Tulsa is familiar with the uneasiness of confronting homelessness face to face, whether it’s silently acknowledging the homeless among us as we pass one another other on the street, or being directly confronted with the question, “Can you spare some change?”

No matter how polished downtown becomes, the epicenter of social services for the homeless are never more than a few blocks away. And so we must coexist: the vagrants and the visitors. As downtown districts attract patrons en masse, however, opportunities for panhandling are ripe.

Such is the case in the Brady Arts District, whose boundaries bump up against shelters and correctional facilities. The district has, for some time, been weighing its options, searching for a balanced approach to panhandling and seeking assistance from leadership. Time ran out one afternoon a couple of weeks ago when a local business person was severely beaten by a panhandler. Tired of waiting for a magic bullet, a local property owner took matters into his own hands, quickly posting signs and erecting a new fence.

I wrote a blog post titled “A Fence Built of Fear” on a website called Less Planning, More Doing, at lessplan-moredo.com, though I saw the irony even as I wrote. From an urban design perspective, the approach to panhandling in the Brady Arts District is flawed. Originally, black vinyl fencing surround half the pocket park at Archer and Main, obstructing paths to and from the park and rendering it essentially useless as an inviting place to walk (since, parts of the fence have been removed.) Signs on the outside of the fence read, “PLEASE DO NOT PAY THE PANHANDLERS.” The visual effect of the signage paired with the fence was most unfortunately akin to that of a petting zoo warning visitors not to feed the animals—or, in this case, the poor people that frequent the park.

It wasn’t until after I blogged about my personal, gut reaction to the fence/sign combo that I realized the new signage is not exclusive to the park but is peppered throughout the district as a reaction to recent violence and is part of a larger effort to curb panhandling and maintain public safety. 

As an urban planner I, too, often lack the patience to wait around for full consensus, for the perfect solution to present itself, for someone with more authority to give their stamp of approval or come fix the problem from on high. I recently hung chandeliers beneath an underpass because I was tired of waiting for someone to turn the lights on there.
I am an impatient planner.

And in that sense, I respect the district’s initiative to address an ongoing and escalated issue. I believe stakeholders should feel empowered to address threats and opportunities as they see them in their communities. No one has more interest in finding real solutions.

We shouldn’t be afraid to test ideas in the short term as we endeavor toward long-term resolutions. Flawed though it may be, the intervention in the Brady Arts District has effectively drawn attention to an ongoing issue. Love them or hate them, people are talking about the signs, they’re talking about panhandling, they’re presenting their own ideas for a better approach.

Talk is just that, of course. What we need is more doing.

MyVoice is a twice-monthly opinion column written by members of your community—your friends, your neighbors, your voice. Want to write or know someone who should? Email us at voices@langdonpublishing.com.