Tale of two cities

It's a crime to criminalize homelessness

High-profile local policy sets a tone, sometimes in a contrarian or outright reactionary direction. Think of when California passed a measure capping property taxes in the 1970s. It led to similar laws across the country, including Massachusetts's Proposition 2¹/2 . Or how about New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's get-tough approach to law enforcement, which is now accepted practice in most urban police departments in the nation?

That's why the differences between New York's and Boston's attitudes toward homelessness are so important to the nation.

It would be tragic if other public servants followed Giuliani's cruel approach to housing the homeless -- which is to put them in jail if they refuse to participate in shelter programs. In a deeply cynical move, Giuliani is requiring people seeking shelter to meet the same requirements that welfare recipients must meet: work or be denied aid. Missing an appointment or showing up late for work can result in losing shelter for three months at a time. Incredibly, these punitive measures are directed even at families with children.

A better example is the one set by Mayor Thomas Menino, who has volunteered every year since becoming mayor as a census taker in Boston's annual count of its homeless population. While participating in this year's census Monday night, Menino met an 81-year-old homeless man who sleeps in the subway at Downtown Crossing. The man is well known to outreach workers and resists attempts to place him in shelters. But on Monday, after talking with the mayor, the man agreed to go to Pine Street Inn for the night. Menino personally escorted him there. "You can juxtapose that to what Rudy Giuliani is doing, and there's a very big difference," says Kelley Cronin, director of the city's Emergency Shelter Commission.

A national study, released early this month, confirmed what we already know about the homeless crisis: there are no easy solutions. Close to 40 percent of the nation's homeless are mentally ill; nearly 30 percent were raised in foster homes or institutional settings, and thus have never known a place called home; and more than 60 percent of our homeless are chronically ill. All are mired in poverty.

But Menino's behavior at least exhibits compassion -- and it's typical of the policies in Boston and Massachusetts. "We've accommodated the system to the needs of the homeless people rather than expecting the homeless to adapt to the needs of the system," says Philip Mangano, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance.

At the Pine Street Inn, the shelter on Long Island, and the Shelter for Homeless Veterans, federally funded programs are in place that teach homeless people to work in food service. Homeless workers at these shelters are paid the minimum wage to feed their counterparts. Some go on to find outside jobs. At the Boston Rescue Mission, shelter workers have teamed up with ServiceMaster, a private maintenance company, to learn janitorial and building-maintenance skills. At Project Place, homeless people work with the city to beautify business districts, planting flowers and removing graffiti. The city also runs a Transition to Work Collaborative that offers job training to homeless mothers.

The emphasis in all these programs is on working with the homeless population in a positive way, not a punitive one. The goal is to help people move on if they are capable of doing so. As for the hard-core homeless -- those who have been living on the streets for years -- the city approaches them with equal respect. "When you've worked in homelessness long enough, you see that some people really have limitations," says Cronin. "They just aren't able to participate in the economy at the level other people are." Rather than abandoning these people, the state has employed outreach workers to get to know the chronically homeless, including those who are mentally ill and those who are addicted to drugs. As Mangano points out, this is one reason you don't see "masses" of homeless people in every doorway or public park, the way you do in New York City.

Even as much of society enjoys unprecedented prosperity, homelessness is increasing: the Boston census counted 250 homeless people on the street, compared to 188 last year. We need compassionate solutions, not punishing ones. "Boston understands that the homeless person is a victim of something, not the perpetrator," Mangano says. Mr. Giuliani should pay attention.

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