Is a CRACKDOWN the Answer.

CITIES ARE BANNING THE HOMELESS FROM PUBLIC SPACES, BUT CRITICS SAY THAT WON'T MAKE HOMELESSNESS DISAPPEAR

When the police car pulled up, a dozen homeless men and women were sitting in a tired heap with 15 shopping carts and two dogs outside the Trinity Plaza Apartments on Market Street, in San Francisco, California.

Not an hour earlier, two officers had chased them from a park across the street, at the tourist-filled United Nations Plaza. Now, an officer was saying someone had complained about the group. Caesar Cruz, holding two $76 tickets for "camping in public" (sleeping in a doorway), worried about getting another summons. So he nodded again and again when the officer said he would like Cruz to "move along."

No one uttered a word in protest. Everyone scattered.

But it is not always that easy to make people who live on the streets disappear, as cities across the country are discovering. At the richest time in the nation's history, affordable housing is at an all-time low. With complaints growing about the numbers of beggars, bag ladies, and mumbling, stumbling vagrants, cities are fighting more than ever before to move homeless people out of public spaces.

In Sacramento, California, officials give homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town. In Atlanta, Georgia, a person asking for money more than twice from a passerby who ignores the request can be arrested. In Seattle, Washington, those caught sleeping in parks can be banned from them.

For many cities, the model is New York City, where Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's quality-of-life initiative in the mid-1990s swept midtown Manhattan of panhandlers and squeegee men--homeless men who aggressively offered to clean motorists' car windshields for money. Thousands of homeless people were ticketed or often arrested for offenses like sleeping in parks or obstructing sidewalks.

Local laws aimed at people on the streets have increased markedly in the last five years, as the booming economy has brought real estate developers, tourists, and well-to-do home buyers back to downtowns. The scramble for space has made desirable neighborhoods out of once-overlooked areas, the kind where cheap, single-room-occupancy hotels thrived, and the very poor lived unnoticed. The catch is that the newly discovered neighborhoods must be scrubbed clean.

ILLEGAL TO SIT IN PUBLIC

The so-called quality-of-life laws help to drive away the homeless by making it illegal to sleep, lie down, and sometimes just to sit or stand in public. Of 49 cities surveyed last year by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 73 percent were enacting or enforcing such ordinances, up from 26 percent in 1994.

"We need to decide, are we going to be a society where there's a sense of order," says the Reverend Amos Brown, a San Francisco City supervisor who supports the crackdown, "or do we want a disorderly society where anything goes?"

Paul Boden, director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, says the public has shifted the blame for homelessness from society as a whole to the unfortunates who are suffering. "There is an attitude that with unemployment at record lows, with the stock market at record highs, if you're poor, it's your own damn fault," Boden says.

While some city officials insist that homeless people come from elsewhere, studies have suggested that most homeless people once had homes in the communities where they became homeless, but they were evicted when they could no longer afford the rent. "It's not rocket science to figure out that people become homeless because of the lack of affordable housing and support services for those who are mentally ill or addicted," says Mary Ann Gleason, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

RESIDENTS APPROVE

In San Francisco, many residents support the city's actions. "I don't really sympathize [with homeless people]," says Leia Sutton, a waitress. "They are already taken such good care of with financial aid and food stamps. And I think it's making them not get off their butts and survive for themselves."

The problem seems intractable. Despite the public's dislike of homeless people on the streets, no one, it seems, wants to have a homeless shelter near their own backyard.

In Atlanta, where an estimated 22,000 people are homeless, two proposed shelters are stalled by opposition from residents. One of the proposed sites is a building in an industrial area, where the closest real neighborhood is across a highway. "If we can't open it here, then where?" says Anita Beaty, co-director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.

The other day, about two dozen men were lying a stone's throw from the proposed shelter. They live under the highway, tucked under its supports, shrouded in darkness. If community opinion doesn't change, they are likely to remain there a long time.

BASHING THE HOMELESS

In Denver, Colorado, five homeless people were pummeled to death and two more beheaded. In Seattle, Washington, one was stabbed 18 times. One in Chico, California, was beaten to death for begging for spare change.

These were just the killings that made the news over the last year. Exactly how many homeless people have been victims of savage attacks is unknown. Police don't tabulate crimes against homeless people; in many cases, those who survive attacks do not report them.

What appears certain, advocates say, is that living on the streets is becoming more dangerous. In the last few years, police departments have reported more frequent, more vicious attacks on those who are homeless. Nearly always, the victims are ambushed as they sleep. Nearly as often, the suspects are described as young men who appear to attack for no reason.

"We're obviously sending a message to our young people that homeless people are not worthy of their respect," says Michael Stoops, a community organizer

for the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Based on news reports, the coalition has counted 29 homeless people who were killed in 1999 in 11 cities, from San Francisco to Richmond, Virginia. It listed six other people who barely survived attacks. The youngest suspects were 14 years old, and most were under 21.

No one can say for sure why young people in particular seem to be attacking the homeless. But many advocates for the homeless blame the increased attacks on the new laws cities are instituting against homeless people for sitting, sleeping, or lying in public spaces.

"These people are criminals for being poor," says John Donahue, an advocate for the homeless in Chicago. "That's what the official position is saying about these people."

--Evelyn Nieves

HOW YOU CAN HELP

If you want to help the homeless, there are some practical ways you can get involved:

1. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Call your mayor's office to see if the city-run shelters have opportunities for volunteers. Also try calling churches and synagogues, many of which run their own shelters.

2. Work with homeless kids as a tutor, or help arrange outings. For a list of programs near you, go to the National Coalition for the Homeless Web site (www.nci.ari.net) and click on "Directory of State Contacts for the Education of the Homeless."

3. Organize a clothing drive, raise money to buy gift certificates for new shoes for homeless kids, or ask stores for donations of school supplies for homeless teens.

4. Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for poor people, has a special program for teen volunteers, ages 16 and older. Call 1-800-422-4828.

EVELYN NIEVES is a national correspondent for The New York Times.