Two Sides of the Street

He hurries past one of the homeless campers on Moravian Street, the Dumpster-lined alley that serves as the service entrance for the Union League club, Le Bec-Fin and his shop, Newman Galleries. The skinny man holds up a cupped palm. "Can you help me?"

Newman pays him no notice. He's preoccupied with a massive bunker on the sidewalk, shaped from layers of blankets, quilts, sheets and plastic, all balanced between bollards, wood pallets, metal drums, and the wall of a parking garage.

Its builder has no plans to leave any time soon. There's a mess of belongings - two grocery carts stuffed with clothes, a broom, a wood cane, a busted umbrella, an office chair, big empty detergent bottles, an ice bucket, an L.L. Bean duffel bag, a black document case on wheels.

"City workers will come through here, but they're not allowed to take it down," Newman says. "That's considered someone's possessions, and they have to warn the person first. Isn't that amazing?"

Newman turns to leave.

Poking out from the edge of the bunker, under a dirty green quilt, a woman's foot stirs.

The homeless problem cuts like a fault line down Moravian Street.

On this tight alley between Walnut and Sansom Streets, all the feelings toward the homeless collide - the frustration and compassion, the antagonism and worry.

Center City's street population - 85 percent of whom are mentally ill or addicted or both - is the highest in 10 years, according to the city's homeless outreach center. But that's only the most visible part of the homeless situation. Shelters, which cater more to families, are running at capacity with 20 percent more beds than five years ago, city statistics show.

Philadelphia's homeless system, long a national model, cannot keep up with the magnitude of today's problem. Efforts to find new emergency shelters and longer-term assisted-living units have been blocked for more than two years by a lack of resources and crippling neighborhood opposition.

Even if all the homeless in Philadelphia wanted to come in off the streets, the city would have no place to put them, said Dainette M. Mintz, who has run the city's homeless housing program since 2006.

But as city officials try to decide how to respond, the growing presence of street people is wearing down those who live and work in Center City.

Like the bank manager near City Hall who scrubs her ATM lobby with disinfectant and empties a wastebasket of urine after an overnight guest.

Or the Dunkin' Donuts clerks on Broad Street who have put away their tip cup because a homeless guy kept swiping it.

Or the new mayor, who drives past the throng getting food handouts on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and thinks this isn't right.

Mayor Nutter says when day turns to dusk, Center City becomes "a Philadelphia version of a South African shantytown."

Nutter has not laid out specifics on how he will address the homeless situation. Yet change is already afoot. Since Nutter took office Jan. 7, police in Center City's Ninth Police District have begun a "quality-of-life initiative" in which individuals caught loitering, publicly intoxicated, urinating in public or blocking a highway will get a citation and be ordered to appear in Philadelphia Community Court.

William G. Babcock, the Community Court's coordinator, said that in just a few weeks his staff had noticed an increase in the caseload out of the Ninth.