Two Sides of the Street

W. Andrews Newman III pulls on his camel-hair blazer and strides out the back door of his family-owned art gallery, into the dimming light of a wet January afternoon.

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.

In an interview shortly before he took office, Nutter said the city would have to be fair and humane, "but we will also have to be relentless. . . . We cannot allow people to sleep on sidewalks, sleep on benches, sleep in parks as if that is their regular living space."

Charlene built the bunker on Moravian Street.

Monty says she moved there in December. He lives next to her in a doorway of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia.

"I was raised Catholic and always knew that when I ran into trouble, I could run to the church," says Monty, 56, who is tall and lean with a thin gray beard and watery eyes.

From his perch, Monty sees all the people who drift in and out of Moravian Street, using it like an outdoor hostel. Most offer only their first name.

On the church's front steps on 17th Street, two young drifters - Jeremy and John - take turns strumming a pawnshop guitar as passersby drop bills into their black cap on the ground.

That's a problem for an older man, who claims a spot just feet away. He has just written out a new cardboard sign: "Out of Kindness. Please help." A stuffed blue monkey holds his paper cup.

"He wants us to leave," Jeremy tells John. They move to Walnut Street.

Monty is among those too proud to panhandle. He collects scrap metal and cans from Dumpsters on Moravian. Twenty-four cans will get him 35 cents. Monty, who once worked as a hotel cook and had a home in Northeast Philadelphia, has been on the streets for seven years.

Sitting on a mattress shoved into the church's back door on Moravian, Monty says he can get a free meal almost every day. He's just back from a pasta lunch and movie, Meet the Fockers, at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion at 21st and Chestnut Streets.

Outreach workers, he says, always try to get him off the streets. But he doesn't like shelters. "Too much conflict." And he's afraid that his possessions, kept in a big cardboard box, would be stolen.

On Moravian, Monty says, "I feel a little safe."

It's getting dark. Soon, Monty will walk around the corner to the ING cafe on Walnut Street. He'll pass the time watching football and wrestling's Smackdown on big-screen televisions inside - from a perch on a sidewalk planter outside.

Downtown residents last year ranked as their top concern the number of people living on streets - the first time that had happened since the Center City District, a special-services unit funded by downtown property owners, began polling people in 1992.

The city has also received more citizen complaints about aggressive behavior by homeless people, such as refusing to leave hotel lobbies and throwing bottles at passersby.

There's pressure on the city to ban outdoor feedings of homeless individuals. Some would like the city to go further and enforce the ban on camping in Fairmount Park, which covers Rittenhouse Square, JFK Plaza, and open space along the Parkway.

Mintz, head of the city's Office of Supportive Housing, said some people believe "the ideal solution is to do something so they can't visibly see the homeless."

Los Angeles learned that lesson the hard way. Last year it settled a federal lawsuit by agreeing not to enforce its statute banning sleeping or lying in public spaces. The homeless may remain on the streets until the city builds 1,250 units of low-cost housing with related services.

A decades-old sidewalk ordinance in Philadelphia makes it illegal to live in public space. But Nutter recognizes that the city can't force people off the streets without giving them someplace to go.

"We will have to build our way out of this particular problem," Nutter said.

That may mean more units of supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Or it may mean more affordable housing for families languishing in shelters, who have to compete with all the working poor of the city even for public housing. The Philadelphia Housing Authority already has 48,000 families waiting for subsidized homes.

For the moment, the city's approach is to ramp up outreach efforts while making encamping in certain areas less comfortable.

Police regularly tell people in problem spots - such as the grassy area at 15th and Vine Streets and the wall of the Youth Study Center on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway - to clear out. Once the homeless are given notice, city workers, with police standing by, collect the trash, debris and personal items left behind.

But those efforts usually affect only the most visible encampments - not every backstreet in the city.

Paul Levy, president of the Center City District, the agency created in 1991 with a surcharge on downtown property owners to improve safety and cleanliness, said complaints about encampments in alleyways like Moravian came in daily.

Center City District crews, which are on the streets every day, are often redispatched to keep the residue from the street homeless under control.

Levy acknowledged that the presence of increasingly large groups of homeless people on Center City streets undermined the district's efforts to make Philadelphia's downtown attractive to visitors, businesses, prospective residents and investors.

But he also said the city's homeless outreach efforts, as humane and laudable as they are, ultimately persuaded only 27 percent of the long-term street residents to go into shelters.

"There is a total reluctance to . . . say this individual is unable to make a decision in their own best interest. Therefore, we need some form of public authority" to do that, Levy said.

The only time that happens, he said, is when the temperature becomes life threatening.

"I continue for 10 years to ask the question," Levy continued. "We know that the mortality rate among these individuals is significantly higher. We don't want them to die quickly.

"Are we really prepared to allow them to die slowly?"

On a rainy Saturday, the big community room at the First Baptist Church on Moravian Street is warm and inviting.

About two dozen men and women have come in from the cold, greeted by the smell of hot turkey meat loaf, ham and chicken, and the sight of smiling women spooning out pasta, potato salad and vegetables.

Last August - when others were complaining about street people - the congregation opened its doors to them.

Every other Saturday, the church offers food, a place to wash up, clean clothes, and four hours of quiet.

After lunch, a few men sink into soft sofas and watch The Last Samurai on a big-screen TV. One man instinctively slumps to the ground and pulls his down coat over his head to sleep.

"You know why they cover their heads?" asks Margo Hunt of Port Richmond as she takes a break from serving food. "So people passing don't know if it's a man or woman."

Anonymity is a bit of protection if you sleep on the street, explains Hunt, who was homeless for a year two decades ago. "It's a tough place to be," she says, her eyes welling up.

The Rev. Gerardo DeJesus, a psychologist by training, moved here two years ago by way of California.

While stopping at each table, he listens intently to a 33-year-old from South Jersey who lost his job, his apartment, and all ties to his family.

He tries to encourage a 46-year-old crack addict who tried to leave the streets for a shelter, but didn't last.

The church's outreach is "a small attempt at saying something must be done," DeJesus says. "But there is only so much we can do. The problem is greater than our ability to address it."

As they push for solutions, advocates for the homeless have a sense of deja vu mixed with dread.

A decade ago, when Center City's street population was larger than today - exceeding 800 - the city launched a $6 million intervention plan.

It added extra teams of outreach workers and funded about 300 new units of special, long-term housing for those with mental illness and addictions. Within three years, the street population dropped below 200.

During Mayor John Street's first term, which began in 2000, the numbers remained low.

The numbers began rising sharply in 2005, hitting a high of 621 last summer. In the last year, the Street administration faced increasing tension over mass public feedings and the rising number of people sleeping in public spaces, but the city's approach to handling the homeless - of trying to reach out to people rather than criminalize homeless behavior - remained unchanged.

Homeless experts say the numbers will keep increasing unless the city gets to the root of the problem - a severe shortage of supportive housing for the mentally ill. Almost two-thirds of those living on the street have mental illness. But their numbers are not static. As people leave the streets, new ones arrive.

Homeless experts say what's needed is housing for those who are at highest risk of becoming homeless in the first place, particularly people with severe mental illness.

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania expert on homelessness, said the city needed to add 2,000 units of permanent housing with services to help those with severe mental illness to live independently.

That's nearly double the number of available units. The additional housing could take many forms, such as scattered apartments that are subsidized or special residences for many people.

Culhane argues that taxpayers will pay for the chronically homeless one way or another, and that it is more cost effective and humane to provide long-term housing than emergency shelters and acute medical services.

Each person on the streets already costs Philadelphia about $10,000 a year in the form of time spent in shelters, emergency rooms, hospitals, detox centers, psychiatric units and jails.

Other cities, including New York, have shifted spending from shelters to permanent housing for this most vulnerable population, Culhane said.

"It would be less expensive in the long run to do it the right way," said Sister Mary Scullion, a longtime advocate for the homeless and cofounder of Project HOME, which provides housing and services to the homeless.

"Otherwise, it will be the same old thing, with the numbers going up and down."

The First Baptist Church sexton is worried about the woman in the bunker. With flurries in the morning, the afternoon temperature is falling fast.

By the makeshift shelter on Moravian Street, Lafayette Phillips kneels on the sidewalk and lifts a flap. "Hello? Hello?" he shouts into the darkness.

"I don't know where to begin to look for a person in here," he says.

Charlene lies on a mattress amid a jumble of blankets. Inside, it is dark, the air heavy and rank.

"What's your name?"

She looks up fleetingly and mumbles.

"What?" Phillips asks. "You don't feel like talking to me right now?"

He presses: "This isn't a good place to be building a house. You don't think it would be best if you went into a shelter?"

Nothing.

Phillips steps back. "Wow," he says, surveying the chaos. In just a day, the bunker has grown. It's now about eight feet long, four feet high, and as wide as the sidewalk. There are even more blankets, more plastic sheeting, more junk.

Phillips then checks on Monty, lifting up a blue tarp. He's not there.

Many mornings, the sexton will leave Monty a cup of coffee.

"What I don't want to see," Phillips says, "is lifting up the sheet and seeing someone deceased."

Two days later, Charlene has a seizure outside the Starbucks at 16th and Walnut.

Paramedics rush her to Pennsylvania Hospital for observation. She is later discharged to a shelter.

Days later, city workers come to Moravian Street with a truck and remove her bunker.

Tomorrow: A simple goal: Their own home.

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