A photograph of a hand-lettered sign is the centerpiece of an ad campaign urging people not to give to panhandlers Downtown.

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette An anti-panhandling sign near the entrance of Fifth Avenue Place. Click photo for larger image.

"Give me spare change and I may never get off these streets," says the sign, held by a man whose face has been partly cropped out of the photograph. "Give to organizations that could really help me and you could save my life. It's up to you."

Beneath the image, which appears on signs Downtown, ads in playbills, and bus and T placards, is information about the approach advocated by the sponsoring groups -- the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the City of Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and the Downtown Ministerium Walk-in Ministry. They suggest donations to the ministerium or other programs that provide food, shelter and services, rather than handing spare change to individuals.

Mike Edwards, executive director of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, said the impetus for the campaign came last year.

"We had some surveying done, and many of our stakeholders, many Downtown property owners, had noted an increase in panhandling activities, and were sharing their concerns about how it's negatively affecting businesses."

His group began to look for programs that would "channel people into programs they need, and at the same time reduce panhandling, which tends to feed the addiction instead of actually feeding someone," Edwards said.

Other cities have similar campaigns; Pittsburgh's is modeled closely on one in Baltimore.

The ministerium, made up of five Downtown churches, has had the walk-in ministry program serving homeless and low-income people for about 25 years, said the Rev. David Gleason, president of the group and senior pastor at First Lutheran Church on Grant Street. Churches rotate responsibility for the ministry week by week, and pay for it through money they raise as well as contributions from the Building Owners and Managers Association.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette A homeless man panhandles for money while children from Metropolitan Preschool and Nursery go for a walk along Smithfield Street earlier this month. Click photo for larger image.

"It's not so much to raise funds," said Gleason, who said it costs about $1,200 a month to run the walk-in ministry. "It's really much more to raise awareness, to help people understand that giving money to panhandlers really is not helping them. In most cases you are dealing with addictions, in many cases multiple addictions."

The Downtown Partnership spent about $3,000 on 1,000 placards on public transportation and signs in 25 locations Downtown. The Cultural Trust paid for design of the ads.

Gleason said donations are up slightly since the campaign began, and that the response has been favorable.

Local groups that work with homeless people have largely supported the campaign, which began last month, or are withholding judgment.

"I can understand that basically there is people's perception that there is a safety issue in the Cultural District," said Mac McMahon, outreach coordinator for Community Human Services, an Oakland-based social service agency that has programs for the homeless. "We think it's the right of the business community to direct activities so that people are not encouraged to panhandle."

Rich Venezia, administrator for Allegheny County's Bureau of Hunger and Housing Services, said that such a program "creates a mechanism for more responsive use of resources for that population, a more efficient use of funds."

But Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C., said such programs often are ineffective. He is familiar with similar programs in other cities, as well as many others to address panhandling.

"They can do their little public relations campaign, but history has shown it probably won't have the effect they want it to have," he said. "Rather than trying to keep people from giving, maybe we should ask why there are so many people begging on our street corners. Homelessness is increasing, and we think it's going to increase more because of cuts proposed by the president."

Stoops said cities have been trying to outlaw or control panhandling for decades.

Dayton and Cincinnati have required panhandlers to get permits, as have other cities. Orlando has tried prohibiting panhandling and registering panhandlers, neither of which worked very well. Now it has blue-painted squares in its downtown where panhandling is permitted. Many cities have ordinances like Pittsburgh's, passed in 1995, banning "aggressive" panhandling and practices like soliciting money close to ATMs.

But panhandling remains legal in most places.

"We believe that people have a right to panhandle, that the public has a right to give or not to give," Stoops said. "I think it's somewhat self-serving for churches to say, 'Give us the money, don't give money to the beggar on the street.' I think it's OK to bypass the middleman and give directly to the poor. A panhandler friend of mine doesn't call himself a panhandler, he calls himself an 'unaffiliated applicant for private sector funding.' "

Kevin Lafferty, 49, who has lived on the streets for most of the past three years and occupies a regular spot on Stanwix Street most afternoons, said he sees aggressive panhandling Downtown.

"There are aggressive panhandlers who get in people's faces. They wait for the church crowd to come out. They wave signs as big as that Kossman parking sign," said Lafferty, sitting cross-legged across the street from the garage. "The passive ones like myself -- I have no sign, I just sit here like a sphinx -- they're also making friends. I don't know what the answer is finally. I don't know how you choose a panhandler."

The idea of eliminating the possibility of a face-to-face encounter with a beggar, and of giving people a pass to ignore them, bothers some people.

Stoops makes note of panhandlers' signs he's encountered over the years. Two he remembers seeing in Lafayette Park read:

"In a former life I was you."

"I see you not looking."