Homeless meters raise little elsewhere

Atlanta’s latest plan to thwart panhandling on downtown streets by installing five meters where people can donate money instead of giving it to beggars is backed by the slogan, “Give Change That Makes Sense.”

But if similar programs in other cities are any indication, the effort won’t raise much in the way of dollars and cents.

In Athens, the Downtown Development Authority erected four homeless meters five years ago. “We’ve never collected as much as $2,000 a year from the meters,” said the group’s executive director, Kathyrn Lookofsky.

In Baltimore, which has a homeless meter program often cited as the example of a program that works, the city collects a total of about $100 a month from 10 meters put up two years ago in the main tourism district along the waterfront.

“It’s not a lot of money, but it helps the homeless,” said Tom Yeager, executive vice president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, which put up the meters to replace change boxes.

“The boxes were becoming a problem because people were stealing them,” Yeager said.

In Atlanta, so far, the possibility that the meters might be stolen seems to be the only concern of city officials generally embracing Mayor Shirley Franklin’s latest attempt to make downtown streets more hospitable to visitors. The plan was announced last week, and the first five meters have been installed.

“What I want to know is, are they going to be easy to break into and take the money out of?” Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin asked. “Otherwise, I’ve got a wait-and-see-how-it-works attitude.”

The meters are yellow with black posts and look as resistant to break-ins as parking meters. People insert change in them the same way.

“The response to the program has just been tremendous,” said Debi Starnes, senior policy adviser to Franklin on homeless matters. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls from people wanting the meters.”

The idea has been floated for years, but Atlanta officials decided to push forward after seeing meters on a trip to Denver.

The money for the program — $40,000 — is coming from Central Atlanta Progress, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Georgia World Congress Center. The money from the meters will go to organizations that aid the homeless, such as the Gateway Homeless Services Center.

The Buckhead Coalition business group was one of the early adopters, buying three for $315 a piece. The group’s president, former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell, said Friday that he sees the meters as one more element in dealing with panhandlers that have become a problem in Buckhead.

“Increased enforcement downtown has increased our homeless population by pushing some of it in a northern direction,” Massell said. The meters would be placed at two MARTA stations in Buckhead and near the intersection of West Paces Ferry and Peachtree roads, he said.

The five downtown meters were installed in front of City Hall, the Fulton County Courthouse, the Georgia World Congress Center, the Hilton Hotel Downtown and the Atlanta Police Department Zone 5 precinct.

Michael Stoops, executive director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless, which advocates for the rights of the homeless, didn’t wholly endorse the program, but he considered it compassionate by Atlanta standards.

“Atlanta ranks as one of the ‘meanest’ cities in the nation in the way it treats homeless,” Stoops said, citing the city’s ban on panhandling. “We support the rights of people to give freely in the street, so we don’t think there need to be homeless meters. It’s just the latest fad.”

Stoops said there is some question that putting the money in the meter will be as helpful to the homeless as donating directly. But he said his group also opposes aggressive panhandling, which city leaders said is the impetus behind the new program.

The city launched its program after a slaying two weeks ago at a Midtown gas station where police said a man was shot to death after arguing with a panhandler. A suspect was arrested and charged with murder.

If the city hopes that encouraging tourists to put money into meters instead of giving it to panhandlers will reduce the homeless population, the prospects are unclear judging by programs in other cities.

“We saw a drop in panhandling along the waterfront,” said Baltimore’s Yeager. “But a reduction in homeless people? No. They just went to neighborhoods where they didn’t have meters.”