The last day of May in Baltimore was like a Caribbean night -- palm-tree breezy and warm enough for short sleeves. And although the Tigers fixed the Orioles 7-6, it was still a fine night to be tucked inside Camden Yards.
Karen Johnson positioned herself and her 4-year-old daughter, Montia, near the ballpark and in the middle of the human traffic. Then, the mother waited.
Ben Harris of Silver Spring had just had a great night at the game with his wife. Walking back to his car, Mr. Harris passed several male panhandlers. The lone men with their hard-to-guess ages bring cardboard signs and paper cups here when the Orioles are in town. Mr. Harris heard their polite pleas ending with those pleases and thank-yous, and drive safely, sirs.
Then, Mr. Harris stopped on Conway Street. He stood almost directly over Ms. Johnson, who was sitting on the sidewalk by a chain-link-fenced parking lot. She was cradling her sleeping girl. It was almost 11 at night.
Mr. Harris looked like he wanted to cry. He emptied his pockets and maybe $6 or $7 spilled out into the mother's Styrofoam cup. "God bless," Ms. Johnson said, each time Mr. Harris evacuated a pocket. Then, he walked away and realized he had nothing left.
"I've got to find a MOST machine because I just gave her all my parking money," he said, nearly begging a stranger to tell him where he could find a money machine in this town.
"Maybe I'm a sucker. She may be going home to a better place than I am. But if she's not, then I hope I did some good," he said.
"You see, I have a son."
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Women panhandling with children in tow are the latest wrinkle in the steady business of begging in Baltimore. Given the fact more women and children are using shelters and soup kitchens, it's not surprising to see more women begging on the streets with children, experts say.
Women with children panhandle around Camden Yards, work the lunch traffic at downtown intersections such as Mulberry at Charles streets, stand off ramps at the Jones Falls Expressway, or walk along Pratt Street across from the tourist-soaked Harborplace. The children hold their mothers' hands or sleep on their shoulders or in a stroller. And although they might be clean and healthy, these children are being exposed to a life of hopelessness, says Sue Fitzsimmons, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Social Services.
Possible long-term effects aside, women who panhandle with their kids make short-term gains. They have a competitive edge in Baltimore's community of panhandlers.
"Yes, it is a tactic to elicit white middle-class America to give you a buck," says Felicity Northcott, an anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University. "Are they manipulating us? Why not? We all manipulate the system. We do it at work to get what we want. We just do it in more private and less obvious ways."
Asking people for money is legal. The federal courts have ruled that begging is a form of free speech. It's how people beg that is regulated. The Baltimore City Council passed an "aggressive panhandling" law last year, making it a misdemeanor to use obscene language, block the path of a car or persistently beg for money after someone has refused. (Since January, police say they have made 17 arrests for "aggressive" panhandling in the downtown area.)
Ranks unknown
Pinpointing the number of panhandlers is difficult because of such factors as the weather, time of month and the lack of official statistics. Anecdotally, maybe 25 panhandlers a day will work in and around downtown Baltimore when the weather is agreeable, authorities estimate. Of these, six women might be out on a given day or night panhandling with their children.
"They come out more toward the end of the month, when they more or less have run out of money or food," says Truxon Sykes, president of the Baltimore Homeless Union. Mr. Sykes panhandled in Baltimore in the 1970s, a time when he remembers few, if any, women panhandling with children.
He estimates the total population of downtown panhandlers is about 300 people, including an estimated 100 women. Of these, about 40 women bring children along when they panhandle, he says.
Homeless advocates say too few addiction treatment centers, reductions in welfare grants for families and a lack of jobs and affordable housing have led to an increase in women panhandling. And because they typically can't afford day care, these mothers will continue to bring their children along with them.
For those on welfare, panhandling supplements public assistance, which often is not enough to live on. It's a legal and relatively safe way of getting money, says Ms. Fitzsimmons.
"The woman may be trying to be the best mother she can be," Ms. Fitzsimmons says. Then again, "I'm convinced a lot of them use the money they get from panhandling for drugs and alcohol."
Experts also say panhandling and homelessness are not synonymous. "Keep in mind, there are many subgroups in the homeless population. By and large, panhandlers are not homeless," says Diana Smith of the Eleanor Corner Shelter, the YWCA's 62-bed facility for women, children and families in Baltimore. "When I drive around, I don't see our residents panhandling."
Whether they live in public housing or on the street, women who panhandle with children are emotional assaults. The sight of children on a street corner evokes a Dickensian scene -- Oliver Twist begging on the streets of London with his young partners in petty crime.
"We almost have this physiological reaction to seeing a child -- a tool of production," says Jeff Singer of the Baltimore-based Health Care for the Homeless. "It does pull our heartstrings."
We've become accustomed to seeing men panhandle for "gas money" or "bus fare." For instance, many have seen 60-year-old Macon Stiff under the Cal Ripken Jr. mural near Light and Lombard streets. There he is, almost every day, plopped down )) on a crate and collecting $3 or $4 in his Diet Coke paper cup. He puts each donation into his pockets so his cup is empty for the next passerby.
"Unfortunately, too many people have become hardened to the sight of a single man on the street," says Joanne Selinske of the Mayor's Office of Homeless Services in Baltimore. "People relate more to women and children."
On a muggy May day, Richard Lassiter, 50, begged at the corner of Lombard and Light streets. He said he can't compete against women who panhandle with children. Where he might make $4 in a good day, Mr. Lassiter said he's seen women with kids make up to $100.
"They use the babies as a crutch, a way to get sympathy," he said. "The mothers are using the money for dope. I see the tracks on their arms."
At the end of May, a woman begged at Mulberry and Charles streets. She and a 5-year-old boy walked up and down Mulberry as the traffic light changed, bringing new rounds of cars. It was around 4 p.m. on a weekday, and both the woman and child were bundled up -- maybe too much given the 80 degrees. She didn't want to be interviewed.
The woman, somewhere in her 30s, held a cardboard sign saying she needed money for her family. She held the boy's hand, as he held a blue toy truck in his other hand. He looked bored and antsy but clean and healthy. He didn't say a word, and neither did his mom during her 20-minute stop at this intersection.
Before cars stopped at the light, before eye contact was made, before the woman could show them her sign -- drivers were reaching into their pockets.
Thoughts on giving
The person approached by a panhandler knows the psychological tug-of-war that occurs because of these down-and-dirty exchanges: Will she use the money for drugs? Is the kid even hers? Is the child safe? Is the woman working for a man? What's the mother's real story?
"What difference does it make?" asks Ms. Northcott, who says the accuracy of these women's "stories" is irrelevant. Giving should be unconditional. She says maybe it's no one's business what a panhandler does with her money.
Maybe. But many people can't help but wonder how their extra change will be spent and whether they really helped anyone at all.
vTC "You got a lot of people abusing the situation and making it hard for people who really need help," says 27-year-old Karen Johnson, panhandling on Conway down the street from Camden Yards, where the Tigers were beating the Orioles. "A lot of mothers out there who don't want to do nothing."
Ms. Johnson, a Baltimore native, talked about her situation while year-old Montia ate pistachio nuts and made happy faces with her eyes. They both had just finished sharing a hot dog and iced tea someone had bought them outside the ballpark.
Ms. Johnson says they spent the previous night on a bench inside the Trailways bus station on Fayette. "Montia slept across my legs. I was very uncomfortable there," she says. Ms. Johnson says she has $5 on her and needs another $24 to afford a night at the hotel at St. Paul and Madison streets.
"I pray each night and each morning that God soon will help us to lead a better life, and we won't have to struggle," she says.
Ms. Johnson, who attended Walbrook High School but dropped out in the 11th grade, says she does not have a husband, job or home. She says she does not use drugs. Ms. Johnson says she has worked as a cashier, a telemarketer, a janitor, and until this February, she worked as a lottery machine worker at a convenience store.
Ms. Johnson says she receives $195 in food stamps each month and $289 in other public assistance. Carrying only a duffel bag, she says she keeps all her other clothes and personal items at My Sister's Place, a Baltimore shelter for homeless women and children. Ms. Johnson says she planned to keep an appointment June 6 at the Housing Application Office of Baltimore's Housing Authority.
Agency spokesman Zack Germroth says no one by that name checked in June 6 at the application office.
Ms. Johnson says she never asks anyone outright for money, but always offers to work for money -- washing car windows, sweeping porches. "I go out every day and look for work," she says. In the last month, she says, she applied for work at the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore Hotel.
The hotel's human resources manager, Cindy Spearman, says the hotel has no application from a Karen Johnson.
Up past bedtime
At about 11 p.m., Ms. Johnson is still sitting on the sidewalk outside the ballpark. Usually, Montia is in bed by 9 p.m., she says. "Believe me, I don't make her do anything she doesn't want to do," Ms. Johnson says. "She likes to walk at night with me."
Montia appears healthy and clean. "I'd rather be dirty than see my daughter dirty," her mother says.
Around 11:30 p.m., her mother drapes a coat around Montia and then rocks her. A Styrofoam cup, bottom-heavy with change, sits next to them. Ms. Johnson says she always takes the bills out because they might get stolen. And she never counts her money in front of people.
Cynthia Hill, a 37-year-old from Bethesda, is walking to her car and sees the mother and child on the sidewalk. She gives them about a dollar in change.
"It was just seeing the child. I'm glad I gave. It was nothing, really, but I feel better," Ms. Hill says. "I'd like to think they use the money for food. I make the assumption it was needed."
Ms. Johnson says she now has enough money for the $29-a-night room on St. Paul Street. She hoists her sleeping child into her arms, keeping Montia wrapped in her coat.
Walking along Pratt Street toward the hotel, Ms. Johnson puts all her bills from the night into the bottom of one of her untied Keds. By the time she gets to Harborplace, a foursome of prom-goers passes her in purple dresses and black tuxedos. "They look lovely," says Ms. Johnson, dreamily.
Before she is left to walk to the hotel, Ms. Johnson is told about Ben Harris and how he gave her all his parking money.
"Oh, wow," Ms. Johnson says. "As you can see, people have feelings."
Then, Karen and Montia Johnson take a left onto St. Paul and are gone for the night.
At St. Paul and Madison streets, the Abbey Hotel stays open all night. Rooms start at $29. Greg Turner, the manager working the night of May 31, says no woman with a 4-year-old girl registered.