Spare change? Maybe not in Westmount

At council’s December meeting last Monday evening, Mayor Peter Trent faced questions from several residents about possible measures the City could take to deal with people soliciting money from passersby on the street. “Unlike questions of graffiti or litter, which also concern you and me, panhandlers are a much more complex issue to deal with,” said Trent. “They exist because people give them money. So obviously there are people out there who encourage panhandlers … “We have a sociological problem, a societal problem, and it’s not easy to deal with. So it would be facile for me to say, fine, we’ll deal with it, but I don’t really know quite how we can do it. We can ask them to move along. We can try to deal with the problem as best we can. But I don’t have an overall answer. We need to have a discussion; we need to do some research.”

Trent said he personally never gives money to people who panhandle. “If everybody did that we wouldn’t have any problem with panhandling. Unfortunately, people do. And so those people may not like it if we adopt any measures that tend to reduce the number of panhandlers.”

During question period, some residents suggested that Westmount should enact new bylaws that would make it illegal for panhandlers to loiter within a certain distance of banks and automated teller machines. One man even said the City should follow the example of the City of Pittsburgh, where he claimed it is an offence to give money to panhandlers. “I’m afraid that would probably be regarded as being overkill,” the mayor replied.

Director General Duncan Campbell noted that the City already has a bylaw in place for loitering and vagrancy and that “it’s really more a question of how we go about enforcing it.”

City Councillor Gary Ikeman, who is responsible for public security, said that direct policing of panhandlers “is simply going to move the problem around, but it won’t solve it. We can move people from the north side of the street to the south side of the street. We can ask people to move along, but these people cannot be arrested. They’re not breaking any laws. “We don’t arrest panhandlers in this city to my knowledge. There are bylaws, but we don’t put people in jail for panhandling and we can’t fine them because they don’t have any money. I think it’s a social problem that needs to be addressed and we are looking at ways to address the problem.”