Plan Helps Panhandlers With Vouchers, Not Quarters</p>
<p>“Junior” spends most of his days sitting near the sidewalk on York Street here, holding his baseball cap out and asking passersby for change. “How you doing? You got some coins?” he asks.</p>
<p>But now, mixed in with the dollar bills, quarters and dimes, he is getting 25-cent vouchers he can redeem for food, personal items, even bus fare. “I like the idea,” said the unemployed panhandler, who would give only his nickname. “I’m happy when someone gives me a voucher because I can go over to Wawa and get me some food.”</p>
<p>The vouchers are distributed by New Haven Cares, a nonprofit group created to reduce panhandling in downtown New Haven and to help the community support street people without supporting their alcohol or drug habits.</p>
<p>The idea emerged in 1992 when members of the Downtown Christian Ministries approached Yale University about supporting a voucher program modeled after one in Berkeley, Calif., which has sold about 240,000 25-cent vouchers in two years.</p>
<p>Matthew Lieberman, a third-year law student at Yale and the son of United States Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, led the effort, gathering the support of church and community leaders, merchants, Yale University officials and the New Haven police. The vouchers were first distributed early in September. Food, but No Alcohol</p>
<p>“People in New Haven do care about homeless people and about panhandlers,” Matthew Lieberman said. “The overwhelming support of this program shows that. But getting all these groups together – who knew we had a panhandling problem but were often at odds over what to do about it – was exciting.”</p>
<p>More than 45 New Haven merchants are participating in the program. About 35 sell vouchers and 15 redeem them, allowing street people to pick up a hot cup of soup, a pint of orange juice or a bottle of baby formula. Cigarettes and alcohol cannot be bought with the vouchers.</p>
<p>“We can’t get the vouchers in fast enough, they’re selling so quickly,” said Richard Hibbard, the manager of Store 24, a convenience store on Broadway. “People are buying them at $3 and $4 a clip and giving them to panhandlers.”</p>
<p>Lisa Lubasch, a Yale junior from Jericho, L.I., went into the Wawa food market on York Street to get a quart of milk and bought some vouchers, which she passed out on her way down the street. “You can’t walk down the street without having someone come up to you asking for money and that can be intimidating,” she said. “I like the idea of a voucher so much better. You know at least they’ll be getting food.” Encouraging Generosity</p>
<p>Mr. Lieberman says he thinks the vouchers will make people more generous. “The sum total of giving is going to increase a lot,” he said, “because people know the vouchers will be used to meet a need.”</p>
<p>Harry W. Berkowitz, the president of the Yale Co-op, a major department store for Yale students, applauded the effort. “I think it’s a wonderful thing that Matt and his group, who are up to their eyeballs in studies at law school, have the time, the drive and inclination to become involved in the community’s needs,” he said. “This community needs to do more to solve its own problems. We have to reduce the intimidation, reduce the feeling of unsafeness. This is one step in that direction.”</p>
<p>Mr. Lieberman and two fellow law students, George Miller and Don Moorehead, act as a kind of central bank. Merchants who sell vouchers pass on the money to the law students, who reimburse merchants who have redeemed vouchers. Most stores act as either selling or redeeming sites, although some convenience stores and restaurants do both. Those who sell vouchers do not make any profit on them.</p>
<p>Signs are up in the windows of all the cooperating stores, and Yale law students also spend time walking the streets telling indigent people about the program. ‘America Cares’ Program</p>
<p>Besides New Haven Cares, there are voucher distribution programs in Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz, Calif., Boulder, Colo., Chicago, and Edmonton, Alberta. Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico, has proposed legislation to create an America Cares voucher system that would provide start-up money in more than 60 cities. Mr. Lieberman’s father, a Democrat from Connnecticut, is a co-sponsor of the bill, which is in the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.</p>
<p>New Haven corporations are starting to sign on, buying up hundreds of vouchers to be given to the city’s non-panhandling homeless at soup kitchens and social service agencies.</p>
<p>Mr. Lieberman, a lifelong New Haven resident, said he wanted to address the problem of panhandling ever since he was 13 and his parents let him take the bus alone into downtown New Haven. While there a panhandler asked him for money and he gave him three dollars.</p>
<p>When he got home he told his mother, Elizabeth Haas, a psychiatric social worker. She told him that many of the panhandlers spent their money on liquor and wound up at the front door of the mental health center.</p>
<p>“I became one of those people who never gave to panhandlers,” he said. “I didn’t want to contribute to a drinking problem and yet I never liked just walking by and not helping. This is a way to get people to help and to interact.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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