Community members regularly bemoan the presence of homeless persons who panhandle along State Street. The complaint is that their ranks have swelled, that many are young and aimless rather than unfortunates truly in need, and that this newer breed deploys aggressive tactics in pursuit of cash handouts. This is thought to turn off tourists, upon whom Santa Barbara's economy largely derives.

So The Investigator chose late Saturday afternoon -- optimum shopping, strolling and snacking hours for residents and visitors alike -- to reconnoiter State Street, beginning at Borders, down to Gutierrez Street, up to the Arlington Theatre, and back again, to assess whatever threat homeless beggars pose to the community.

This adventure, covering nine city blocks, produced 15 people seeking
handouts:

• A middle-aged man on a bench near Borders, reading a book, sporting this sign: No talent.

• A 30-something woman with a dog and stroller packed with belongings, on a bench outside Rite Aid, and a sign: Anything helps.

• Near Paseo Nuevo, a man and woman with this sign: God bless U.

• Outside Pascucci: A busker strumming a guitar.

• Outside Cost Plus World Market: A busker banging a bongo.

• Behind the Habit: A young man with a backpack and a fishing pole from which hangs a plastic cup, and this sign: "Fishing 4 a change in life -- Got any work?" This is Jeremy, 28, from Oklahoma. He told The Investigator he sleeps in bushes at night instead of homeless shelters "because they're covered in bugs lately, lice and scabies."

He was reading a book, "To Own a Dragon." "I get through three books a week," said Jeremy. "People see me reading and give me books."

A sometime carpenter, Jeremy arrived in Santa Barbara six years ago, had his car and tools stolen, he said, and thereafter fell into the poverty hole. He's been homeless "on and off" ever since, working in construction whenever he can get himself hired.

On Fridays he gets paid to unload produce for the market, but no one will hire him lately because he's homeless. On a good day -- "the good days are Fridays and Saturdays, the bad days are Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays" -- he collects about 10 bucks, enough to feed himself.

Asked about aggression, Jeremy explained the aggressors are not homeless persons, but young male adults who, after a night's drinking in State Street bars, show off to their girlfriends by tormenting street people. He recently witnessed three men urinating on an elderly homeless man sleeping on a bench.

• Outside Morning Glory Music's old premises, a barefoot vagrant with belongings.

• At the art museum, two males, bags packed, one with this sign: All politicians are losers.

• A multi-tattooed man with a sign: Old, ugly and homeless. This is Wolfgang. He told The Investigator he's been homeless for a year, since losing a job at the recycling center.

Wolfgang sleeps at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission despite, he says, "a lice outbreak this month -- that's three times this year. They spray everything. I'm not sure what's worse, the lice or the spray."

Wolfgang, in Santa Barbara since 1970, added, "Most people are homeless because of alcohol." He estimated that 95 percent of his brethren (about 600 homeless in Santa Barbara) are drinkers or drug abusers.

None of the above displayed threatening or obnoxious behavior; not one tried to block anyone else's path or make aggressive demands or use profanity, which would violate state law.

If one wanted to gripe, one could say these vagabonds take up public benches; also, it may be distasteful to view dirty bare feet -- or legs with open sores -- which some vagrants are not shy about exposing.

The Investigator returned twice for similar walkabouts and found mostly the same poor folks, a couple different, but fewer than before, and no aggression.

Police Sgt. Ed Olsen told The Investigator he has noticed a change in both the number and disposition of panhandlers since he joined the force 18 years ago. He divides them into two groups, regulars and drifters. It is this latter category, the "seasonal transients," whom he blames for accosting women pushing children in strollers.

Sgt. Olsen also said that police have not received assault reports from homeless persons, though he understands such persons generally avoid initiating police contact -- and police do receive many reports of assaults perpetrated by young adult males leaving the lower State Street bars.

His colleague Sgt. Dan McGrew leads a five-officer unit that patrols the downtown area on alert for street crime and to monitor the homeless presence, including those living in junky trailers that have proliferated in a neighborhood around Santa Barbara Junior High.

Sgt. McGrew told The Investigator that those who sleep rough, instead of at the rescue mission, do so because they prefer to bunk with a bottle of booze, or cannot otherwise abide by rescue mission rules.

Is it such a bad thing if visitors to Santa Barbara walk away with an understanding that we have tolerance and a big heart? Possibly.
According to Sgt. Olsen, neighboring communities routinely re-direct their vagrants to Santa Barbara as a means of solving their own vagrancy problems.

The plight of the homeless, however, may give us cause to reflect -- especially during these hard times -- on how fortunate we must be in Santa Barbara to possess the means to look after those in need year- round, not just between Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone is sentimentalized into feeling kind and compassionate.